Russell Roberts's Blog, page 313
February 15, 2021
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “The ‘Great Fact'”
In my column for the April 27th, 2011, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review I wrote about what the great economist Deirdre McCloskey calls “the Great Fact.” You can read my column beneath the fold.
Some Non-Covid Links
Traditions, customs, and noncoercive “authorities” to which people give recognition and respect and deference only can sustainably emerge and intergenerationally survive when they arise out of the free actions and chosen forms of personal and societal interactive conduct of the human actors themselves. It is what Adam Smith called “the system of natural liberty” with its evolved institutions of free exchange that generates the workings of the market’s “invisible hand” of mutual gains from trade in all their varied forms inside and outside of the marketplace.
David Mikics decries the illiberal mentality, and intellectual and ethical disintegration, of the New York Times. (HT Tom Palmer) A slice:
Stalin’s most celebrated victims were themselves used to humiliation and self-abasement. As Robert Conquest writes in his indispensable book The Great Terror, “Their surrender was not a single and exceptional act in their careers, but the culmination of a whole series of submissions to the Party that they knew to be ‘objectively’ false.” Conquest tells of a former member of the Soviet Supreme Court who was informed by an interrogator, “Well, the Party demands that you, as a Bolshevik, confess that you are an English spy.” The man responded: “If the Party demands it, I confess.”
These days we repeatedly confess our racism and misogyny, suppressing any sense that we are perhaps not as sinful as we are told. Maybe we haven’t harassed, demeaned, or insulted anyone—but the very impulse to defend ourselves indicates our guilt. After all, we are all part of “the system,” and only a thoroughgoing racist would dispute the idea that the system is guilty.
Julian Simon would applaud this excellent essay by Joakim Book.
Jeffrey Tucker reminds us of the unsavory, racist origins of minimum-wage legislation.
Ethan Yang is justly impressed with Richard Epstein’s great 1995 book, Simple Rules for a Complex World. (This book is my favorite of all of Epstein’s works.)
Here’s an important truth shared by Arnold Kling:
Government money has played a role in the decline of quality in academia. Programs like the GI bill and student loan programs have swelled the ranks of college students. Programs like the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities have dumped huge amounts of money into higher education. The net effect has been harmful.
Today is the 80th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s recording of the great Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
Some Covid Links
As recently as eleven months ago such deranged general restrictions on travelers would have sparked outrage from libertarians, classical liberals, and free-market conservatives. Yet mostly I hear crickets.
If I were a British citizen, I would sign this petition.
Laura Perrins decries Covid fascism.
Here’s Ivor Cummins’s latest detailed video on Covid.
So now Anthony Fauci is publicly proclaiming on matters economic. (HT Phil Magness) Remind me why Fauci should be taken seriously?
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 120 of John Mueller’s superb 1999 book, Capitalism, Democracy, & Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery:
It would be difficult to overestimate the economically pernicious effects of efforts to determine the “just wage” and the “just price” by nonmarket judgments.
DBx: Indeed. Yet for centuries, priests and monarchs and court toadies issued such determinations.
It’s nothing short of astonishing that those who today call for a return to such dark-ages’ practices call themselves “Progressive” – and are so uninformed about history as to believe their self-flattery.
February 14, 2021
Some Non-Covid Links
Art Carden celebrates Gordon Tullock’s birthday. A slice:
Every year, Tullock was still considered one of the favorites for the [Nobel] prize. He had been passed over for his contribution to the development of public choice, but his path-breaking research on what came to be known as the theory of rent-seeking deserves the prize in its own right. Tullock’s 1968 [DBx: 1967] article “The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft” paved the way for a new understanding of how resources are used in political processes. In 1974, the economist Anne Krueger would coin the term rent-seeking to describe spending in pursuit of a fixed pie. Their insight is insufficiently recognized in public and popular discussions of the political process even today. Lost consumer surplus–the reduction of output to a point where the marginal benefit is greater than the marginal cost, meaning that there are unexploited gains from trade–is not the only cost of tariffs, monopolies, and theft. The resources invested in getting the policies are wasted, as well.
