Russell Roberts's Blog, page 351

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Amelia Janaskie shares a report the authors of which inveigh against lockdowns. A slice:

Although the authors suggest the idea of “Flatten the Curve” might have been a suitable strategy at first for the purpose of not overwhelming hospitals, they find that there are significant unintended consequences of lockdowns, especially regarding public health. The majority of Covid-19 deaths occur in people close to life expectancy, while lockdown-induced deaths occur in young people far from life expectancy, resulting in a high number of total life years lost. The authors cite various studies showing that children, adolescents, women, individuals with young children, and at-risk individuals are experiencing diminished mental health. They also report that cancer and cardiovascular deaths are increasing due to lockdowns because less people are receiving necessary screenings or going to hospitals.

Robert Wright argues that it is not a crime to get Covid-19.

Ben Zycher points out the perversities of Biden bringing the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Agreement.

George Will explains why the U.S. Supreme Court should reject a Trump administration argument about who on American soil is to be counted by U.S. Census takers. A slice:

Most of the Framers, say [Ilya] Somin and [Sanford] Levinson, did not believe the federal government had the power to exclude immigrants — there was no significant federal immigration restriction until 1875 — so they could hardly have intended to exclude from apportionment “illegal” immigrants. Furthermore, the Framers expected that the congressional apportionment count would include the more than half the adult population that was not entitled to vote because of gender, or property requirements.

Here’s David Henderson on Justin Wolfers on government subsidies to college students.

Mark Perry looks at some migration patterns within the U.S.

“Contrary to most predictions, Election Day brought no blue wave” – so begins my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy’s latest syndicated column. A slice:

For more evidence that the voters’ lack of enthusiasm for progressive policies likely explains the Democrats’ reduced majority in the House, one should consider this election’s down-ballot outcomes. Illinois and California, two of the most progressive states in the Union, provide good examples. In Illinois, voters rejected by a 55 to 45 percent margin the so-called Fair Tax Amendment. That progressive tax scheme would have amended the state constitution to replace the flat income tax with a progressive one.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 189 of the late Hans Rosling’s marvelous 2018 book, Factfulness:

Almost every activist I have ever met, whether deliberately or, more likely, unknowingly, exaggerates the problem to which they have dedicated themselves.

The “Quotation of the Day” from Exactly One Year Ago…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… standing alone, is even more relevant today. That Quotation of the Day from November 19th, 2019…

… is from page 419 of George Will’s important 2019 volume, The Conservative Sensibility:

The largest and most lethal eruptions of irrationality have occurred in the name of reason.

On the Logic of Unilateral Free Trade

(Don Boudreaux)

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In this new paper, published today by the Mercatus Center, I use simple game theory to explain core differences in the thinking of those of us who support a policy of unilateral free trade from the thinking of those who, while not hostile to free trade, oppose a policy of unilateral free trade. Here’s my conclusion:

The long-standing and still-prevalent consensus among economists is that (a) protectionist policies in all but the rarest of theoretical cases impose net damage on the home economy and (b) the bulk of the economic damage of any government’s protectionism falls on its own citizens. The logic that leads to these conclusions is depicted in figure 2. These conclusions differ substantially from conventional beliefs about trade, which are depicted in figure 1. Whereas figure 1 shows the conventional misunderstanding of the gains of trade and the consequent reasons for opposing unilateral free trade, figure 2 reveals trade unilateralists’ reasons for supporting it.

As I recognize, economists and others who support a policy of unilateral free trade do not (as is often asserted by protectionists) deny that a foreign government’s protectionism inflicts some damage in the home country. Informed trade unilateralists make no such denial. Nor do they deny the theoretical possibility that retaliatory tariffs could, in theory, cause foreign governments to reduce or even eliminate their tariffs, thus yielding net gains in the home country over the long term. But an economically informed comparison of the magnitude of the damage that foreign-government protectionism has at home with the damage done at home by home-government protectionism casts doubt on the wisdom of retaliation. This doubt is only intensified when one recognizes the interest-group pressures that realistically are almost always at the root of governments’ resort to protectionism—pressures explained well by public choice theory and repeatedly confirmed by history.

See Beyond the Obvious

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to a college student writing a paper on what he calls “the social justice of wealth redistribution”:

Mr. Eden:

Thanks for your e-mail.

You ask: “Why shouldn’t government tax away half of Jeff Bezos’ wealth and give it to America’s poor people.” In your assessment, “this would be fair without hurting Bezos.”

My disagreements with your assessment are many, but I have time now to list only three.

First and primarily, it’s immoral to take stuff belonging to other people. Because Bezos acquired his wealth lawfully, to take it is wrong. Note also that he acquired his wealth in a manner that bestows enormous benefits on hundreds of millions of his fellow human beings, and that he has already paid billions of dollars of taxes on his earnings.

Second, Bezos’s wealth is now reported at $203 billion. With 34 million Americans currently below the poverty line, confiscating half of Bezos’s fortune and distributing it equally to these poor Americans would give each a one-time windfall of $2,985. A nice sum. But it’s not enough to transform their lives. More fundamentally, people’s lives aren’t transformed for the better by being given windfalls. Transformation comes from within, personally, and from better policies that allow the creation of more and better opportunities.

