J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 37

Adam Smith Got There 250 Years Ago: "The Real Recompence of Labour..."���Twitter

Twitter: Adam Smith got there 250 years ago: "The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of��� https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1271273216850276353.html: 'The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in a still greater proportion than its money price. Not only grain has become somewhat cheaper, but many other things, from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes, for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough...

...All sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper. The greater part of the apples, and even of the onions, consumed in Great Britain, were, in the last century, imported from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarser manufactories of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactories of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade, as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of household furniture.

Soap, salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors, have, indeed, become a good deal dearer, chiefly from the taxes which have been laid upon them. The quantity of these, however, which the labouring poor are under any necessity of consuming, is so very small, that the increase in their price does not compensate the diminution in that of so many other things.

The common complaint, that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, clothing, and lodging, which satisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompence, which has augmented.

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society? The answer seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor & miserable.

It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, & lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged...

.#equitablegrowth #twitter #weekendreading

Note to Self: Columbus's Ships' Crews

Note to Self: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=how+many+men+on+christopher+columbus%27s+voyage&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8: 'Between 86 to 89 men accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage. There were 20 on the Ni��a, 26 on the Pinta, and 41 on the Santa Mar��a. After the Santa Mar��a sank, 39 men were left to establish a fort, La Navidad (the Santa Mar��a sank on Christmas eve), in the village of the Taino cacique Guancanagari... .#notetoself #2020-07-03

Worthy Reads from July 4, 2019

Worthy Reads from Equitable Growth:

Heather Boushey: How Can We Better Measure Growth...

The Equitable Growth twitter account informs me that Oregon is leading not just on YIMBYism but also on FAML: Equitable Growth: "Congratulation to Oregon for passing one of the most comprehensive paid family and medical leave policies in the nation. To learn more about the implications of paid family leave on American families and employers, check out our factsheet: https://t.co/oXQV4DiY8M?amp=1...

Walking the walk: Heather Boushey: "We believe that having a staff union at Equitable Growth will make us a stronger organization and look forward to working with union members...

While there has been a lot of noise about the changing short-run economic outlook over the past year, in actuality very little has changed: the U.S. economy continues to grow slightly above its trend rate of 2% per year or so, with no outbreak of inflation, and with a roughly one-in-five chance of seeing a recession begin within the year: June 28, 2019: Weekly Forecasting Update: It is still the case that: [1] he Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax cut has been a complete failure at boosting the American economy through increased investment in America.... [2] U.S. potential economic growth continues to be around 2%/year. [3] There are still no signs the U.S. has entered that phase of the recovery in which inflation is accelerating...

 

Worthy Reads from Elsewhere:

I do not see this as a "silver lining" at all. To say that there are now trends for factories to locate close to demand is not an alternative source of regional comparative advantage and disadvantage but rather an amplifier of other sources. Ultimately, customers are located in regions that have regional exports. A region that does not have large regional exports���and the prospect of growing more���will not be attractive to firms making long-run decisions and attempting to locate where there customers will be. It is likely to be a very uphill climb: Rana Foroohar: Silver Lining for Labour Markets: "Globalisation... bottom of... reasons that labour���s share of national income has declined.... The biggest reason... supercycles in areas... which favour capital over labour.... Automation and the speeding up of capital substitution because of technological shifts have hurt traditional industrial areas disproportionately.... A mere 25 cities and regions could account for 60 per cent of US job growth by 2030.... Tech hubs will benefit, of course, as will commodity-rich areas and tourism centres catering to the wealthy. But so will... regions... capitalis[ing] on a silver lining... being closer to customer demand.... Companies such as Nike and Adidas have built highly automated 'speed-factories'... to roll out the latest styles faster and more cheaply...

A very, very heartening success in the war on NIMBYism. Now we get to see whether local bureaucracies resist. And we get to see whether other states with NIMBYist regions can assemble the same political coalition: Michael Andersen: "Oregon just voted to legalize fourplexes in all areas of every large city, duplexes on almost every urban lot. A historic achievement, first bill of its kind in US history.... before I drink it's extremely important to thank @TinaKotek, its architect & champion; @ShemiaFagan, who carried it across the floor; @Voices4ORHomes, builders of a mighty anti-displacement toolbox; @1000oregon, visionary anti-sprawl/pro-housing warriors; & many others. Democratic caucus: 14 Y, 4 N. Republican caucus: 3 Y, 5 N. Housing is popular...

