Russell Roberts's Blog, page 268
June 5, 2021
Some Covid Links
Liz Wolfe rightly criticizes New York City’s remaining Covid-19 restrictions. A slice:
Though the nonsensical midnight curfews for indoor and outdoor dining have finally been lifted citywide, many other pointless measures remain in place. Just as they’ve been forced to for the last 15 months, business owners must continue to navigate a maze of state- and city-imposed restrictions that fail to take into account the idea that maybe they’re the ones best suited to decide what works for their own staff and customers.
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
Historian Dominic Sandbrook: “Once assumed, state powers are not lightly surrendered. And once politicians have a taste for control, they find it very hard to give it up.”
Victoria Lambert writes about Lionel Shriver. A slice:
Shriver’s generosity of spirit suddenly takes a sharp swerve. Ah yes, recent events. “I think lockdown was a catastrophic error,” she says. “It has caused terrible damage to specific people who have invested their whole lives in businesses – I can’t stand it.” Shriver mentions her own husband, American jazz drummer Jeffrey Williams, who has not been able to work.
Is she hopeful about Opening Up Day on June 21? Not really: “They won’t take away the power to do it again if they feel like it.”
This is not just concern over economics or catastrophic health effects (such as missed cancer diagnoses). “It is about what we have done to liberal democracy all over the world. We used to have civil rights. They were irrevocable. Now, they are revocable.
“All of our liberties have become conditional, and they will stay conditional for ever. What is the difference between living under the Chinese Communist Party and the Conservative Party?
“We never used to talk about lockdowns except in prisons – then it became a thing in days. I have been horrified to see how people have adapted to the new circumstances. It is a violation of the country I thought I lived in.”
Shriver is not a disease-denier. She has had both vaccinations (“with not much agonising”) and would have approved of guidance for the elderly or immunocompromised to stay at home. But it is another thing “to tell them to stay home and send police out on the streets to enforce it”.
It is appalling, she says, “that this Government has taken hold of every aspect of our lives”.
Here’s a new profile of the heroic Jonathan Sumption. A slice:
Well, Lord Sumption has certainly done that in recent months, becoming the intellectual champion of the anti-lockdowners – one of the few public figures prepared to stick his neck out and articulate a case against the Government’s measures in regular newspaper columns (several in The Telegraph) and on television. His stand has drawn criticism from his former colleagues at the Bar and from those who believe the threat from Covid justified the most illiberal measures seen in peacetime. But Sumption, who began his working life as an academic, believes the response has been massively disproportionate and betrays a distinct lack of historical perspective.
‘Covid-19 is towards the upper end [the most bearable] of the kind of epidemic that humanity has had to cope with from the beginning of time,’ he says. By contrast, he argues, the various lockdowns the Government has enforced over the past year have been brutal in prohibiting the most basic of human interactions. ‘It is historically extreme and unusual,’ he adds. ‘We have never, ever done such a thing.’
…..
Sumption feels so strongly on the subject that he appears ready to take on all-comers in any forum. ‘These (lockdown) rules are an attack on our humanity. They are an assault on everything that makes humanity spiritually valuable,’ he says with feeling. ‘The interaction with other human beings is completely fundamental to our existence.’ Then, he adds, there was the ‘attack on the entire spiritual dimension of our existence – the closure of schools, the closure of museums, theatres, churches, sports grounds. These are things without which we cannot function as human beings. And I do not think that the saving of lives is worth such a price.’
Here’s the opening paragraph of Amy Jones’s latest at UnHerd:
A new pandemic is upon us — but it doesn’t involve viruses. It doesn’t involve the WHO, or perfidious cave bats. It’s a pandemic of opinion pieces written by liberals complaining of “reopening anxiety”.
During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded to them.
They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into nursing homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable. Their rules for prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask wearing or violent protesting often hinged on political grounds. Their spending measures on “infrastructure” and “health care” were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) deserves applause for working to prevent the U.S. government from requiring, as a condition for flying domestically, so-called “vaccine passports.” (For the record, while I would do my best to avoid ever flying on an airline that chooses to require such “passports,” I believe – strongly – that no government has any business preventing privately owned airlines from using such requirements.)
