Russell Roberts's Blog, page 310
February 21, 2021
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 317 of the “Random Thoughts” section of Thomas Sowell’s 2002 volume, Controversial Essays:
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
Some Covid Links
In response to Biden saying that he believes, but doesn’t guarantee, that we’ll be approaching “normalcy” by the end of the year, Phil Magness correctly writes on his Facebook page that:
Your best bet is to ignore him and everyone else who adheres to his position on this issue, including Fauci.
You know your own risk better than anyone else. Use that to make informed assessments of what risk-mitigation measures you need to take, and go about your life accordingly while allowing others with different risk assessments to do the same.
The biggest mistake of the entire pandemic was the assumption that it could somehow be “solved” through the instruments of state-coordinated collective action.
Also from Phil Magness at Facebook:
As of 2/19, Sweden has 1,224 deaths per million without lockdowns.
The UK has 1,798 deaths per million after 3 harsh lockdowns.
The number of Covid-19 deaths should be adjusted to distinguish, as well as possible, those persons who died with Covid-19 from those persons who died of Covid-19. Likewise, the number of non-Covid-19 deaths should be adjusted to distinguish, as well as possible, those persons who died during lockdowns from those persons – such as these two unfortunate young women – who died because of lockdowns. (DBx: One doesn’t have to have Covid in order to have a life that’s meaningful and to suffer a death that’s mournful. Yet most of the public, media, and governments have reacted to Covid as if the only deaths that matter are Covid deaths – as if the only lives that matter are the lives of people with Covid – as if the only risk that matters and, hence, the only risk worth reducing is the risk of suffering from Covid. This utter lack of proportion – this sudden ignorance that our lives are unavoidably filled with many different risks that must be traded-off against each other – this treatment of Covid deaths as being categorically worse than are non-Covid deaths – all combined with a blind faith in politicians and bureaucrats to use vast powers wisely, prudently, and effectively – is what I call Covid Derangement Syndrome.)
It’s not just political careers that are dropping like stones. The same is happening to Covid cases in the U.S.. The trend seems to defy prediction from January 20, 2021: the new US president said this about Covid-19: “things would get worse before they get better.” Then something very interesting happened. The number of cases of recorded infections of SARS-CoV-2 took a startling dive, falling fully 80% from the daily high on January 8th.
Peter Hitchens understandably mourns the loss of freedom in Britain. Two slices:
When I describe freedom, I’m not thinking of the group rights for protected categories that are now widely seen as the only freedoms that matter. I’m thinking of a general feeling that we were free to do, say and think as we liked within the boundaries of a clearly understood law and of good manners.
I’m also thinking of the independence of strong families, through which tradition and faith were passed on, along with manners and the habits of unselfishness. And I am thinking of schools in which teachers with authority passed on hard knowledge.
It was not paradise – though by comparison with now, the liberty of children to live free-range lives was so astonishing that many find it difficult to believe it happened at all.
It had many things wrong with it that could have been put right without the snooping and surveillance, and the heavy hand of politically correct conformism which we now endure.
…..
Millions have been vaccinated against Covid – mainly the most vulnerable. Millions more will be soon. But do not be surprised if this does not in fact lead to liberation from the strangling of the country which began almost 11 months ago.
This is what always happens when you give up real freedom for what is usually fanciful safety. Officials and politicians dare not relax the measures they took in a panic, in case they are blamed if anything ever goes wrong afterwards. And millions genuinely believe they are safer as a result.
Janet Daley asks fundamental questions about the horrible tyranny of the past year. Two slices:
How on earth have we got to the point where a government of any complexion in a liberal democracy is about to give us permission (or maybe not) to embrace our loved ones, meet a friend for lunch or emerge from home for something other than a purpose it deems to be essential? That is the big one but there are some smaller questions too about the unprecedented experiences of this astonishing period.
When did it become acceptable, indeed a routine expectation, that experts serving on government bodies as official advisers during a national emergency, should feel free to appear regularly on the media expressing their personal opinions on contentious matters of public policy? Surely this should be regarded as quite irregular – if not improper. And yet, neither government ministers nor their Opposition shadows (who may find the resulting confusion helpful), appear to have made any adverse comment about this.
