With such chaos, confusion, and incompetence playing out, it is little wonder that more and more Pennsylvanians are refusing to obey lockdown decrees.
In theory, it is possible to adjust inflation measures to account for the many constant changes in prices resulting from changing demand, quality, and innovations. But it's essentially impossible to execute these adjustments accurately.
Some claim "the rich" will be fine—or even better off—after the COVID panic destroys the economy for most of us. But there's a problem: the wealthy depend heavily on an economy fueled by the production and consumption of all workers and entrepreneurs.
The editors of the Babylon Bee podcast discuss the economic situation with Bob Murphy. Then, they ask a series of fun questions, against the backdrop of their shared Christianity.
Thanks to past interventions, the economy is now rife with malinvestments and prices that don't reflect real demand. The solution is to allow deflation and other types of painful readjustment. Otherwise true growth will elude us.
Accad and Koka interview Eric Weinhandl, an epidemiologist whose investigation of a JAMA paper on dialysis patients led to its retraction—and subsequent republication. They also discuss the field of epidemiology during the COVID pandemic.
For many parents, the ongoing closure of public schools will just reinforce growing suspicions that public schools just aren't worth it anymore. Maybe they never were.
Paul Krugman is now claiming that reopening the economy and allowing people to go to work almost surely will cause a depression.
Buyers and sellers in the free market do indeed act from self-interest, but Adam Smith never argued that this excludes friendly feelings for those they do business with.
Hacking off soldiers' limbs was a favorite technique of Civil War surgeons, largely because doctors wanted to avoid blame for later cases of gangrene. So doctors erred on the "safe" side. Many patients may have disagreed.
Media outlets, both left and right, are mostly narrative driven. Also, journalists have a tendency to lazily reprint whatever "experts" say. This makes media reporting thoroughly unreliable.
With their bizarre and extreme lockdowns, governments are forcing very low-risk populations to endure social isolation and unemployment. The mental health effects will be significant.
Presenting "saving lives" as a more or less equal alternative to commerce and community is a misguided view of what the lockdown debate is really all about.
Jeff Deist and economist Daniel Lacalle present a special live seminar on the COVID-19 crisis and what it means for your economic future.
Crashes are fast, like that first hill on a coaster. Recoveries are not, for the simple reason that production is more difficult than destruction.
