Topic: Policy

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy, Public Choice and Public Policy, Regulation

Two Pandemics: One Serious, One Mild

– July 3, 2020

“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

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy

Don’t Let Hospitalization Trends Blind You to the Numbers Themselves

– July 3, 2020

“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

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Policy

Rand Paul Is Right About Experts

– July 3, 2020

“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

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy

Municipality Second Waves: Zero and Counting

– July 3, 2020

“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

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy

Why We Should Not Be Concerned About Increasing Covid-19 Cases in Texas

– July 2, 2020

“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

Authoritarianism, Classical Liberalism, Crisis, Policy

Independence Day in the Midst of Dictatorship

– July 2, 2020

“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

Authoritarianism, Crisis, Policy

Why Election Markets are Betting Against Trump

– July 1, 2020

“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

Capitalism, Fiscal Policy, Policy

The Adverse Economic Consequences of Higher Tax Rates

– June 30, 2020

“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

Capitalism, Central Banking, Gold Standard, Monetary Policy, Policy

Global Money Supply Growth and the Great Inflation Getaway

– June 30, 2020

“Maintenance of the level of employment rather than inflation has become the focus of official policy everywhere. Stimulus will continue until employment is restored to its pre-crisis level and there remains a colossal debt overhang to temper inflationary tendencies, but there is a real and present danger that, in the process of returning the economy to full-employment, consumer price inflation will get away.” ~ Colin Lloyd

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy, Regulation

The Real Pandemic Was a Nursing Home Problem

– June 30, 2020

“It is increasingly clear that despite driving the U.S. economy into an artificial depression, destroying tens of thousands of businesses and the lives of millions of citizens, and elevating rates of domestic violence, divorce, substance abuse, and suicide, US government policies failed to protect the most vulnerable segment of the population: individuals in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.” ~ Peter C. Earle

Crisis, Healthcare, Policy

CDC Has Become Centers for the Destruction of Childhood

– June 25, 2020

“We call on parents to reject CDC guidelines and the new normal at schools. We should no longer allow our children to be unwitting subjects in this deviant and unethical grand social experiment. CDC-enabled child abuse and its ongoing destruction of normal childhood development must end now.” ~ Robert M. Sauer, Donald S. Siegel, David Waldman

Crisis, Free Markets, Healthcare, Policy

Again, What Were the Benefits of Locking Down?

– June 25, 2020

“With the evidence coming in that the lockdowns were neither economically nor medically effective, it is going to be increasingly difficult for lockdown partisans to marshal the evidence to convince the public that isolating people, destroying businesses, and destroying social institutions was worth it.” ~ Edward Stringham