…..
So maybe, all things considered, letting scientists blurt things out when they feel like it, is quite a brilliant news management strategy. The trouble is that it has been messing with people’s minds in a dangerous way. Those at home who are praying for release, and even those others who are now so gripped by terror that they no longer crave freedom, do not know who to believe. The state of confusion and open disagreement among those who are supposed to be in charge – in which the world-beating vaccine programme is being celebrated one day only to be downplayed as a harbinger of a return to normal life, the next – is genuinely driving the country crazy.
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 118 of Robert Higgs’s brilliant 1971 book, The Transformation of the American Economy: 1865-1914 (original emphasis):
Of course, with many employers, each attempting to maximize wealth, competition for workers would soon force the wage up to a level at which it equalled the actual value of the worker’s labor services to the firm. Not every employer must be a wealth maximizer to obtain this result, however. In principle, just one would be enough, for it would pay him to outbid other (discriminating) employers for labor and to expand his business as long as he could continue to obtain workers at less than the going rate…. The evidence is quite convincing that at least some employers in the post-Civil War era strongly preferred wealth to the pleasures of discrimination.
February 20, 2021
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 76 of the great Shelby Steele’s 1998 essay “Wrestling with Stigma,” as this essay appears in the 2002 volume edited by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, Beyond the Color Line:
Nowhere in the ancient or modern world – except in the most banal utopian writing – is there the idea that people will become self-sufficient if they are given a lifetime income that is slightly better than subsistence with no requirement either to work or to educate themselves. Nowhere is there the idea that young girls should be subsidized for having children out of wedlock, with more money for more children. And yet this is precisely the form of welfare that came out of the sixties – welfare as a license not to develop. Out of deference this policy literally set up incentives that all but mandated inner-city inertia, that destroyed the normal human relationship to work and family, and that turned the values of hard work, sacrifice, and delayed gratification into a fool’s game.
Courageous Jodi Shaw
Rick Geddes alerted me to this new piece by Bari Weiss in which Ms. Weiss shares in full Jodi Shaw’s eloquent letter of resignation from an administrative post at Smith College. I will contribute to Ms. Shaw’s GoFundMe campaign, and encourage you to consider doing so.
Here’s Ms. Shaw’s letter in full:
Dear President McCartney:
I am writing to notify you that effective today, I am resigning from my position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life at Smith College. This has not been an easy decision, as I now face a deeply uncertain future. As a divorced mother of two, the economic uncertainty brought about by this resignation will impact my children as well. But I have no choice. The racially hostile environment that the college has subjected me to for the past two and a half years has left me physically and mentally debilitated. I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom.
I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.
But the climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.
Before even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave, and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees, workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating “systemic racism” on campus.
In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.
Allowing this narrative to dominate has had a profound impact on the Smith community and on me personally. For example, in August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort, and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going to be done in rap form and “because you are white,” as my supervisor told me, that could be viewed as “cultural appropriation.” My supervisor made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem was my skin color.
I was up for a full-time position in the library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time.
Humiliated, and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life.
As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race.
Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.
Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.
The last straw came in January 2020, when I attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity. When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.
Later, the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.
I filed an internal complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process, over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behavior, like having important aspects of my job taken away without explanation.
Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation.
I can no longer continue to work in an environment where I am constantly subjected to additional scrutiny because of my skin color. I can no longer work in an environment where I am told, publicly, that my personal feelings of discomfort under such scrutiny are not legitimate but instead are a manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps most importantly, I can no longer work in an environment where I am expected to apply similar race-based stereotypes and assumptions to others, and where I am told — when I complain about having to engage in what I believe to be discriminatory practices — that there are “legitimate reasons for asking employees to consider race” in order to achieve the college’s “social justice objectives.”
What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.
Equally troubling are the many others who understand and know full well how damaging this is, but do not speak out due to fear of professional retaliation, social censure, and loss of their livelihood and reputation. I fear that by the time people see it, or those who see it manage to screw up the moral courage to speak out, it will be too late.
