Russell Roberts's Blog, page 76

Focused Protection vs. Evil Straw Men

(Don Boudreaux)

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At the SoHo Forum, Jay Bhattacharya recently debated Sten Vermund on the question of focused protection vs. lockdowns.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins continues to write wisely about covid, as well as about most governments’ calamitous overreaction to it. A slice:

The results wouldn’t be published until a few months after Covid arrived in early 2020, but Columbia University’s Jeffrey Shaman and colleagues produced a study in 2016-18 showing that only 5% of cold-symptom sufferers and 21% of people with flu-like symptoms sought medical attention.

Had the data been available in the pandemic’s earliest days, it would have reinforced what should have been everybody’s first assumption after reflecting on their own medical behavior. If most people with mild symptoms weren’t seeing doctors, not only was Covid less deadly than being reported, it was likely already out of the bag globally and unstoppable even in countries where it had yet to be formally identified.

And any epidemiologist would have told you as much in the first weeks, before it became systematically necessary to pretend something else for political reasons. You can still see the results in certain journalistic accounts three years later, framed by a presumption that only the terrible incompetence and failure of our leaders allowed Covid to spread at all. In his latest book, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward portrays himself demanding of then-President Donald Trump, our failing national daddy, “Do something!”

The story of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis is the story, in contrast, of a grown-up. After initially adopting stringent measures, he returned to first questions. Was the virus stoppable? Would trying materially pay off in terms of reduced mortality and suffering? No, he concluded. As a result, Florida experienced roughly the same Covid outcomes as other states while piling on fewer of the costly, impotent gestures that were adopted elsewhere mainly to show that politicians were very, very concerned.

Writing in the Telegraph, Jonathan Sumption explains that “we’re all now paying the terrible price for lockdown.” Two slices:

The UK’s public finances are in a worse state than at any time since the Second World War. Not the Government’s fault, says Jeremy Hunt. It’s the pandemic. It’s Ukraine. It’s world-wide interest rates. It’s just about anything other than the main culprit lurking in the background: the lockdowns of the last two years.

Let us look at a few sobering facts. First of all, government expenditure associated with the pandemic has been by far the largest contributor to the current deficit. The National Audit Office (NAO) has estimated the total cost at £376 billion, or £5,492 for every man, woman and child in the land.

Secondly, most of this expenditure was not in fact caused by the pandemic, but by the government’s decision to respond by locking the population down. Less than a quarter of the NAO’s figure represents the extra cost of health and social care. Most of the rest is the cost of supporting people prevented from working and businesses prevented from operating. At the height of the pandemic, the government was spending about twice as much per month on paying people to do nothing as the entire cost of the NHS.

Compare the modest financial hit experienced by Sweden, the only European country to see through the hype by which other governments sought to justify their measures. Sweden operated a largely voluntary system and refused to lock down. Pandemic-related measures cost 60 billion kronor in 2020 and 2021, according to government figures. This works out at about £460 a head, less than a tenth of the UK figure. Yet their results in terms of both cases and deaths were a lot better than ours.

We are paying the price of panic, populism and poorly thought-out knee-jerk decision-making. At least the current Prime Minister can point to his warnings as chancellor that lockdowns were unaffordable if extended over any significant period of time. Boris Johnson’s lordly indifference to mere money ensured that the cost was not even considered. All that can be said in his favour is that, if the Labour Party had had its way, the lockdowns would have been even longer and more costly.

…..

The true cost of this terrible social experiment is now becoming clearer. Health professionals warned at the time that lockdowns would have a serious impact on mental health and on the diagnosis and treatment of other conditions. All this has come to pass as surely as Rishi Sunak’s warnings about the cost. Excess deaths are currently running at about 10 per cent above historic rates, almost all from conditions other than Covid. By far the biggest contributor is dementia, a condition aggravated by loneliness and lack of stimulation.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board decries “the high price of covid learning loss.” A slice:

The full cost of the Covid-19 school shutdowns will take years to understand, but here’s another estimate that will make many parents livid: If the recent learning loss can’t be reversed, it would equate to a 1.6% drop in lifetime earnings for the average K-12 student, or a nationwide total of some $900 billion.

