In a recent post, libertarian political philosopher Jason Brennan argues that “we should ignore the welfare of people who choose not to vaccinate out of paranoia”. We owe them nothing. Brennan reaches this conclusion by analogizing vaccine hesitancy to a heckler’s veto (my bold): The idea of heckler’s veto goes as follows: Take any action, […]
A couple of months ago I drafted up a post arguing that Trump was becoming yesterday’s news. He was off Twitter and Facebook, and responsible for a highly unpopular attack on Congress. Stripped of the powers of the presidency he would be forced to spend his time whining about the election and playing victim. The […]
The battle to save democracy continues. White man commits intentional voter fraud: A Marple Township man who illegally registered his dead mother as a Republican and cast a vote on her behalf in the 2020 presidential election has been sentenced to five years of probation, Delaware County prosecutors said. Bruce Bartman, 70, pleaded guilty to felony […]
The American Economic Review is publishing an article by Samuel Norris, Matthew Pecenco, and Jeffrey Weaver that suggests parental incarceration has benefits for children: Every year, millions of Americans experience the incarceration of a family member. Using 30 years of administrative data from Ohio and exploiting differing incarceration propensities of randomly assigned judges, this paper […]
When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were first approved, it was clear that they were highly effective at preventing covid and that they would be in short supply for months. The clinical trial data also suggested that, at least in the short-run, one dose of the vaccines would provide almost as much protection against covid […]
Larry Summer is still criticizing the American Recovery Plan. Summers: In his latest attack on the recent rush of stimulus, Summers told David Westin on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” that “what was kindling, is now igniting” given the recovery from Covid will stoke demand pressure at the same time as fiscal policy has been […]
From WAPO: Senior Democrats are abandoning a backup plan to increase the minimum wage through a corporate tax penalty, after encountering numerous practical and political challenges in drafting their proposal over the weekend, according to two people familiar with the internal deliberations. . . . Economists and tax experts have said that the tax outlined […]
We made many mistakes in our response to the coronavirus over the past year. One of the most critical was our failure to massively expand our capacity to produce coronavirus tests and masks and other PPE. As many economists including Paul Romer noted last spring, mass testing and wide distribution of high quality masks would […]
Several comments on my last post on the economic difficulties of the people who attacked the Capitol took aim at their characters in one way or another. I certainly do not want to defend the Capitol invaders in any way. I think they should be vigorously prosecuted. However, it is critically important to step back […]
From the WAPO: Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010. Nearly […]