I wanted to change things at Smith. I hoped that by bringing an internal complaint, I could somehow get the administration to see that their capitulation to critical race orthodoxy was causing real, measurable harm. When that failed, I hoped that drawing public attention to these problems at Smith would finally awaken the administration to this reality. I have come to conclude, however, that the college is so deeply committed to this toxic ideology that the only way for me to escape the racially hostile climate is to resign. It is completely unacceptable that we are now living in a culture in which one must choose between remaining in a racially hostile, psychologically abusive environment or giving up their income.
As a proud Smith alum, I know what a critical role this institution has played in shaping my life and the lives of so many women for one hundred and fifty years. I want to see this institution be the force for good I know it can be. I will not give up fighting against the dangerous pall of orthodoxy that has descended over Smith and so many of our educational institutions.
This was an extremely difficult decision for me and comes at a deep personal cost. I make $45,000 a year; less than a year’s tuition for a Smith student. I was offered a settlement in exchange for my silence, but I turned it down. My need to tell the truth — and to be the kind of woman Smith taught me to be — makes it impossible for me to accept financial security at the expense of remaining silent about something I know is wrong. My children’s future, and indeed, our collective future as a free nation, depends on people having the courage to stand up to this dangerous and divisive ideology, no matter the cost.
Sincerely,
Jodi Shaw
DBx: Courage such as is here displayed by Ms. Shaw – with her words backed by her meaningful action – is much-needed always, but today especially so. Let us hesitate no longer to describe many of today’s Progressives as the racists and sexists that they are. (Today’s Progressives, actually, aren’t all that different from yesterday’s Progressives.)
I have no doubt that were we able somehow to get into the heads of the likes of John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, or any of the other slave-holding or slavery apologists of yesteryear we would discover that these individuals truly believed themselves to be in the right. They did not think of themselves as championing an evil ideology and system. They, I’m sure to a man and woman, were convinced to the innermost molecules of their marrows of the correctness of their position and of the righteousness of their cause. Ditto for proponents and imposers of Jim Crow legislation.
And so, for the same reason, I don’t doubt that the president of Smith College and her colleagues, along with each of the countless other proponents and campus enforcers of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” truly believe themselves to be in the right. They do not think of themselves as championing an evil ideology and system.
Like racists of the past, today’s racists are convinced that the racial distinctions that they draw are meaningful, valid, and important. Like racists of the past, today’s racists feel in their bones the justice of classifying people according the superficial category “race,” and then forcing the inferior races to do the bidding of the superior races. ‘Justice demands it!’ they believe. ‘History ordains the righteousness of the superior races’ claims on the inferior races, and that the inferior races continue to show obeisance to their racial superiors. Those who object to this status system,’ racists of every age screech, ‘are morally corrupt enemies of all that is right and, therefore, they must be silenced.’
College campuses today – especially elite college campuses – are home to sincere yet evil racists and sexists. These racists and sexists are the woke crowd. They are also the university administrators who push so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” They include the professors and students who are in a fever to cancel any and all who are perceived to be insufficiently enthusiastic about today’s form of racism and sexism.
All of today’s racists and sexists are, as all racists and sexists throughout history have been, utter simpletons whose very simplemindedness is what allows them to mistakenly fancy themselves to be in an intellectual and ethical vanguard. Their simpleton-ness is attested to by the fact that they focus almost exclusively on superficial phenomena, mostly skin color and genitalia. Today’s racists and sexists are made blind to their racism and sexism by the puny fact that the races and the sex that they champion differ from the races and the sex championed by yesterday’s racists and sexists.
Today’s racism and sexism are just as antediluvian, irrational, and uncivilized as were the racisms and sexisms of yesterday. This racism and sexism must be resisted. Their predations must be abolished.
Some Covid Links
Paul Alexander, et al., carefully examine the evidence on Covid-inspired school closures. Here’s part of their conclusion:
Why have these school closures gone on for so long? Why has the public, the parents, the children and the teachers been so badly deceived as to risk? Were decisions made based on evidence or other factors? Who is at fault here? What was the reason for this very flawed policy, as it surely is not based on available research data or even common sense for that matter? This is tantamount to sabotage of our children by government officials, Teachers’ unions, seemingly unskilled medical experts, and public health agencies, the latter charged with the health and well-being of our societies.