Tremendously disturbing. The question in the marketplace should aways be "is your money good?" not "I don't like your face". The second is tremendously destructive to human liberty: Kevin Drum: A Third of Republicans Think It���s OK to Refuse Service to Muslims: "A new PRRI survey.... Conservatives think business owners should be free to refuse service to gay people if their refusal is based on religious belief. But apparently large numbers of them also think it���s fine to refuse service to Muslims, Jews, and African Americans.... 18 percent think it���s OK to discriminate against blacks compared to 47 percent who think it���s OK to discriminate against gay people. Jews and Muslims and atheists are in the middle.... I wonder how seriously to take this?...

I do not understand this alternative. Tapping into global markets is great���if you have something to sell. But if low-wage labor is no longer a powerful source of potential comparative advantage, what then do poor countries have to sell that could jump-start development? There is labor, there is capital, there is expertise, there is your natural resource base. Poor counties are poor because they lack capital and expertise. And as for natural resources���well, "resource curse" is a phrase often heard for good reasons: Michael Spence: The ���Digital Revolution��� of Wellbeing: "In the early stages of development... labor-intensive process-oriented manufacturing and assembly has played an indispensable role.... Advances in robotics and automation are now eroding the developing world���s traditional source of comparative advantage.... E-commerce platforms... the real prize is the global marketplace. Only if digital platforms could be extended to tap into global demand would they suggest an alternative growth model (provided that tariffs and regulatory barriers do not get in the way)...

I concur with Noah Smith's judgment here. Elizabeth Warren's policy shop is highly professional, and that she already has such a highly professional policy shop is a strong recon to think she would make a good president: Noah Smith: Elizabeth Warren Channels the Real New Deal: "Just since the start of this year, Warren has released no fewer than 19 detailed economic policy proposals... neither the cautious, technocratic tweaks that tend to emerge from centrist think tanks, nor the bold but vague promises often issued by the socialist left.... They represent a coherent, unified program for transforming the U.S. economy.... By thinking big, combining intelligence with ambition, and being willing to engage both the public and private sectors, Warren has set herself up to be the closest thing modern American politics has to a successor to FDR...

That Martin Feldstein was certain that we could determine and then agree on what good public policies were was always heartening, and raised my confidence we could make a better world: Larry Summers: The Economist Who Helped Me Find My Calling: "Working for [Feldstein], I saw what I had not seen in the classroom: that rigorous and close statistical analysis... can provide better answers to economic questions, and possibly better lives.... Marty was a magnet for talent.... Marty cared about people���s economic analysis, not their political affiliation. That is why he mentored stars like Jeffrey Sachs and Raj Chetty, who disagreed with him on many questions...

It is tremendously disturbing that so many of today' Republican office holders and ideologues have no sense of when markets do and do not work, or how to structure markets so that they can work: Jerry Taylor: One (and Only One) Cheer for the Republican ���Innovation��� Answer to Climate Change: "Restless Republicans are (rightly) uncomfortable about allowing the planet to burn while their party doggedly maintains that nothing is happening. Alas, they���re also uncomfortable about imposing discernible economic costs on anyone, so technological 'innovation' via subsidies for favored low-carbon industries and increases in federal energy R&D has thus far been their policy response of choice.... But the Republican innovation agenda alone is not, in and of itself, a serious policy proposal. It is, perhaps, the prelude to a serious policy proposal.... If Republican rebels are prepared to accept the consensus within the climate science community, they need to... act even more aggressively... deploy zero-carbon energy technology right now.... Simon���s narrative about resource renewal only plays out when we���re dealing with tradable commodities in a free market economy where price signals are accurate and can do their job. And we don���t have those conditions when it comes to the atmosphere...

