The Economy after COVID-19
“One thing is certain: life in America is not going to be the same after COVID-19. Like the Great Depression and World War II, the pandemic will exert an impact for years, perhaps even decades, on the nation’s economic and political fortunes.” ~ James D. Gwartney
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The Metaphysics of Lockdown, According to Albert Camus
“This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so near and already so far, which haunted us daylong. In fact, our suffering was twofold; our own to start with, and then the imagined suffering of the absent one, son, mother, wife, or mistress.” ~ Albert Camus
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Safety First is a Bad Ideology
“With the birth of capitalism, we tolerated social mobility: both downward and more heroically, upward. The churning of the social space is consistent with a greater toleration of risk. Maybe we haven’t convinced you with regard to public health issues during a pandemic, but at least consider the weight placed on safety the next time you use a satellite connected device, visit a beach, or take an antibiotic.” ~ Diana & Michael Thomas
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Smash the COVID Orthodoxy
“In a time of industrial levels of draconian lockdown measures, of fear-mongering and politicization, a failure to speak out against the orthodoxy will only lead to more pain and suffering. Perhaps the status quo is the best way forward, but we will never know unless we have more voices in the conversation. When this is all over, history will remember those who were brave enough to speak out, insightful enough to weigh all the options, wise enough to consider the future, and most importantly those who stood for principle.” ~ Ethan Yang
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Two Pandemics: One Serious, One Mild
“Simply put, we adopted the wrong measures and used them to ineffectually target the milder of the two pandemics, all the while neglecting or even exacerbating the much more severe outbreak that continues to run its course through our vulnerable nursing home population.” ~ Phillip W. Magness
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Don’t Let Hospitalization Trends Blind You to the Numbers Themselves
“What we can see clearly from the trends around the world is that the virus’s impact has been very uneven, and massive outbreaks like those experienced in Italy and New York are not inevitable, and seem to have little to do with how local government addressed the pandemic.” ~ Stephen C. Miller
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Rand Paul Is Right About Experts
“An expert is very well-positioned to say “if you do these things, then you can expect the following effects with the following probabilities.” Only in the most extraordinary of circumstances—and even then, I’m still extremely skeptical—should they presume to tell others exactly which choices they should make.” ~ Art Carden
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Municipality Second Waves: Zero and Counting
“As the media continues to talk of a “second wave,” keep asking the important question: Have we yet seen a municipality second wave based on deaths? If the answer is no, then figure that what is happening is the first wave still washing through the larger landscape.” ~ Daniel B. Klein
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Why We Should Not Be Concerned About Increasing Covid-19 Cases in Texas
“That increased testing means we are discovering more young and healthy people with COVID-19 should not be surprising or alarming in the slightest. The hospitals are under financial pressure from having to mostly stop doing business for months, so they are classifying as many people as possible as a COVID case in order to gain the subsidy offered by the federal government.” Edward Peter Stringham
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Independence Day in the Midst of Dictatorship
“The Great Pandemic Follies of 2020 have been based on the illusion that government could make life risk-free. But the advocates of shutdowns, lockdowns, and endless prohibitions ignore the risk of dictatorship. That was what our forefathers fought against.” ~ James Bovard
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Why Election Markets are Betting Against Trump
“Trump’s persona – and even his own base’s perception of him – has changed in this pandemic. He was once the man who would liberate the country from the establishment. He then became the chief executive ruling mostly through executive edict, and hence participated in and now celebrates the lockdowns that shattered people’s lives.” ~ Jeffrey A. Tucker
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The Adverse Economic Consequences of Higher Tax Rates
“The political impact will be that “the rich” pay more. The economic impact will be less capital formation and entrepreneurship, and those are the changes that hurt the vast majority of us who aren’t rich.” ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
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