Derek Winton methodically exposes the reckless gullibility of those who, in March 2020, swallowed Neil Ferguson’s Imperial Model prediction of Covid deaths. Here’s his conclusion:
When (if!) the dust finally settles on the Coronavirus pandemic it will be difficult for future historians to conclude anything other than the following: We abandoned our carefully planned and rehearsed pandemic preparedness plans in favour of an experimental measure on the basis of non-peer-reviewed, undocumented, obscure, predictively inaccurate modelling, using a design that leaves out one of the most important variables involved, created by an expert with apparently no formal training in computer modelling or epidemiology and a track record of very high over-estimates of disease mortality.
Prediction is an incredibly difficult business. That said I am absolutely confident that, in years to come, those historians will shake their heads and wonder: “What were they thinking?”
It’s worth noting, however, one caveat provided by epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse, who is also a member of SAGE: “Whatever the answer is, it’s not zero.” That is, he explained, because if you take the view that every Covid death is unacceptable, “you are writing a blank cheque to do any amount of harm by the measures you’ve implemented to try and control it.”
For as long as I can recall I have been an Anglophile. I admired and cherished the love of freedom and the spirit of individualism that seemed to run more deeply in Britain than elsewhere – a love of freedom and spirit of individualism that were rather naturally receptive to bourgeois dignity and that, in turn, sparked and nourished the industrial revolution. The Great Britain of the Levellers and of Locke, Hume, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Macaulay, Martineau, Cobden, Bright, Mill, Gladstone, Spencer, Auberon Herbert, Acton, Dicey, and Edwin Cannan. And don’t forget the countless now-long-forgotten Englishmen and Englishwomen whose attitudes are documented in Alan Macfarlane’s The Origins of English Individualism. Is my admiration now past its due date? Ed West says that the answer, sadly, is yes. A slice:
While Italy and the Netherlands have had serious anti-lockdown disturbances, the British public have accepted it with remarkably little in the way of complaint. They may not have liked it, and some rules may have been bent a little, but compliance has generally been strong — with an inevitable decline during the summer.
Not only that but lockdown is popular as a policy. Wildly popular, you might say. The Prime Minister has been miles behind British public opinion in every restriction he has reluctantly imposed, out of touch with a population who, as a whole, don’t seem to especially love freedom.
Glyn Lewis decries “the ever-moving goalposts of lockdown.” A slice:
We were told that with the arrival of the miracle vaccine, we would return to normal once the over-70s were vaccinated. So why are we still in lockdown? It was then changed to the over-60s. Then the idea of booster jabs was announced. Now the government says that all nine ‘vulnerable groups’ must be vaccinated. Even when every man, woman and child is vaccinated, the wearing of face masks and ‘social distancing’ (that most irritating of oxymorons) will very likely remain in place. Not only that, but the idea of ‘vaccine passports’ is now on the cards. According to Boris Johnson, to re-open theatres and nightclubs, passports or tests will be required to ‘crack the toughest nut’. The very idea of this coercion is beyond the pale, but what is worse is the mainstream media’s lack of scrutiny when such an authoritarian policy is touted. It was not that long ago when some in the mainstream media were exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of social credit, i.e. the removal of the most basic of civil liberties if you are deemed to have committed an act detrimental to the State. The parallels are there for all to see, but the truth makes too many people uncomfortable.
The fundamental question ‘Is the government’s response to Covid proportionate?’ needs to be asked repeatedly, but alas, commentators such as Dan Hodges smear it as a slogan. The sneering and contempt of the lockdown zealots is a re-run of how the Remainers conducted themselves during the 2016 referendum. They said Brexit would be economic Armageddon for the country, but shutting down the economy for a year (so far), resulting in the worst economic decline since 1707, is to be embraced.
Here’s a new conversation with Knut Wittkowski.
Jordan Schachtel exposes Anthony Fauci’s flip-floppiness and hypocrisy. (HT Phil Magness) A slice:
In 2014, at the height of the Ebola outbreak in Africa, concerns were rising in America about the possibility of the disease spreading across the country. With a genuinely horrifying 40 percent case fatality rate (which is at least 40 times higher than the CFR of COVID-19), and a several week incubation period for infectees, state governors acted to pursue mandatory quarantines for healthcare workers returning to the U.S. from regions where the virus was spreading.