It is astonishing that this Brexit farce continues. It would only take 10 Tory MPs to call a halt to it: Bloomberg: U.K. Tory Prime Minister Candidates Unprepared for Brexit Reality: "Irresponsible tax and spending promises predominated. Implausible approaches to Brexit were aired, along with nonchalant talk of defaulting on public debts. Cocaine proved unexpectedly salient.... A chaotic no-deal exit on Halloween. Alarmingly, most of the candidates��have suggested that they���d be okay with that last option... imposing the most damaging version of a policy that about half the country already despises, and one that Parliament has already explicitly rejected.... If the Tory candidates recognize the urgency of confronting hard truths, they���re showing few signs of it...

.#noted #weblogs #2019-07-04

Wolf: What Trade Wars Tell Us���Noted

The highly esteemed Martin Wolf reviews an excellent book by Klein and Pettis. And yet what Klein and Pettis have to tell us is old news: it was first reported by John Hobson, in one of the very first few years that began with the digits ���19���. Hobson's point in those long ago days was that Victorian capitalist plutocrats liked to save in assets they thought were secure, rather than risk their wealth in enterprise. They had already made their piles, and their principal fear was that they might lose them and hence lose their position. Somebody else in society must therefore take on the job of nurturing and spending on enterprise and investment at the appropriate scale: the Gilded Age plutocracy simply will not do it consistently.

It is true that investments and expenditures can be highly negative sum for society, if they take the form of colonial imperialism or militaristic arms races. They can be somewhat negative sum, if they take the form of trade war tariffs and quotas and investments promoted as a part of monopoly inducing inappropriate industrial policy. They can be positive sum for society, if they take the form of social welfare, social insurance, and suitable industrial policy.

But a more comprehensive look reveals that political parties that find a way to make such expenditures tend to survive and retain power, and those that do not do not. And those societies that do, thrive:

Martin Wolf: What Trade Wars Tell Us https://www.ft.com/content/f3ee37e0-b086-11ea-a4b6-31f1eedf762e: ���Trade Wars Are Class Wars... [by] Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis argues that what has been happening to trade and finance can only be understood in the context of domestic pathologies... severe global imbalances, unsustainable debt and monstrous financial crises.... The foundation of this excellent book is the theory of ���underconsumption���, proposed by the British analyst John Hobson in 1902...

...���For decades,��� note the authors, ���real borrowing costs have been below long-term forecasts of real economic growth and remain around zero.��� This combination of extraordinarily low real interest rates with weak global demand and low inflation is a prime symptom of underconsumption or, in modern parlance, ���a savings glut���... income has been shifted to wealthy people who do not spend what they earn....

The book���s core is the analysis of the history of China, Germany and the US over the past three decades.... The role of the US as supplier of the world���s safest and most liquid assets is vital. We are trying to run a global economy with a national money. It has long been known that this is problematic. It has not become any less so.... The beginning of any sensible policy is clear analysis. The imbalances that caused the eurozone crisis, the debt explosions in the US and peripheral Europe, and again in post-financial-crisis China go back to two fundamental failures: the distribution of income away from the bulk of the population towards wealthy elites and the unique global role of the dollar. The obvious solution to the first failure is to distribute income to people who will spend it....

In the eurozone, this will probably require the creation of a central fiscal authority with capacity to redistribute resources. In Germany, it will require higher government spending on investment and welfare. In China, it will require the reform of property rights, improved rights for migrants to urban areas, a better social safety net, the ability of workers to organise and a shift of taxes on to the rich.... If we do not recognise and respond to these challenges, we may find ourselves persistently mired in the world of imbalances and trade wars. This is not a good place to be. We should escape���

.#noted #2020-07-03

Zeballos-Roig (2020-05-05): White House Adviser Devised Model Showing Covid-19 Deaths Hitting 0 in 10 Days���Noted

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing I have seen this week came from Trump economist Tomas Philipson, with his claim that Trump���s economic analysis instincts are ���on par with many Nobel economists I have worked with at Chicago��� https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-economist-tested-positive-for-covid-19-11593212011>. It is certainly the case that I do not have much of a regard for Phillips and Economic intuition: he seems to me to have made a career of advocating for a ���freedom to try alternative therapies��� on the part of the thick that is overwhelmingly, in practice, a freedom for bad actors to steal from the sick by lying to them in order to hold out false hopes. (I must, however, admit that even I did not anticipate seeing Phillipson waving to us from a prominent place on the hydroxychloroquine train.) But Philipson and his praise of Trump���s economic instincts is not the least competent thing Trump administration economists have done this spring. That prize goes to Kevin Hassett:

Joseph Zeballos-Roig (2020-05-05): White House Adviser Devised Model Showing Covid-19 Deaths Hitting 0 in 10 Days https://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-economic-adviser-hassett-model-coronavirus-deaths-zero-10-days-2020-5: ���The White House is relying on a model prepared by a controversial White House economic advisor that shows coronavirus deaths dropping to zero by May 15 to help guide their decision-making.... The White House is reportedly relying on a "cubic model" prepared by controversial White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett that shows coronavirus deaths plunging to zero by May 15 to help guide their economic decision-making during the pandemic.... The "cubic model" from Hassett clashes with the assessment of public health experts who say the virus will continue infecting people and swell the US death toll for the foreseeable future.... Other critics argued that an economist with an unreliable track record on issues within his own realm of expertise shouldn't wade into public health matters... #coronavirus #economicsgonewrong #moralresponsibility #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-07-03

Kottke: da Vinci���s The Last Supper���Noted

Jason Kottke: See Intricate Details in Leonardo da Vinci���s 'The Last Supper' in a New Gigapixel Image https://kottke.org/20/06/leonardo-the-last-supper-gigapixel-image: ���The Royal Academy of Arts and Google teamed up on a high-resolution scan of a copy of Leonardo da Vinci���s The Last Supper painted by his students. Even though the top part of the original is not depicted, this copy is said to be ���the most accurate record of the original��� and since the actual mural by Leonardo is in poor shape, this copy is perhaps the best way to see what Leonardo intended. "This version was made around the same time as Leonardo made his original. It���s oil paint on canvas, whereas Leonardo���s was painted in tempera and oil on a dry wall���an unusual use of materials���so his has flaked and deteriorated badly. It probably didn���t help that Napoleon used the room where the original hung as a stable during his invasion of Milan." A zoomable version is available here https://artsandculture.google.com/story/explore-the-last-supper/sAKCB2AzvHUmKQ���

.#noted #2020-07-01

COVID Tracking Project���Noted

And this is the best Twitter Covid resource I have found: The COVID Tracking Project https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/with_replies��� .#coronavirus #noted #publichealth #2020-07-01

UCSF: Grand Rounds (Covid)���Noted

This is the best coronavirus video series I have found: UCSF: Grand Rounds (Covid) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ucsf+grand+rounds+covid��� .#coronavirus #noted #publichealth #2020-07-01

Why Were University of Chicago Professional Economists Republicans So Stupid About Coronavirus?

I look at the Trump professional economists Republicans���Kevin Hassett, Tomas Philipson, Casey Mulligan, & co.���and I really do wonder: Why were they so incompetent? Why did they get so strongly behind the "epidemiologists have it wrong", the "reopen the economy"���originally by Easter���and the "this will burn itself out quickly"���deaths down near zero by mid-May���pushes? At least now Philipson and Hassett appear to be silent���although Mulligan is still out there, claiming that the depression is the result of government lockdowns alone, which he values at "15,000 dollars per household per quarter" not counting "intrinsic costs of forgone civil liberties".

By the end of January we knew that this coronavirus was (a) highly infectious, (b) transmitted by the presymptomatic, (c) something against which no human had immunity, (d) a disease with a normal-behavior herd-immunity point likely to be more than 50% of the population, and (e) a disease that killed���with treatment���about 1% of the infected. Those facts made it obvious that keeping it from killing 30 million people worldwide would bet a very difficult task, and that adding up mortality and morbidity costs valued at three million or so per death meant that the stakes we were playing for to avoid a worst-case three million dead epidemic amounted to ten trillion dollars, compared to which the 350 billion cost of a one-month complete non-essential business lockdown that reduced national income by 20% was relatively small change.

And, indeed, the rest of the global north���even Britain���with the exception of Sweden has bit the bullet, taken the lockdown hit, now has the virus (temporarily) on the run, and can move to test-and-trace and social distancing to stomp the virus. We and Sweden have not. We have thus become pariah nations, as far as coronavirus is concerned.