Third, Bezos’s net worth is what it is because the vast bulk of it is invested in Amazon and other productive enterprises. If he suddenly must turn over half of his wealth to the government, he would not draw it from his consumption (which is what you mean when you say that this policy would not hurt Bezos). He would draw it out of his investments. And resources currently used in valuable productive uses would become much less valuable when turned into goods and services for current consumption. And so to give each poor American $2,985 paid for by Jeff Bezos would require that far more than half of his fortune be seized.

You might nevertheless be good with this outcome, for it would still leave Bezos very wealthy. It would still not put a dent in his lifestyle. But the American economy would suffer greatly. Not only would the economy lose, in one fell swoop, well over a hundred billion dollars of assets – which means the loss of whatever outputs those assets produce – but lose also untold trillions of dollars of assets over time that would have been, but will not be, created. Like it or not, people do not invest heavily when government seizes large chunks of the fruits of their successes.

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

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 254 of the late Anthony de Jasay’s great 1998 book, The State:

If the state finds society “ungovernable,” there is at least a presumption that it is its own government that has made it so.

David Stockman on Covid-19 and Fauci

(Don Boudreaux)

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This essay by David Stockman is powerful and important. (It’s behind a paywall.) A slice:

Moreover, the commonly reported and highly aggregated facts are downright irrelevant and systematically misleading. For instance, the WITH-Covid mortality rate for the entire 328.2 million US population stands at 68.2 per 100,000 at present. But that’s an absolutely meaningless figure in the context of the massively variant rates among the population cohorts shown below:

WITH-Covid Mortality Rates, 42 Weeks Through 11/07/2020:

54 Years & under: 7.9 per 100,000;
55-64 years: 66.5 per 100,000;
65-74 years: 153.7 per 100,000;
75-84 years: 374.0 per 100,000;
85 years & older: 1,048.0 per 100,000.

Needless to say, the real danger is not merely the immense damage to both liberty and capitalist prosperity that has already been done. Far more insidious is the fact that the public health apparatchiks have been sainted by the MSM, and have acquired an apparently unquenchable taste for power and fame.

For instance, over the weekend Dr. Fauci made it very clear that America citizens essentially have no pre-existing rights or constitutional protections when it comes to this targeted medical problem, which the public health authorities have unilterally decreed to be a societal threat.

That is to say, your job is to OBEY a 79-year old windbag who doesn’t have a clue about how a constitutional democracy needs be governed or what it takes to keep the engines of capitalism functioning at even a tolerable level of prosperity:

“I was talking with my UK colleagues who are saying the UK is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit,” Fauci said during a panel with other experts in Washington, DC.

“I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you’re told,” he said, as first reported by CNBC.

…..

(HT my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy.)

Safe and Effective

(Don Boudreaux)

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I’m sure that someone must have already posed this question, but, if so, I’ve not yet seen it: Why do not the Covid-19 lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions have to meet the same strict standard in the United States that the FDA requires new drugs and medical devices to meet?

New drugs and medical devices cannot be made available to the general public, even through prescriptions by physicians, until these are proven – to the satisfaction of FDA bureaucrats – to be both safe and effective. Americans are denied access to any drug or medical device that isn’t certified to have such proof. Can’t be too safe, dontchaknow!

Why does no one demand that any proposed Covid restriction be proven to meet the same standard before governors, mayors, public-health bureaucrats, and other pooh-bahs are allowed to prescribe it as treatment for the general public? (Actually, “prescribe” is not really the correct word; a more accurate one is “impose.” But we’ll here leave this nicety aside.)

…..

Although I can anticipate several of the “Oh-the-Covid-case-is-entirely-different” objections, I ask the above question without any of my tongue in my cheek. I ask the above question seriously. If any new medical intervention is presumed to be unsafe or ineffective (or both) unless and until it is proven to be otherwise, why are the Covid interventions presumed to be safe and effective? What gives?

Some Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Let’s all hope that Jeffrey Tucker is correct that people are growing sick and tired of the tyrannical Covid-19 lockdowns.

Let’s hope also that the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of the – quoting Jacob Sullum – “Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction against [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo’s [lockdown] order.”

Christian Britschgi decries the tyranny of lockdowns restaurants and bars in the name of fighting Covid.

Red-state Covid vs. Blue-state Covid.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board rightly condemns California Governor Gavin Newsom and other government “leaders” for their hypocrisy – hypocrisy quite common in people exercising tyrannical powers. A slice:

Nobody should begrudge the Governor for celebrating a birthday with friends. The problem is that he and many politicians require the hoi polloi to follow strict virus rules that they don’t abide by themselves. Then they threaten lockdowns as punishment if the little people don’t comply.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 192 of the late Hans Rosling’s brilliant 2018 book, Factfulness:

The numbers will never tell the full story of what life on Earth is all about.

The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone.

DBx: Keep this vital bit of wisdom in mind whenever you hear some professor, pundit, or politician insist that choosing the best public policies is solely a matter of “following the science.” It’s not and never will be.