Biden is separating families at the border. Billy Binion asks “Where’s the outrage?”
My colleague Pete Boettke shares this interesting talk on economic growth by Ricardo Hausmann.
Juliette Sellgren talks with Brian Riedl about the federal budget.
Tunku Varadarajan talks with Shelby Steele. A slice:
Americans look at statistics and disparities and many think “there’s another explanation for inequality other than racism,” Mr. Steele says. “Inequality may be the result of blacks not standing up to the challenges that they face, not taking advantage of the equality that has been bestowed on them.” He points to affirmative action and diversity—“the whole movement designed to compensate for the fact that blacks were behind”—and says that blacks today have worse indices relative to whites in education, income levels, marriage and divorce, or “any socioeconomic measure that you want to look at” than they did 60 years ago.
The element that really sings institutional cowardice isn’t the firing or flip-flopping, but the apparent need to extort a North Korea apology from Mr. McNeil as he left. “I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended,” he conceded probably on the advice of his bank manager. “I now realize that it cannot.”
Some Covid Links
Noah Carl provides further evidence that Covid-19 is indeed seasonal. A slice:
Bishop’s criticisms of the Imperial College model are well-taken. In the remainder of this essay, I want to present additional evidence for the seasonality of COVID-19. Before looking at studies that deal specifically with COVID-19, it is worth mentioning that other human coronaviruses are known to be seasonal, with the peak of infections occurring in February (in the northern hemisphere). As one recent study – which analysed eight years of data on a cohort in Michigan – concluded, “Coronaviruses are sharply seasonal”. Hence it would be somewhat surprising if COVID-19 didn’t behave in the same way.
Ethan Yang decries the devastation that Covid lockdowns inflict on the world’s poorest people.
Supporters of strangling the country always demand ‘What would you have done?’ if I dare to criticise the Government’s wild, unprecedented policy for dealing with Covid.
They assume, as backers of crazy policies always do, that there is no alternative to mass house arrest, enormous police powers, Maoist travel bans and the crippling of large parts of the economy.
Well, there is an alternative. Sitting in the Government archives is a 70-page document called UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011. Don’t be put off by that ‘influenza’. The plan could easily be adapted to deal with a coronavirus or any similar threat.
Agreed by all four governments of the UK, it was revised after the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. It is typical of careful, commonsense UK state planning before the hysteria outbreak of March 23, 2020.
“The longest three weeks in history.”
Kylee Zempel’s justified fury at the push for double-masking is expressed eloquently and effectively. Three slices:
Continuing the trend of Babylon Bee headlines being prophetic, Twitter on Monday decided to promote a Quartz article about “Why it’s time to start double masking.” Just like clockwork, the CDC on Wednesday decided to add double masking to its COVID-19 guidance.
…..
In fact, if we care about science, we’ll stop letting the same people who have tanked our economy, kept our kids home from school, and banished us from churches dictate our lives for one more minute. So much of the nonsense that has poured out of their mouths, over the airwaves, and into our homes and institutions these past many months has proved to be utter hogwash — about masks, “flattening the curve,” nursing homes, schools, “essential” versus “nonessential” businesses, the vaccine, and getting “back to normal.” The rules served corporatists’ interests, not public health or the general welfare.
They told us Costco was safer than the ballot box. They said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who sent COVID-19-positive patients into nursing homes as superspreaders among the most vulnerable, was an exemplary leader. They said mass protests and riots were OK but worship was reckless. They ignored science to please teachers unions, told you to stay in your house for the holidays then jetted off to their vacation homes, and said mask up to save lives — lying even about the efficacy of masks.
…..
That regime, however, doesn’t deserve your allegiance. It derives its power not from truth and science but from the capitulation of the panicky masses. Don’t cave to the bullies who will undoubtedly scream that you’re a science-denier if you refuse a second mask. Tomorrow, they’ll be shouting that you’re a murderer because you won’t slap a third swatch of fabric over your mouth. The more the better, right? There’s no limiting principle; we know how this goes.
What’s that about the wonders of New Zealand’s successful response to the coronavirus?