So I looked back���and found the professional economists Republicans getting way out in front in terms of minimizing public-health worries in February. For example, Thomas Philipson in February at the NABE saying "it's much less than the normal seasonal flu:

Tomas Philipson (2002-02-25) <https://www.c-span.org/video/?469591-1/economic-policy-conference>: I think the president obviously has the safety of the American people as his number one priority. He wants to avoid what happened with the swine flu, which was 60 million Americans infected at the time in 2009. And we obviously taking strict measures. Secretary Azar is leading our task force. We have already sort of put border control policies in place that are pretty, uh, uh, seems to be very successful or, or, uh, so far in terms of combating anything any impact here. In terms of the public health impact on the economy. I think that's been, uh, exaggerated. If you look at seasonal influenza in the U S, it kills roughly on average 40,000 Americans a year. Uh, so that's a big deal relative to the numbers we were talking about, uh, for coronavirus that's, uh, killed two and a half thousand worldwide. So far in 2018, we're at 60,000 Americans in a high growth year, uh, being killed by influenza. So those are, you can vaccinate against those new strains. When you vaccinate against seasonal flu, you think you're protective against everything. You're not you're, you might be protected against a fraction of the strains, but a lot of new strains you can vaccinate against successfully. So it's important to keep in mind that we every year take a huge, huge hit from infectious diseases that can't be vaccinated against. And the economy is still sort of a resilient to that. That doesn't mean that the economic effects from, from all the shutdowns in China won't have an impact here. It will. The question is, you know, how large are those effects and that's sort of where we're currently taking a wait and see approach...

Contrast that to what I was saying to my classes at the start of February. I was wrong in thinking that this thing would be stopped at borders. But I was right on the magnitude of the threat: 'The next six to nine months are likely to be quite unpleasant for the world Globally, the public health authorities are still hoping to keep deaths at much, much less than 30 million dead worldwide. This will be accomplished largely by slowing down international travel, and interregional travel in China, for a great deal of time. The National Institutes of Health and other research organizations need to figure out what this sucker is and how to train all of our immune systems up to deal with it. Border control authorities will have to pull people with symptoms aside and quarantine them until they conclude that they do not have it. This is a new age.... Wish all the public health people luck. This is a potentially big challenge. Curses on the Chinese government, which failed to have the right incentives in place for officials in Wuhan to report what was going on early enough. As a result of that failure to report, we are still largely flying blind. We do not have good public health indications of the rapid spread of this thing in its first stages. And those would be very useful now in trying to figure out what it's going to bring to the world. Be anxious but not too anxious: We have a powerful, rich, and enormously technologically capable civilization. Our public health technologies, especially, are mighty. And while the worst-case scenario as of now looks much, much more likely than it looked two weeks ago, the worst-case scenario itself looks much, much better than the worst-case scenario of two weeks ago looked���or so my public health contacts say...'

And contrast that to me at the end of February getting out ahead of the Berkeley administration by telling my clases that everybody with any respiratory symptoms should stay home: 'Iran says that it has so far had 3,000 coronavirus cases, and that 100 people have died of coronavirus. However, at the cabinet meeting Wednesday morning, both Vice President Jahangiri and Industry Minister Rahmani were absent. There are reports about Rahmani being hospitalized in an ICU. The chief of staff is also absent. The Supreme Economic Coordinating Council appears to be down from six people to three. What are the odds that the 3,000 and the 100 or so are all members of Iran's elite? We have no clue how large this is in Iran. But it seems like the thing has majorly jumped, from China to Iran, and elsewhere. As a result, we now are living in the spring of coronavirus. Calls for what Berkeley will do are Carol Christ's. That said, if you are coughing and sneezing���if you are coughing and sneezing, go get tested. And until you get tested, please stay home. Email me, and I'll give you lots and lots of extra credit points for being willing to hang out in your home, eating potato chips, rather than infecting other people with possible coronavirus���'

People I talk to say "Dunning-Krueger to the max". And then they shrug their shoulders...

