Public Choice and Public Policy
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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…
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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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Masking Kids: Safety without Efficacy
“It is time to look beyond the symbolic measures we are taking to protect ourselves from the virus, and to start thinking about the costs and benefits of schools reopening more realistically. Come fall, schools should be open without any extreme social distancing measures in place.” Michael Thomas and Diana Thomas
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Unemployment Drop Due to Fewer States with Lockdowns
“The drop in unemployment is almost entirely due to drops in states with lockdowns that have indefinite end dates and states that were partially or fully open as of May 16, 2020, with a bit of the drop coming from states that never had formal lockdown orders.” ~ Abigail Devereaux
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Unemployment Far Worse in Lockdown States, Data Show
“In general, states that were still closed on May 9 had the highest average insured unemployment rates relative to the average for that same group on March 1. The unemployment rate of fully locked down states was at least double than states that had no formal lockdown.” ~ Abigail Devereaux
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Question the Mask Mandates, for Reasons of Science
“CDC guidelines regarding the use of cloth masks have seen a complete 180-degree inversion over the last two months. With rapid changes like this we see the human side of science, we see the social and political aspects of the scientific process.” ~ Diana W. Thomas and Michael D. Thomas
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Targeted Tax Incentives: Perverse and Ineffective
Often firms that receive these targeted incentives are subject to little or no accountability, and they rarely create the number of jobs or the hourly wage rates they promise.