Pierre Kory describes “three medical policies that need immediate changing.” A slice:

It’s a disturbing trend taking hold across the country. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) recently voted to remove Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the nation’s leading cardiologists, from his certifications in cardiovascular disease. Mr. McCullough’s sin had nothing to do with his performance in caring for patients, but rather with questioning the necessity of the COVID-19 vaccine for younger populations. With their far-reaching certification authority, the ABIM has the power to make any doctor’s life a living hell. Mr. McCullough’s fate now hangs in the balance until his Nov. 18 appeal date. This dangerous precedent must be nipped in the bud in the nation’s most populous state (governed by an oft-mentioned future presidential candidate) before it can take hold elsewhere.

J.D. Tuccille writes about the GOP entering a post-Trump world. A slice:

Chief among those charting their own course is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. From a libertarian perspective, DeSantis is a mixed bag, mixing heavy-handed culture war with support for tax cuts and resistance to public-health authoritarianism. But whatever his ambiguous appeal to advocates of freedom, the combination is proving popular among Floridians and Republicans alike. Voters in his state handed him a huge win over his Democratic rival, while the GOP faithful eye him as a new standard-bearer for their party.

Writing at EconLog, my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, rightly criticizes today’s GOP for standing mostly for “nothing.” Two slices:

All that said, the GOP has a problem that runs deeper than Trump (though it may have gotten much worse under Trump). It’s this: Republicans today stand for nothing, and on the rare occasions that they do stand for something, that something is woeful. From protectionism to vile anti-immigration rhetoric, from government-engineered paid leave to the extended child tax credit, and from threatening to punish big tech and to impose industrial policy, with a contingent shouting “free-markets are actually bad”, the party is in disarray intellectually – a fact that plausibly contributes to its current disarray politically.

…..

However, unless Republicans wake up and realize that this crusade against “market fundamentalism” isn’t working for them—if only because it’s a sloppy, lazy and economically ignorant agenda—they will continue to be ridiculed and lose elections long after Trump has gone bye-bye.

Inspired by research by Justin Callais and my GMU Econ colleague Vincent Geloso, Ryan Bourne warns against jumping to conclusions about policies meant to counter income inequality.

David Henderson points to further evidence of the astronomical wealth of those of us in modernity.

George Will reports on a new lawsuit brought by the amazing Institute for Justice. A slice:

In 2009 (things are even worse now), lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate’s “Three Felonies a Day” demonstrated how easy it is for the behavior of law-abiding — or so they mistakenly assume — citizens to violate a law. There are more than 3,000 federal crimes and an estimated 300,000-plus federal regulations that can be enforced by agencies empowered to seek criminal punishments.

Arnold Kling writes about “elite academia’s cuckoo nest.”

Pierre Lemieux admires the beauty of gridlock.

Juliette Sellgren talks about “innovators in sculpture” with Dianne Durante.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 13 of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition of Felix Morley‘s 1959 volume, Freedom and Federalism:

The merit of a supervisory, as opposed to a directive, state, is that the former keeps “the power in the people,” (to use the phrase of William Penn). Our [American] system encourages the individual to exertion for his own sake, instead of requiring exertion by an elite in behalf of the masses, which is the principle of communism and of national socialism put in the most favorable light.

DBx: Indeed so. And of course in any system in which members of an ‘elite,’ holding government power, ostensibly exert themselves on behalf of the masses, these ‘elite’ will order the masses to exert themselves, in principle, on behalf of the greater good but, in practice, on behalf of the ‘elite.’

DeMuth Stumbles

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Editor:

Usually sure-footed, Christopher DeMuth stumbles into serious error when he writes, in apparent sympathy with today’s “national conservatives,” that “American conservatism became unduly attached to libertarian individualism, unfettered markets and free trade as ends in themselves – which helped set the stage for anything-goes cultural corruption, the decline of community, family and religion, and the rise of global corporations and institutions that decimated the American heartland” (“America’s Right Confronts the 21st Century,” November 19). Here are only two of his mistakes.

First, far from being unfettered, free markets teem with the time-tested and honest fetters of commercial competition. This competition regulates firm behavior far better than do government diktats or bureaucracies, which when these aren’t restricting firms from better serving consumers, are protecting firms from the commercial competition that alone keeps them efficient and responsive, not to government officials, but to consumers and suppliers.