Quotation of the Day…
… is from page 137 of Vol. 1 of the 1980 printing of the marvelous 1945 Knopf edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant work Democracy in America:
It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without perceiving that the desire to be re-elected is the chief aim of the President; that the whole policy of his administration, and even his most indifferent measures, tend to this object; and that, especially as the crisis approaches, his personal interest takes the place of his interest in the public good.
February 13, 2021
Again on Comparing Jobs Lost to Trade with Jobs Lost to Minimum Wages
Here’s a letter to Bloomberg:
Editor:
In “The Burger Flipper Who Became a World Expert on the Minimum Wage” (Feb. 3), Peter Coy equates the losses that some workers suffer as a result of minimum wages with the costs that some workers pay as a result of free trade.
This comparison is inapt. For many reasons, the losses from minimum wages differ categorically from the costs of free trade. The most fundamental of these reasons is that free trade is simply the absence of artificial restraints on peaceful commerce while minimum wages are the imposition of such restraints.
To better see the relevance of this distinction it’s helpful, when discussing trade, to replace “foreigners” with “blacks.” Would any right-minded person believe that the elimination of Jim Crow restraints on Americans’ ability to conduct commerce with blacks created losers who deserved special consideration, and perhaps compensation, because they lost some particular jobs to blacks? Of course not. For the same reason, workers who lose particular jobs to foreigners as a result of free trade deserve no special consideration or compensation.
Trade across national boundaries is identical, economically, to trade within national boundaries. And because in competitive economies jobs are incessantly being destroyed as others are created – with only a fraction of this job churn in the U.S. caused by international trade – to single out those individuals who lose jobs to imports as if they are categorically distinct from the many other workers who lose jobs because of economic competition is economically mistaken and ethically improper.
What is not mistaken or improper is to single out and take pity on workers who lose jobs to minimum-wage legislation. Such legislation coercively prevents low-skilled workers from increasing their employment prospects by offering to work at wages below the minimum. These workers are stripped of a human right. These workers lose jobs not as a result of the rightful operation of competitive markets. Instead, they lose jobs because they are denied their full rights to compete for 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
Some Non-Covid Links
Glenn Loury speaks some unspeakable truths about racial inequality in America. A slice:
Or, consider the educational achievement gap. Anti-racism advocates, in effect, are daring you to notice that some groups send their children to elite colleges and universities in outsized numbers compared to other groups due to the fact that their academic preparation is magnitudes higher and better and finer. They are daring you to declare such excellence to be an admirable achievement. One isn’t born knowing these things. One acquires such intellectual mastery through effort. Why are some youngsters acquiring these skills and others not? That is a very deep and interesting question, one which I am quite prepared to entertain. But the simple retort, “racism”, is laughable—as if such disparities have nothing to do with behavior, with cultural patterns, with what peer groups value, with how people spend their time, with what they identify as being critical to their own self-respect. Anyone actually believing such nonsense is a fool, I maintain.
And here are George Leef’s reflections on Glenn Loury’s speech.
I can’t wait to read Bryan Caplan’s next book, Poverty: Who to Blame?
Scott Lincicome worries that Biden will repeat Trump’s mistakes on trade policy. Here’s his opening paragraph:
The New York Times yesterday provided an in-depth look at the Biden White House’s plans to “transform the economy” through “dramatic interventions to revive U.S. manufacturing” – heavy on economic nationalism, industrial planning, and manufacturing jobs. If that approach sounds familiar, it should: it’s essentially the same gameplan that Biden’s predecessor used, with the only major difference being Biden’s emphasis on “green” industries like wind turbines, as compared to Trump’s love of steel and other heavy industry.
Eric Boehm wonders why Janet Yellen suddenly sounds like Trump on trade. (Any economist who remotely sounds like Trump on trade has seriously lost his or her way.) Here are two slices from Eric’s essay:
The best explanation, of course, is that Yellen is just trying to be a team player here. The Biden administration has signaled that it is unwilling to make a sharp break with Trump’s trade policies, likely because the White House sees domestic political benefits of talking about protectionism. Biden’s first major trade policy moves were the announcement of a “Buy American” plan for federal procurement that will force taxpayers to pay higher prices for goods the government buys, and the reimposition of tariffs on aluminum imported from the United Arab Emirates. Neither of those things should be expected to do much to boost American manufacturing, but both will marginally increase costs and complicate some of those global supply chains that Yellen knows are key to ongoing economic growth.