.#coronavirus #economicsgonewrong #highlighted #moralresponsibility #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-06-30


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Thomas Franck (2020-06-22): Larry Kudlow says a second wave of coronavirus cases 'isn't coming' https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/larry-kudlow-says-a-second-wave-of-coronavirus-cases-isnt-coming.html���
Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson (2020-06-29): Fear, Lockdown, and Diversion: Comparing Drivers of Pandemic Economic Decline 2020 https://www.nber.org/papers/w27432: ���While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection.... The shutdown orders did, however, have significantly reallocate consumer activity away from ���nonessential��� to ���essential��� businesses and from restaurants and bars toward groceries and other food sellers���
David Anderson: Cubic fits and department of D'OH https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/05/05/cubic-fits-and-department-of-doh/���
R.R. Reno (2020-03-23): There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/03/from-_first-things_-rr-reno-tells-us-that-a-culture-of-life-is-all-very-fine-when-it-comes-to-bullying-women-but-not-wh.html���
Our World in Data: Coronavirus Pandemic Data Explorer https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-14..&country=USA~EuropeanUnion~AUS~JPN~NZL~KOR~CAN~TWN&casesMetric=true&dailyFreq=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc...
Scott Atlas (2020-05-25): The COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/499394-the-covid-19-shutdown-will-cost-americans-millions-of-years-of-life: ���For most of the country, that reopening should occur now,��without any unnecessary��fear-based��restrictions, many of which repeat the error of disregarding the evidence���
Vance Ginn (2020-06-13): We must learn from the shutdown mistake | TheHill https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/502518-we-must-learn-from-the-shutdown-mistake: ���This begins with responsibly ending the shutdowns ASAP.... We take on risk every day, and even the shutdowns aren���t without risk. The data keep pouring in, demonstrating that in this case, the cure has been worse than the disease.... the costs of the shutdowns on lost life-years is almost double that from COVID-19���
Casey Mulligan (2020-03-27): Coronavirus Pandemic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szlkO7jb66A���
Casey Mulligan (2020-04-16): Economic Activity and the Value of Medical Innovation during a Pandemic | BFI https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/economic-activity-and-the-value-of-medical-innovation-during-a-pandemic/: ���15,000 dollars per household per quarter before counting any health costs or monetizing any intrinsic costs of forgone civil liberties���
Casey B. Mulligan, Kevin M. Murphy, & Robert H. Topel (2020-04-27): Some basic economics of COVID-19 policy https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2020/article/some-basic-economics-covid-19-policy: ���The gain from reducing the incidence of infections in the presence of externalities may seem obvious, but there are important caveats. First, the externality created by an infected individual can actually benefit others (a positive externality), which would call for less social distancing. Suppression of the disease delays the development of ���herd immunity������
Casey Mulligan: Daily Update of COVID-19 Costs http://pandemiccosts.com/?mod=article_inline���
Laura Ieraci (2020-05-11): Catholic economists urge end to stay-at-home orders in COVID-19 response https://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2020/catholic-economists-urge-end-to-stay-at-home-orders-in-covid-19-response.cfm: ���Ending the widespread stay-at-home orders under the coronavirus pandemic would align with Catholic social teaching and respond to the needs of vulnerable people, including the young and the poor, two Catholic economists said. Government regulations generally are developed "with the interests and lifestyles of the upper class in mind," while poor people "do not have a seat at the regulatory table," said Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, during an online event May 5 organized by the Lumen Christi Institute at the university���

Tomas Philipson: Such a Maroon���Note to Self

Dunning-Krueger to the max: Shorter Tomas Philipson: It's great that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine, & encouraging others to suck up the supply away from lupus patients for whom it works. It's great that Trump refuses to wear a mask!: Tomas Philipson (2020-05-20): 'There's nothing new about https://twitter.com/TomPhilipson45/status/1263228191457583105 @POTUS using healthcare, in consultation with a physician, that hasn't undergone government approved randomized trials. Most healthcare spending is on services/procedures lacking such evidence. And the majority of cancer drugs are prescribed without it. Patients and doctors, based on trade-offs between effectiveness, side-effects, and prices, often correctly disagree with one-size-fits-all blind randomized trials, which have many problems. This is one reason why @POTUS signed Right to Try to let patients���not bureaucrats���decide. Indeed, the same people who argue POTUS should wear a mask to guard against COVID, for which there is no randomized evidence yet and blinding would be difficult, are the same people who argue that such evidence is crucial for COVID Rx use��� .#economicsgonewrong #moralresponsibility #noted #notetoself #orangehairedbaboons #2020-06-30