Second, corruption – political and cultural – is fueled not by free trade, but by protectionism. Under a policy of free trade politicians and bureaucrats have no favors to sell to firms that crave relief from having to satisfy consumers. Firms thus compete for profits honestly rather lobby for rents mendaciously. And because all protectionist pleas and policies must be sold to the public dishonestly, as patriotic and well-intentioned interventions rather than as what they really are – namely, privileges for the few at the larger expense of the many – protectionism contributes to cultural rot.

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

Generosity Is Admirable, But It’s Wasteful When Poorly Aimed

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to Washington, DC’s, WTOP Radio:

Sir or Madam:

Understandably, when reporting on the Girl Scouts’ admirable efforts to help the poor, you don’t wish to be critical (“3 Va. teens provide community with a Free Period Pantry,” Nov. 18). But objectivity is served by noting that your report furthers two fallacies.

First, the notion that feminine products are prohibitively costly for the poor is false. A 2021 survey found that the monthly amount spent in the U.S. by the average woman on menstrual products is $13.25 – or 44 cents a day. With the average annual income, after taxes and transfers, of households in the lowest quintile being just shy of $50,000,* expenditures on feminine products by an average poor household with even six women of reproductive age would consume less than two percent of that household’s income.

Second, the fact that all of the menstrual products made available by the Girl Scouts free of charge are quickly scooped up does not, contrary to your report, “prove how badly period products are needed.” Instead, it proves simply that, compared to paying for products, people prefer to get them for free.

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

* Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early, The Myth of American Inequality (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Table 2.4, page 29.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 75 of my colleague Peter Boettke’s 2007 paper “Liberty vs. Power in Economic Policy in the 20th and 21st Centuries,” as this paper is reprinted in Pete’s 2021 book, The Struggle for a Better World:

[W]henever ideas that argue that liberty must give way to power in human affairs become dominant, the consequences are dire to the social progress of humanity. Reliance on power makes us worse off, not better off.

DBx: Yes.

To too many people, power appears active while liberty appears indolent. Yet the reality is quite the opposite. Liberty allows everyone to pursue his or her goals with experimental ways of enticing others voluntarily to assist. This assistance typically comes through market exchange, but sometimes through voluntary organizations such as clubs and churches. Power overrides the countless adjustments and creative moves made by private actors – and of course overrides also private actors’ preferences. Power substitutes the preferences and limited knowledge of the power-wielder for the preferences and much greater, although dispersed, knowledge of the multitude – the multitude each of whom must obey the power-wielder or be (if the disobedience persists) slaughtered.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board reports on Sam Bankman-Fried’s overly late realization of the folly of ESG investing. A slice:

Mr. Bankman-Fried virtue-signaled by committing to make FTX “carbon neutral” and donating generously to fashionable progressive causes such as a foundation working to provide solar energy in the Amazon River basin. “We’re giving millions each year to launch sustainability related initiatives,” he said in an April Forbes magazine interview with—you can’t make this up—Brazilian super-model Gisele Bündchen.

Meanwhile, he was leveraging FTX customer funds to make risky, ill-timed bets. “Problems were brewing. Larger than I realized,” he tweeted. “In the future, I’m going to care less about the dumb, contentless, ‘good actor’ framework,” he added. “What matters is what you do—is *actually* doing good or bad, not just *talking* about doing good or *using ESG language*.”

Pierre Lemieux decries “the incredible conceit of the state.”

I’m always honored to be a guest of Amy Jacobson and Dan Proft.

David Harsanyi quite effectively punctures the pretensions and exposes the errors of today’s “natcons” – that is, the self-described “national conservatives.” Two slices:

Young NatCons, many of whom I know and like, seem to be under the impression that they’ve stumbled upon some fresh, electrifying governing philosophy. Really, they’re peddling ideas that already failed to take hold 30 years ago when the environment was far more socially conservative and there were far more working-class voters to draw on. If Americans want class-obsessed statists doling out family-busting welfare checks and whining about Wall Street hedge funds, there is already a party willing to scratch that itch. We don’t need two.

“National conservatism”— granted, still in an amorphous stage — offers a far too narrow agenda for any kind of enduring political consensus. It lacks idealism. It’s a movement tethered to the grievances of a shrinking demographic of rural and Rust-Belt workers with high school degrees at the expense of a growing demographic of college-educated suburbanites.