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 22 of volume 1 (“Rules and Order,” 1973) of F.A. Hayek’s brilliant trilogy, Law, Legislation, and Liberty:
It came increasingly to be seen that the formation of regular patterns in human relations that were not the conscious aim of human actions raised a problem which required the development of a systematic social theory. This need was met during the second half of the eighteenth century in the field of economics by the Scottish moral philosophers, led by Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson….
DBx: In Kirkcaldy, Scotland, Adam Smith was born 298 years ago on this date (June 5th).
June 4, 2021
Some Non-Covid Links
My colleague Bryan Caplan is correct that discrimination should be deregulated.
Here’s Arnold Kling on discourse in modern economics.
Moviemakers play states against one another, leading to a cycle of bigger movie subsidies as lawmakers try not to be outbid by their neighbors. Analyst Robert Tannenwald has called this “perpetual competitive purgatory.”
The history of film subsidies shows the dynamic at work. Louisiana was the first to spend big money on subsidies for moviemaking. It had a small program that started in 1992, but a major expansion in 2002 caused scores of major productions to rush to the Bayou State. That inspired other states to start their own programs, and Louisiana had to spend to keep up. Costs spiraled out of control. Eventually lawmakers capped the subsidy program.
Robby Soave reports on how wokism devours its own. (Babylon Bee couldn’t make up stuff such as this incident on which Robby reports.)
George Will’s latest. A slice:
The unceasing torrent of political proclamations from people whose politics are not germane to their vocations raises a question. Why do people who have nothing intelligent to say insist on proving this? The urgent question, however, is whether the ideologies of the speakers, and the sensitivities of their anticipated auditors, have produced a new etiquette: Politeness is understood as genuflection at approved political altars. Today, verifiable truth is just one option among many, with a standing inferior to any ideological agenda that the truth inconveniences.
My Mercatus Center colleague Adam Thierer is always worth reading – and listening to.
GMU Econ alum Mark Perry documents creative destruction.
Juliette Sellgren talks with Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle about failure.
Some Covid Links
Eyal Shahar is right that Sweden was right. A slice:
Assuming the excess mortality in 2019–2020 “fully balanced” the mortality deficit in the previous flu year, the true excess mortality in Sweden was less than 1% (about 700 deaths). And if we assume, absurdly, that the mortality in 2019–2020 was not affected at all by the mortality deficit in the previous flu year, then the excess mortality in Sweden did not exceed 4.1% (about 3,800 deaths). Excess mortality of a few percentage points, or more, has been calculated in many countries where life has been severely disrupted. Part of that excess has been attributed to lockdown and panic.
To remind us, the hysterical response to the pandemic was not due to fear of an excess annual mortality of 4% or even 10%. The apocalyptic forecasts, which caused the world to shut down, predicted about 90,000 deaths from the coronavirus in Sweden by the summer of 2020: 100% excess mortality! No wonder policy makers around the world prefer to forget those predictions.
David Hart is justifiably infuriated by the Australian Covidocracy’s continuing authoritarianism.
J.D. Tuccille decries performative pandemic panic. A slice:
Now, even with widespread vaccination, mask-wearing remains politically divisive. Some Team Blue partisans retain the coverings just to demonstrate that they aren’t Republicans even after Fauci admitted that the chance of vaccinated people getting infected is extremely low, making masks unnecessary.
The situation may have been even worse in the U.K., where public officials deliberately tried to scare the hell out of the public in order to make people more malleable.
“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian’,” The Telegraph reported last month about the tactics adopted by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B). “SPI-B warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase ‘the perceived level of personal threat’ from Covid-19 because ‘a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened’.”
Emma McArthur decries Britain’s tyrannical response to Covid-19.
Here’s a recent instance in Massachusetts of the Covidocracy’s tyranny.
