Exploring the political economy of embracing lockdowns is an interesting topic for economists to research. Philip Baggus recently published a piece on the political economy of Covid-19 hysteria and it would be fascinating to read his findings if he were to study the proposed topic. Evidence indicates the futility of lockdowns, yet they are still widely embraced.
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Opening and running a business has never been easy, but this past year has been particularly challenging for the nation’s entrepreneurs—those who represent the “driving force” of our economy, as Ludwig von Mises once described them.
Despite the record unemployment rate, widespread hardship to businesses, strains on the healthcare system, political turmoil, and general disruption to daily life in 2020, US consumers have managed to ramp up their habit of buying things. Demand for physical goods replaced some of the previous demand for in-person service-related experiences and much of that demand was met with a surge of imports from China as domestic production slowed down due to lockdown measures.
Back in the wild west days of the housing boom, say 2004-2005, there was a mortgage loan officer who used to pitch an idea to us he called wealthbuilder. He would trot out a spreadsheet and plug in a person’s mortgage amount, and assume a variable rate loan with the low teaser rates that were being marketed at the time.
According to John Maynard Keynes,
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Senator Elizabeth Warren appeared on CNBC last week, sparring with hosts Becky Quick and Joe Kernan over stock buybacks.
Both sides here either forget about, miss, or fail to prioritize the key behavioral incentives that drive this activity.
Today marks the anniversary of a fateful day in the history of the Western world. On March 15, 44 BC, a group of Roman senators assassinated Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar, dictator for lifetime, was seen by these senators, many of whom were personally indebted to him, as a tyrant and a threat to Roman liberty. His death was supposed to restore the republic. It is well known that the assassination of Caesar succeeded, but the republic fell into a civil war and ultimately became a monarchy.