The “New Right” loves to mock “zombie Reaganism.” Well, the ’80s fusionist coalition, which stressed upward meritocratic mobility, free markets, federalism, patriotism, and autonomy from the soul-crushing federal bureaucracy, was by all historical measures more successful than the Buchananism that followed or Rockefellerism that preceded. Zombie Reaganism was a dramatic success not only in 1980 but also in 1994 and again in 2010 and 2014. The “shining city on a hill” might sound like corny boomerism, but it’s still infinitely more enticing than the bleak apocalypticism of Flight 93.

…..

In the meantime, the New Right’s intellectual movement is a Trojan horse for a bunch of corrosive authoritarian “post-liberal” ideas. If a malleable “common good” means jettisoning limiting principles, well, no thank you. Plenty of secular right-wingers like myself have been defending religious freedom on neutral, classical liberal grounds. Today, the New Right tells me those notions are dead. If that’s true, I wonder who will be left to defend them 10 years from now?

On his Facebook page, GMU Econ alum Mark Perry shares some observations from Barcelona:

Random thoughts and observations after 24 hours in Barcelona, Spain:
1. Spain’s median household income (Purchasing Power Parity) was $28,365 in 2021 which is 39% less than the $46,511 household income in the state of Mississippi, America’s poorest state. If Spain became a US state, it would be America’s poorest state by far.
And yet, compared to the US:
2. No signs yet of a single homeless person.
3. No signs yet of a single panhandler.
Also compared to the US:
3. Almost NO baseball caps and the few I’ve seen are worn properly as intended (not backward).
4. No carjackings
5. Apparently almost no shoplifting.
6. Very few dogs
7. Food is insanely cheap, about 2 euros for a dozen eggs vs. $3.50 in the US, 1 euro for three large baguettes, Kentucky bourbon for $7 vs. $30 in the US, $12 for a bottle of Stoly vodka, vs. $25 in the US., etc.
8. Insanely cheap and good Spanish wine for less than 10 euros per bottle.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy calls on Republicans to take their focus off of personalities and to put it instead on policies – hopefully policies that will promote economic growth. A slice:

What’s more, in the rare occasions that Republicans have a policy idea, they’re usually calling for awful and outdated ones such as industrial policy and protectionism, or even Democrat-like entitlements such as federal paid leave and a child universal basic income. And that’s when Republicans aren’t making the economically ignorant case to drop “market fundamentalism” and embrace central planning.

Art Carden reminds us of an important function of labor markets. A slice:

Like every other market. Supply and demand determine broccoli, bean, and bowling ball prices. They also determine wages. What Bryan Caplan calls The World’s Greatest Market is complicated, and the competitive model doesn’t explain everything. People don’t understand, however, how competitive labor markets work, and that’s a bigger problem than voters not subscribing to the Journal of Labor Economics. As teachers, economists have work to do.

Historians and economists have based much of their analysis on the notion that workers and employers have unequal bargaining power. W.H. Hutt traced this idea, which he called “wooly,” back to Adam Smith. Hutt argued that competitive labor markets are workers’ friends, not enemies. His view runs counter to what a lot of people think. Hutt didn’t believe employers were enlightened or benevolent. Bob might be obsessed with his bottom line, however, other employers are obsessed with their bottom lines and stand ready to hire workers whom Bob might be mistreating. Hutt isn’t thinking wishfully, either. Rising productivity in competitive labor markets improves wages and working conditions. Studies of South African apartheid show how white workers enriched themselves by stopping native competition.

Will Jones reports on the G20’s scary proposal for a “global passport and ‘digital health’ identity scheme.”

JoeS619 tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)

It’s such a bizarre ideology to rearrange your entire society around 1 respiratory virus. For years at a time.

While no other deaths or health problems matter.

Living life itself doesn’t matter.

Human rights are suspended.

It’s mind boggling to consider.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 283 of my colleague Peter Boettke’s 2016 paper “Pessimistically Optimistic about the Future,” as this paper is reprinted in Pete’s 2021 book, The Struggle for a Better World:

I am an optimist because of the creativity of individuals and the power of the market; I am a pessimist because of the moral intuitions hard-wired into humans through our evolutionary past in small-group settings and the tyranny of government controls in the affairs of men. The logical outcomes of both are fundamentally opposed: complete and unregulated trade with all or isolation and war against all. Human history, I contend, can be seen as the long drama of these two forces battling it out to determine which norms of interaction will be dominant. Put another way, we can follow the Smithian propensity to truck, barter, and exchange, or we can follow the Hobbesian propensity to rape, pillage, and plunder. Optimism comes from Smithian propensities winning out over Hobbesian ones, whereas pessimism comes from the Hobbesian propensities sweeping aside the Smithian ones.

