I don’t know why I’m writing about this when our democracy is on fire.  Maybe I need to focus on something cheery, like climate change. The American Prospect has a couple of pieces up on insurance and climate change.  One identifies a genuine issue, the other misses the mark. In this piece, Alexander Sammon asks […]

From the Brownstone Institute: Moreover, there appears to be declining confidence that the latest promised “cure” to the disease (mRNA injections) are acting as a cure in any way, shape, or form.  The entire piece is so crazy I can’t even tell what the point is, other than it turns out that the optimal policy […]

In a recent post I suggested that distrust in the government’s handling of covid and in the safety and efficacy of vaccines is mainly the result of a deliberate messaging campaign by conservative media, libertarian propaganda organizations, and Republican politicians to gain political or ideological advantage by fostering distrust.  To illustrate this, I want to […]

Matt Yglesias has published an interesting essay at his substack by Simon Bazelon and David Shor arguing that Democrats should introduce stricter means testing into the Child Tax Credit. Their key points are as follows: The current CTC design already has means-testing for very high incomes, which means that the administrative burdens associated with means-testing […]

People really, truly hate being played for suckers.  Rick Hasen: “You could look at 2020 as the nadir of American democratic processes, or you could look at it as a dress rehearsal,” says Hasen, a professor of law at UC Irvine. To understand this fragile moment for American democracy, you could take a 30,000-foot view […]

Disasters and threats tend to be politically unifying.  Public approval of George W. Bush jumped after the 9/11 attacks, and trust in government increased.  Donald Trump’s approval rating was highly stable due to increasing polarization, but even he enjoyed a small increase in approval at the start of the covid epidemic, and trust in government […]

In prior posts, I argued that Australia’s covid policy can be criticized, but that it cannot simply be dismissed on the grounds that it is “authoritarian”.  Here I will argue that some criticism of Australian covid policy has a distinct and troubling anti-democracy flavor to it. Tyler Cowen argues that Australia should be investing in […]

In my previous post, I argued that the only plausible way to criticize covid policy is to explain why some alternative policy mix (possibly a policy with a big dose of “no regulation”) will lead to better outcomes than the current policy regime.  Libertarians often refuse to engage in this type of policy analysis.  Instead, […]

Libertarians criticize covid policy in broad, uncompromising terms.  These arguments are unproductive at best; at worst they are divisive and potentially destructive.  Many are just propaganda. This does not mean that criticism of the government response to covid is off limits.  The alternative to the libertarian approach is policy analysis:  evaluating specific policies on their […]

There is good money in libertarianism.  The Brownstone Institute was recently founded by Jeffrey Tucker, a libertarian who most recently has spent his time criticizing covid lockdowns.  He just published an article criticizing Biden’s support for a vaccine mandate.  He lists five problems with Biden’s policy, but is it analysis or propaganda? Let’s take a […]