At the peak of the epidemic, governors in several U.S. states initiated a very targeted quarantine that only applied to healthcare workers who were arriving back into the country from impacted areas.
Dr. Fauci wasn’t happy about the fact that his colleagues were being subject to quarantines. He went on a media blitz and hammered the quarantine policies that had been issued in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and Florida, declaring them “unscientific” and “draconian.”
Quotation of the Day…
…is from page 151 of Cass Sunstein’s superb 2005 book, Laws of Fear:
Regulation amounts to a forced exchange; it tells people that they must purchase certain benefits for a certain amount.
DBx: Yes. And so how very ironic is the reality that many of the professors and pundits who are most quick to call for government to regulate justify their policy preferences by asserting that government action is necessary to prevent some people from unilaterally imposing costs on other people?
February 19, 2021
Some Non-Covid Links
In her testimony to become Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen stated that that the minimum wage hike would have a minimal effect on jobs. But that is not what the economic literature says, even for wage hikes far less radical than this one. Yellen herself said something different before she became a saleswoman for Biden. And the chief salesman for the Biden administration—Biden himself—claimed that “all economics” shows that the economy will grow because of the minimum wage. In fact, almost no economist believes it will boost output.
Science cannot dictate policy. But it is unacceptable as a matter of science or morality to deny this brutal fact, and it does no favors for those who will be left unemployed by this minimum wage hike. It is sad that a media that gleefully exposed any false claims of the former President is almost entirely silent when our current President proclaims a version of economics that is a politically driven fantasy.
If this sounds like a good old industrial policy, that’s because it is. This idea isn’t new; it has been on every left-wing politician’s platform for decades. What is actually a bit unique is that support for industrial policy is also coming from many conservatives this time around. They may not care so much about building green cars, but they share in the goal of reviving American manufacturing by constraining globalization and subsidizing favored industries.
Here’s the rub: American manufacturing is generally healthy, especially prior to the trade wars and the pandemic. A data- and chart-rich new paper by the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome about a “Manufactured Crisis: ‘Deindustrialization,’ Free Markets, and National Security” documents American manufacturing’s excellent health. It disproves the alleged justification for industrial policy and debunks all the national security arguments trotted out to justify protectionism. And Lincicome’s analysis and data also apply nicely to Biden’s case for industrial policy.
Art Carden asks if we really do need all of those barbecue restaurants.
Scott Lincicome busts the myth that the global shortage of chips requires supply-chain nationalism.
James Pethokoukis talks with my GMU colleague Joshua Wright about antitrust.
Steven Greenhut bemoans Americans’ lust to cancel one another.
He shows that the exams slant the teaching of history by focusing on facts that suggest to students the need for government control, while they leave out evidence that liberty, capitalism, and Western civilization had anything to do with progress and prosperity. Evidence of the horrors inflicted by leftist movements is downplayed or omitted.
What About Maximum-Work-Effort Legislation?
This young man insists that my “neoclassical free marketeer opinion of the minimum wage is outdated and invalid”:
Mr. A___:
Your persistence in defending minimum wages is admirable. However, I find none of your defenses credible.
Upon reading my recent post on Walter Williams, you say that you “don’t understand” what I mean when I describe minimum wages as policies that artificially and cruelly handicap low-skilled workers as they compete for employment. Yet my point is a simple one, which is this: One means for a worker to make himself or herself more attractive to potential employers is to agree to work at a lower wage. And so by prohibiting workers from offering to work at wages below the government-dictated minimum, the government steals from each low-skilled worker an important bargaining chip for use in competing for employment. How is such theft in the best interest of low-skilled workers?
To better see my point, suppose that government instead imposed, and can easily enforce, “maximum-work-effort legislation.” That is, suppose government can and does prohibit each low-skilled worker, while on the job, from exerting effort above the government-dictated maximum. Although such a policy would surely be sold to the public as being “pro-worker,” do you not see that such legislation would artificially diminish low-skilled workers’ ability to compete for employment?