Roger Watson worries that the consequences of Covid Derangement Syndrome will linger for a long time. Here’s his conclusion:
And there you have it. Everyone is having fun, making up arbitrary rules, bossing others around or being bossed around by others and, if I am not mistaken, enjoying it. To recycle a much-misused expression: “this is how Hitler started.”
During the pandemic, brave doctors such Scott Atlas, Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya have been vilified. These doctors have not been willing to, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would say, live by lies.
A Note on Some Irritating Spam ‘Comments’
Many of you will have noticed that, over the past few weeks, a series of spammers have inserted “comments” on each Cafe Hayek post – comments boasting of the high incomes the spammers make by doing some on-line tasks. These spammers then encourage you, the reader, to get in on the lucrative action. Obviously, do not ever click on any of these ads and do not follow the parasitic get-quick-rich ‘advice’ that is offered.
The moment I find such an ad, I mark it as spam and report it to Facebook (which, alas, is not been speedy in eliminating each). I must do this marking individually, for each and every such “comment.” I get zero revenue from these “comments,” yet even if I did, I’d want them gone and gone forever. But I have no control over who comments at Cafe Hayek. Anyone with a Facebook account is free to do so, and these spammers have Facebook accounts.
So – as soon as I am able, I will stop using Facebook as the commenting forum for Cafe Hayek. Being illiterate in the ways of technology, I’ll have to investigate my options. Please know that these spam “comments” are at least as annoying to me as they are to you.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from pages 210-211 of the 1996 Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) edition of Henry Hazlitt’s insightful 1973 book, The Conquest of Poverty (original emphasis):
And unlike a government agency, the private owner is obliged by self-preservation to try to avoid losses, which means that he is forced to run his railroad economically and efficiently. And also unlike a government agency, the private capitalist is nearly always obliged to face competition – which means to make the services he provides or the goods he sells superior or at least equal to those provided by his competitors. Therefore the private capitalist normally serves the public far better than the government could if it took over his property.
June 3, 2021
The Ultimate Political Insiders
Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Editor:
George Will is correct that “All laws regulating campaigns are enacted by people with conflicts of interest – interests in advantaging themselves and disadvantaging challengers” (“Democrats’ big voting bill is constitutional vandalism,” June 3). As Thomas Sowell explains:
Campaign finance laws also enhance the power of incumbents, who have access to the media by virtue of their offices and have direct access to the public through the power of press releases and junkets paid for by the taxpayers. Unfortunately, it is only incumbents who can vote on campaign finance laws – and they are obviously in favor of whatever increases their chances of keeping their jobs.*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
* Thomas Sowell, “Campaign Finance Reform Follies” (April 14th, 2001).
Some Non-Covid Links
This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.
The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’” Apparently, that’s also racist.
George Leef reviews Gary Saul Morson’s and Morton Schapiro’s uneven new book, Minds Wide Shut. A slice:
Finally, the book contains one glaring error. Among the divisive “new fundamentalisms” the authors indict is what they call “market fundamentalism.” By that, they refer to economists who allegedly base their conclusions purely on economic laws without actually looking at evidence.
That part of the book (which is considerable) is laughably weak. Instead of showing instances where economists who oppose government intervention have argued purely on the basis of economic laws (or from supposedly sacred text such as The Wealth of Nations), all Morson and Schapiro do is to quote two advocates of massive government economic intervention (George Soros and Joseph Stiglitz) who assert that their opponents are fundamentalists.
That’s the academic equivalent of relying on hearsay evidence in a trial. Morson and Schapiro never show that “market fundamentalism” actually exists, much less that it’s a divisive force.
I know of no serious economist whose case for minimal government is “fundamentalist” in nature. Nor do they respond in a fundamentalist manner when their viewpoints are questioned; they respond with counter-arguments, not with haughty references to inerrant texts or with ad hominem attacks. The authors have wasted a lot of pages pounding on a strawman.
Worse still, telling readers that arguments against minimum wage laws, for example, needn’t be taken seriously because they’re rooted in “market fundamentalism” is to encourage exactly what the authors say they are against—refusing to reason with people with whom you disagree.