On Tax Cuts and Private Enterprise

(Don Boudreaux)

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In my latest column for AIER is do my best to bust a popular myth about tax cuts and to point out the very limited meaning of “private” in “private enterprise.”

The free market is private only in the sense that decisions of what and how to produce are made by individuals spending their own resources rather than by government officials spending other people’s resources. But in a free market any entrepreneur or investor who produces and invests only to directly satisfy his or her own private desires – any entrepreneur or investor who disregards the desires of the public – will not long survive as an entrepreneur or investor.

Lady Gaga earns millions of dollars annually not because performing gratifies her directly, but, rather, because her performances please millions of people (nearly all of whom are strangers to her) so much that each of her fans willingly pays her to perform. Jeff Bezos is a multibillionaire today not because he finds great personal satisfaction in doing online retailing, but, rather, because his online retailing skills and efforts satisfy the desires of hundreds of millions of us in the general public. Warren Buffett’s net worth exceeds $100 billion today not because he has a personal, noneconomic attachment to the companies in which Berkshire Hathaway invests, but rather because he is unusually skilled at directing resources to companies that are themselves skilled at producing goods and services that are eagerly purchased by countless members of the general public.

In the market, economically profitable (and, hence, taxable) activities are overwhelmingly those that successfully improve the welfare of the general public.

Ironically, the only truly private enterprises are those that exist and survive because of special privileges granted to them by government. The cane-sugar farmer in south Louisiana or Florida acquires his hefty income not by satisfying the general public, but instead because we in the general American public are obstructed by our own government from buying imported sugar. The U.S. government harms the public in order to bestow unearned riches on American sugar farmers. Only through such interventions as protective tariffs, subsidies, and occupational licensing restrictions are owners of firms able to satisfy their own private desires without having to satisfy the desires of the general public. Only through such interventions are the ‘profits’ and incomes of protected producers extracted from the general public rather than being the rewards for contributing to the general public.

Ordinary men, women, and children will prosper only if, and only to the extent that, truly productive activities are not unduly discouraged by taxes and other government interventions. Income, corporation, and capital-gains taxes are taxes on the general welfare. Also harmful to the public welfare are protective tariffs and similar restrictions on how people may peacefully spend their own money.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy quite sensibly wants to know – now that Ron DeSantis is a likely candidate for the U.S. presidency – what are DeSantis’s positions on key national-policy matters such as protectionism, industrial policy, and fiscal (ir)responsibility.

My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein assembles some sage wisdom about DEI.

GMU Econ alums Ben Powell and Alex Salter write sensibly about gasoline prices. A slice:

Biden’s approach to energy makes production and distribution more difficult. The U.S. economy is producing millions fewer of barrels of oil per day than it did during the 2017–2020 boom. This decreased U.S. production is not caused by the war in Ukraine. U.S. policy decisions make oil and gas quantities lower and prices higher than they otherwise would be. Domestic production lags because companies can’t risk new investments floundering on the administration’s costly climate policies. As a result, oil prices are 40 percent higher now than they were in January 2021.

Ryan Bourne explains why we should worry about government interference in U.S. labor markets. A slice:

Yet in my chapter of the Empowering The New American Worker book, I explain how basic economic analysis (confirmed by empirical evidence) tells us that, at best, these policies tend to help some workers enjoy more security or higher pay or benefits at the expense of others, who often suffer heavily. At worst, they raise the overall costs and risks of mutually beneficial job agreements, reducing net opportunities, harming business productivity, or distorting remuneration packages in ways that harm employees.

What’s more, in recent years, there has been political momentum – mainly from the left, but also the national conservative right – for expanding U.S. labor regulation in a more highly regulated “European” direction, with stricter mandates on contract provisions and greater curbs on firms’ ability to freely recruit or layoff workers. These have included a push for a $15 federal minimum wage, government encouragement of collective bargaining agreements, shoehorning gig economy and other independent workers into traditional employee‐​employer regulatory frameworks and rolling out predictive scheduling laws.