…..
Furthermore, the decline of manufacturing as a share of the whole American economy has been more or less on a steady downward march since the end of World War II. This isn’t a crisis created by the rise of China or the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.
Also from Chris Edwards is this post on minimum-wage legislation. A slice:
Yesterday, the CBO estimated that a minimum wage increase would eliminate 1.4 million jobs. Entry level workers would be hard hit. Milton Friedman noted that the “minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying employers must discriminate against people who have low skills.”
Ben Klutsey talks with Virgil Storr about liberalism and markets.
Ron Bailey wonders if Biden will follow the science on GMOs.
Speaking of Ron Bailey, here’s Juliette Sellgren speaking with Ron Bailey about human progress.
Some Covid Links
We can now say definitively that COVID-19 is much more severe than seasonal influenza,” says Dr. Amol Verma, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto, and the University of Toronto. “Patients admitted to hospital in Ontario with COVID-19 had a 3.5 times greater risk of death, 1.5 times greater use of the ICU, and 1.5 times longer hospital stays than patients admitted with influenza.”
These findings are similar to study results recently reported in France and the United States.
(DBx: Is the level of hysteria over Covid-19, which is vastly more than 3.5 times higher than is the level of concern over the flu, justified? What principles of ethics justify the vast increase in government power and the tyrannical lockdowns given that Covid is 3.5 times more likely to kill than is the flu? What principles of economics justify these over-the-top reactions? Since March we have upended society with unprecedented restrictions on human behavior. The media have frightened us with ‘reports’ of a disease that borders on the existential. Many scientists have allowed – indeed, encouraged – science to become politicized in the name of protecting society from a disease that is 3.5 times more likely to kill than the flu.
Three-and-a-half times more likely to kill than the flu is significant. But humanity’s reaction to Covid is derangedly disproportionate – a fact only strengthened when the age distribution of Covid’s victims is taken into account. Why did so few people stand with stalwarts such as Bryan Caplan and refuse to be stampeded by this madness?)
Alberto Giubilini pushes back against the insulting mantra that “We’re all in this together.” A slice:
COVID-19 did not put us in it together. That slogan is a legacy of the initial uncertainty around the virus. In February-March 2020, we knew very little about it and we thought it was way more dangerous and lethal across all population groups. We now know COVID-19 is a serious threat to the elderly and certain vulnerable groups. But to young people, it is not (that is, if we look at the data, not at individual stories). The mortality rate is estimated to be below 0.1% in the under 40s, to double approximately every eight years, and to rise above 5% in the over 80s. The mortality rate of COVID-19 in children is comparable to that of chickenpox, that is, almost non-existent. “Long-covid” is often invoked to justify restrictions also for the young, but it has a similar pattern to mortality rates: the risk is low for the young and increases with age. This does not mean that COVID-19 is a made up problem or that we should not take it seriously. But it does mean that it is a very serious threat for a limited portion of the population.
So we are not in it together because of the virus. Blaming the virus for the costs imposed by restrictions is wrong, although it is not uncommon. For example, when the BBC asks “How has coronavirus affected mental health?”, it should really be asking how restrictions have affected mental health.
Matt Welch decries the politicized ‘science’ that’s at the root of the CDC’s new school reopening stay-largely-closed-and-unable-to-educate guidelines. Here’s his opening paragraph:
It’s an excellent afternoon to be a treasurer for a private school, or an accelerationist seeking to hollow out public support for the government-run education system.
The CDC emphasizes hand-washing, which is great, but it overemphasizes cleaning. There isn’t a single documented case of covid-19 transmission through surfaces, so why is the CDC emphasizing things such as cleaning outdoor playground equipment that have no bearing on exposure or risk?
John Tamny asks: “Would You Support the Lockdowns If It Meant Losing Your Own Job?”
It’s been years since I last visited Helen, GA. Time to revisit.
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