George Will describes Democrats’ proposed ‘For the People Act’ as “constitutional vandalism.” A slice:
FTP reflects an appetite for constitutional vandalism that was displayed seven years ago when 54 members of the Democratic Senate caucus voted to amend the First Amendment to empower Congress to regulate the quantity, content and timing of campaign speech. They thereby implicitly acknowledged that the amendment (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech”) is, by its text, and Supreme Court rulings, incompatible with their desire to strictly control campaign spending, all of which directly or indirectly funds political advocacy.
To pay for all this spending, Biden proposes to borrow $3.7 trillion in FY 2021. Not surprisingly, the national debt under this plan is projected to increase from $24 trillion this year to $39 trillion by 2031. That’s an increase of debt held by the public from 100 percent of the gross domestic product in 2020 to 117 percent by 2031. As a reminder, at the height of World War II, public debt as a share of GDP was 106 percent.
And Peter Suderman explains that Biden’s ‘budget’ is even more costly than it appears.
No lie: The Nazis were indeed socialists.
John Lott looks at voting laws globally.
Kimi Katiti explains her escape from “the cult of wokeness.” (HT Dan Klein)
While someone always complains about paying higher prices, it only raises a furor during situations hyped as emergencies. Everyone seems to oppose “gouging” in a crisis. But it is even more important to allocate resources efficiently when they are scarcer than usual. And contradicting the “poison pen” press it receives, “gouging” not only accomplishes that, but it results in lower total costs to consumers of acquiring the goods involved than gouging laws.
Here’s Jonah Goldberg and Mark Perry talking with Jason Riley about Thomas Sowell:
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 85 of volume 1 (“Rules and Order,” 1973) of F.A. Hayek’s brilliant trilogy, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (original emphasis):
The freedom of the British which in the eighteenth century the rest of Europe came so much to admire was thus not, as the British themselves were among the first to believe and as Montesquieu later taught the world, originally a product of the separation of powers between legislative and executive, but rather a result of the fact that the law that governed the decisions of the courts was the common law, a law existing independently of anyone’s will and at the same time binding upon and developed by the independent courts, a law with which parliament only rarely interfered and, when it did, mainly only to clear up doubtful points within a given body of law. One might even say that a sort of separation of powers had grown up in England, not because the ‘legislature’ alone made law, but because it did not; because the law was determined by courts independent of the power which organized and directed government….
June 2, 2021
Don’t be a Sap by Falling for This Tax-Cartel Scheme
Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Editor:
David Lynch reports that Pres. Biden’s proposed global cartel of tax collectors – euphemistically described as a “global minimum tax on corporate profits” – “is designed to halt a cycle of corporate tax-cutting that has sapped government revenue around the globe” (“Biden set for G-7 boost in bid for all nations to impose minimum global corporate tax,” June 1).
The only evidence offered for any such ‘sapping’ in the U.S. is this sentence: “Annual revenue from corporate taxes relative to the size of the economy is now less than one-quarter as large as in 1967, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” (By the way, the link in this quoted sentence doesn’t go to a CBO study. It goes to another Washington Post report that itself not only doesn’t mention any CBO study, it doesn’t even touch on trends in corporate tax revenues.) And Our World In Data reveals that governments worldwide are not having their tax revenues “sapped.”
While it might be true that corporate tax revenues in the U.S. relative to GDP have fallen since 1967, they have emphatically not been “sapped.” According to the St. Louis Fed, the U.S. government’s inflation-adjusted corporate tax revenues were in 2020 17% higher than in 1967. And in the pre-Covid year 2019 these tax revenues were 30% higher than in 1967.
As for all federal government inflation-adjusted tax receipts, these were 220 percent higher in 2020 than they were in 1967.*
Biden’s proposed taxing cartel is less about preventing a mythical ‘sapping’ of government revenue than it is about further unchecking what Amity Shlaes calls government’s “greedy hand.”
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
* The nominal figures here in the ninth column (“Total Receipts”) of Table 2.1 were adjusted for inflation using the GDP deflator.
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