This direction of travel is an error. First, because cross‐​country evidence suggests that restrictive labor market regulations raise the structural level of unemployment, particularly for demographic groups with the weakest attachment to the labor market, such as young and unskilled workers. Prior to the pandemic, for men and women, the EU (which has much more stringent labor laws, on average) saw youth unemployment rates (15–24 percent) of 15.3 percent and 14.8 percent, against just 9.4 percent and 7.3 percent in the U.S.

Vanessa Brown Calder reports that – as the title of her post reads – “New Analysis Finds Expanded Child Tax Credit Reduces Work and Growth.”

Here’s the abstract of a new paper by GMU Econ alum Erik Matson – a paper titled “Our dynamic being within: Smithian challenges to the new paternalism”:

This essay uses concepts from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop ideas about choice and welfare. I use those ideas to offer several challenges to common approaches to behavioral welfare economics and new paternalist policy making. Drawing on Smith’s dialectical concept of practical reason, which he develops in expositing ideas about self-awareness and self-judgment, I first argue that inconsistency need not be viewed as pathological. Inconsistent choices might indicate legitimate context-dependencies as individuals reflect over disjointed perspectives and act accordingly. Understanding inconsistency as reasonable raises epistemic difficulties for identifying errant choices and designing corrective policies. Second, I draw on Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator to discuss dynamic aspects of welfare. Welfare is not simply a matter of preference satisfaction but involves a sense of progress and improvement towards better preferences. Smith’s account suggests that economists interested in welfare should focus on institutional arrangements that facilitate self-development.

Art Carden reviews my GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan’s new book, Don’t Be A Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice. A slice from Art’s review:

While the chapters span Caplan’s entire blogging career at EconLog, people might find his first few chapters most interesting in light of present controversies on college campuses. The first chapter is the longest in the book; it’s a 30-page letter to his daughter titled “Don’t Be A Feminist.” At the risk of oversimplifying, Caplan encourages his daughter to cast a skeptical eye on “systemic” and “structural” explanations for group differences when there are other, more plausible explanations. A classic example from labor economics that appears a few times in the book concerns the gender wage gap, which is often misleadingly presented as 20% earnings gap for men and women doing the same jobs. But men and women do not do the same jobs, of course, and a lot of the wage gap can be explained by things like the vast overrepresentation of men in extremely risky jobs like logging. A moment’s reflection shows that a gap per se is not prima facie evidence that something sinister is going on.

Speaking of Bryan Caplan, he continues to find good reason to praise Alex Epstein’s book Fossil Future.

Vinay Prasad tweets: (HT Martin Kulldorff)

It is not ok to fire people for not taking a vaccine that provides no benefit to third parties. The ethical prerequisite to mandate was not met. Merely meeting it doesn’t mean it was a good idea, but not meeting it was a nonstarter.

(DBx: To be clear, I agree with Prasad that no one should be fired from a job just because that person refuses to take the covid vaccine – a vaccine that, indeed, provides little to no benefit to third parties. But I support the right of private employers to require such vaccination – indeed, to require whatever peaceful conditions it chooses, however unscientific or whacky or distasteful. I would do my best to avoid conducting business with employers who require their workers to be vaccinated against covid, but I would also defended these employers’ right to have such a requirement.)

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Justin Hart argues persuasively that Donald Trump’s “decision to approve and extend drastic Covid interventions should disqualify him for a second term.” A slice:

The White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, Anthony Fauciand Deborah Birx, put the Constitution into an induced coma. Mr. Trump’s decision to adopt Chinese Communist Party tactics and close down the country gave license to states to amplify and extend these terrible policies, to governors to wield unprecedented executive powers, and to school districts to shut students out for months or even years.

Mr. Trump did very little to constrain this overreach. His dramatic Covid order shut down your business, barred your kids from school, denied you access to your church, your gym and your coffee shop. It suppressed screenings and treatments for cancer and other illnesses and kept people from visiting loved ones in the hospital or attending their funerals.

Studies appear weekly confirming what almost everyone now acknowledges—the lockdowns were futile as well as onerous. One set of researchers wrote: “Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic.”

Mr. Trump paid lip service to the need to reopen the country but never rallied lawmakers or other officials to do anything about it. It was left to governors like Brian Kemp of Georgia and Ron DeSantis of Florida to do that on their own.