There is a misconception among critics of the COVID-19 lockdowns that they're being imposed over the howls of the local population, which wants freedom. If only that were true.
Noneconomists struggle to realize that scarcity results in the necessity of tradeoffs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this difference in thinking causes them to wrongly accuse economists of "prioritizing money over lives."
“Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State…the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute.” We cannot allow combating a virus to overwhelm all other values in society.
The quality of the models being used by politicians to set COVID-19 policy is only as good as the data collected. Unfortunately, the data is not very good. Meanwhile, real costs arise from the ruined economy.
Thanks to regulations and a lack of private spending, Italy's healthcare system had very limited capacity even before the current crisis.
The airline industry has clearly been prone to booms and busts for decades. Yet instead of planning for hard times, these corporate welfare machines called "airlines" use resources to inflate stock value and pad executive salaries.
The Left conveniently ignores dozens of state-dominated and state-controlled medical systems and decides that the lack of preparedness for COVID-19 was all the fault of those small slivers of healthcare systems that are actually private.
What the economy needs now is more real savings and more real production. Creating more money will not help with either of these things.
What we can learn from the Patriot Act is that during a time of crisis governments can pass legislation that impacts citizens’ lives long after the crisis of the day has passed.
The coronavirus demonstrates how crises become local.