“I’d like to work very hard for you if you hire me,” says a low-skilled worker to a prospective employer, “but government prohibits me from working as hard for you as I’m able and willing to work. But please hire me anyway.” I trust that you see that this low-skilled worker’s prospects of finding employment under maximum-work-effort legislation are lower than they would be absent such legislation. For the same reason – grounded in the reality that no employer will pay a worker more than the value of that worker’s output – low-skilled workers’ prospects of finding employment under minimum-wage legislation are lower than they would be absent such legislation.
You see minimum-wage legislation as a policy that only transfers income from employers, and perhaps also consumers, to low-skilled workers. I see such legislation very differently. I see minimum-wage legislation as a government-imposed restraint on the ability of low-skilled workers to compete for jobs. And I believe that my understanding of this legislation is much more realistic than is your understanding.
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
Some Covid Links
What seems to have escaped notice, however, is the role that Covid-related lockdowns may have played in reducing inspections and preparations for a possibly brutal winter. With so much of normal life shut down during the spring and summer, and so many people finding every excuse to Zoom meet rather than go to work, power plants were subject to neglect.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) – a quasi-government entity – “manages the flow of electric power on the Texas Interconnection that supplies power to more than 25 million Texas customers – representing 90 percent of the state’s electric load.” It is also responsible for inspections, training, and maintenance such as preparing for extreme weather.
An investigation by NBC found that ERCOT “did not conduct any on-site inspections of the state’s power plants to see if they were ready for this winter season. Due to COVID-19 they conducted virtual tabletop exercises instead – but only with 16% of the state’s power generating facilities.”
Thus in compliance with all the restrictions, and possibly also in order to avoid a germ, ERCOT shelved all its usual preparations in favor of pretend exercises.
As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) notes, half the spending in the coronavirus relief plan would go toward such poorly targeted measures. The plan also includes expansions to Obamacare subsidies and would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour—in 2025. Ultimately, the hike would cost jobs rather than preserve them. But raising the federal minimum wage has been a Democratic policy priority for years, so it got stuffed into the relief bill grab bag.
If we insist on a society of zero risk forever, people will never see their elderly parents again. The forever pandemic and the zero-risk society bear heavy costs.
We are going to have to apply pressure on government officials to make the same recognition. Many leaders have seen their power spike, and they like it. A lot. Scientists have served as their handmaids: Witness Fauci’s bizarre and decidedly unscientific recent claim that schools can’t be reopened without further federal stimulus. Huh?
Teachers unions have held our children hostage for a year, and politicians have looked the other way. Two weeks ago, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boss Rochelle Walensky said schools can safely reopen even before teachers were vaccinated. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki absurdly insisted Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity.” So much for listening to experts.
Coronavirus may be a medical milestone rather than simply a scientific event, changing society’s attitude to endemic viruses permanently, as threats that must be eliminated. If anything, rather than seeing Covid like flu, society is more likely to start seeing flu like Covid.
(DBx: If she’s correct, humanity, in its hysteria, has descended into a permanent hell.)
James Bolt debunks the myth that Australia’s Covid tyranny “worked.” Here’s his opening:
It must be tempting, from overseas, to see Australia as the country that defeated Covid-19. A land where the suffering of 2020 was worth it, allowing Australians to be free of the restrictions crippling Britain.
Wrong. There has been no victory, and the fear of lockdown permanently hangs over our heads.
Here’s more from, and on, the heroic British MP Charles Walker.
And here’s Sunetra Gupta on the transmissibility of the new coronavirus variants.
Ethan Yang wisely warns of the emergence of the non-emergency use, and abuse, by governments of emergency powers. Two slices:
Even more worrying, it seems that governments around the world have forgotten how extreme these policies are and how sparingly they must be used. Curfews and other emergency powers such as restrictions on travel are supposed to be used in times of tremendous peril. Deploying such policies like they were some sort of experiment to test out government power as if society is a sandbox should be seen as a direct assault against the very foundation of a free society.
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This is a lesson as old as time. You give a mouse a cookie, it’s going to want a glass of milk. You start to unravel the restrictions on the government’s power, it’s going to want more and more. The power to declare emergencies and the problematic ease that seems to surround declaring one is a haunting specter over the heads of our freedom.
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