Lockdowns had little affect on mortality

A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf (jhu.edu)

“A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality” By Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke

About the Series The Studies in Applied Economics series is under the general direction of Prof. Steve H. Hanke, Founder and Co-Director of The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise (hanke@jhu.edu). The views expressed in each working paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions that the authors are affiliated with.

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies. Sheltering in place, about 2.9%

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

There’s Good News in the Bible, but also in the economic news

There's a lot of good news out there if only the liberal media would let you in on it. The U.S. Census Bureau’s latest report on income and poverty, which came out in October found real median family income up 1.2 percent from 2017 to 2018, real median earnings up 3.4 percent, the number of full-time, year-round workers increased by 2.3 million, and the poverty rate declined from 12.3 percent to 11.8 percent, with 1.4 million people leaving poverty. That's why Democrats want to impeach the President. The poverty and earnings report combined with the November jobs report could just signal that not as many people need the federal government, and for leftists, that's tragic news.

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-world-is-getting-better-its-just-that-no-one-tells-you-about-it/

There are many items of good news in this article—from medicine to technology to environment.

David Horowitz and Freedom Center

“Earlier this year, MasterCard shut off our online fundraising because the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled my Freedom Center an "Islamophobic hate group," and then Discover Card came after us too.

Why did MasterCard go to war against the Freedom Center? Part of the answer no doubt has to do with the invisible advance of political correctness in the corporate world which has helped create a "progressive" culture based on virtue signaling and moral preening.

But there's more to it than that...

The forces waging this war involve a tight network of the most powerful institutions in our economy, the censorship prone social media, the liberal press, and financial giants like MasterCard.

Their marching orders are issued by radical groups such as the George Soros-funded Media Matters and their ammunition dump is provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center's fabricated blacklist of alleged "hate groups."

I know that the story of this attack on the Freedom Center is complicated and I appreciate your patience in reading about it. I hope you see the threat it poses to all enemies of the left.

I also hope you see that the Freedom Center is in the fight of its life and desperately needs your support if it is to continue our historic role as the left's worst enemy.”

Other conservatives have their accounts shut down or go to Facebook “jail” for speaking out about freedom for Jews, or abortion, or schools or support for Trump, like Diamond and Silk (2 black women who advocate for the president). Dare not aim at the Left’s sacred cows.  George Soros has a lot of power (and now you can be called an anti-Semite for speaking out about Soros!) You can’t really say social media punishment for disagreeing with Soros is about free speech because that’s a government issue, however, these sites do have bills to pay—they are a business and depend on advertising which depends on web traffic.  Big Tech is Big Monopoly.  The left also shuts down bakers and florists or fashion designers who don’t want to participate in a same sex wedding, and THAT is a first amendment right, and their businesses are also being destroyed by government.

F. A. Hayek condensed

The leading economist of the 20th century was F.A. Hayek, an Austrian by birth and British by choice. Back in the days when Reader's Digest had 7 million subscribers just in the U.S., his "The Road to Serfdom" was published in the magazine in 1945. It was also reissued by Book of the Month club with 600,000 copies, and you can still buy the condensed version today (or download). People 70 years ago knew a lot more about economics than our fragile, fearful snowflakes, their parents and grandparents today. And from the Reader's Digest. Who knew?

"Our generation has forgotten that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be nominally that of ‘society’ as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises this control has complete power over us."

Wisdom passed along to our children

"My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police." Margaret Thatcher, September 20, 1981.

Why legal abortion is the main cause of family breakdown

http://eppc.org/publications/social-and-economic-costs-of-legal-abortion/

The author writes: Fifteen years ago I published a paper on the “Socioeconomic Costs of Roe v. Wade.”  In it, I estimated the impact of legal abortion in reducing the U.S. population (about 20% so far) and concluded, “taken in its entirety, legal abortion is perhaps the single largest American economic event of the past century, more significant than the Great Depression or the Second World War.”[6]

• legal abortion is single-handedly responsible for the prospective deficits in the pay-as-you-go social security retirement system,[7] and
• suggests that legal abortion was also directly responsible for the 1970s and 1980s rise in crime rates.[8]

Nine schools of economics explained

http://www.businessinsider.com/table-different-schools-of-economics-2014-6?IR=T

From the man who bought you "the shortest economic textbook in the world"; and "13 things Economists won't tell you", here is Ha-Joon Chang's ultimate pocket guide to the differences (and similarities) between all the economic schools of thought.

Read more: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-25/pocket-guide-understanding-different-schools-economics

What turns a liberal into a conservative?

It seems it is a bit like alcoholism—they have to figure it out for themselves.  I did.  But here’s what others say. (Facebook conversation)

I wasn't a well educated liberal. I changed my views because of the WSJ articles in the 80;s explaining the Laffer curve. Marti

I went to education college when I was a (semi-)adult (in my 20s and 30s) and thought that some of the stuff I was learning (whole language, ugh) was not quite right. That led to some reading at the public library (this was before the internet!) and slowly started coming around. Carol

Having kids. Joseph

I have been . . . incorporating critical thinking skills into my lessons. Question authority. Follow the money. If someone makes you an offer too good to be true, it probably is. If you know someone is lying to you about one thing, you can't trust him when he's talking about anything else. . .  some times these kids are actually listening to you. Stuart

My wife is in college presently. She is taking a history course. Reagan is this weeks' topic...the stuff they teach about Reagan in college is pretty sad. I probably was fed the same propaganda back when I was in college, but I don't remember it...experiencing the college propaganda as an older person with life experiences it is easy to detect, but for the young folks it's just another class with stuff to be memorized...pretty soon what they memorize becomes historical fact even when it is blatant lies.  Jim

I was working on a wheat ranch . . . So the farmer said, "Get in the truck." I did, and he drove us into town, and to the "Employment Office." It was so full there were people standing in the aisles, every seat being taken. He loudly announced, "I need 5 people to drive wheat trucks... it is easy work and pays well... first ones to the door get the job." Not one person moved.  Ed

My sister was sounding strangely conservative as she ranted about irresponsible parents of her second graders. She was saying that any aid they get should be tied to actually parenting their children! I told her that was a conservative point of view. Just giving people money doesn't change a thing. Debbie

Discernment informed by life experience. Lynn

“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.”― Winston Churchill.  Hartley

[Came home from Viet Nam and enrolled in college.  Sociology teacher required volunteering.]  I went to one of the places . . . the "Blue Mountain Action Council." I was given the task of going door to door to sign people up for welfare. After an afternoon of having folks tell me that they were insulted by the offer, I went back to the office to talk with the guy in charge. He explained that the real purpose of getting more people enrolled was so that he could get a promotion and more money. He offered that if I helped him do so, he could get me hired into the position he now held. I became a conservative that day. Ed

After the stupidfada and 9/11, I couldn't understand the liberal reaction. That made me start reading conservative sources. I did some work in management consulting, which got me to understanding economics. Ariel

My sister converted me when I was a teenager, by explaining that giving minority-owned businesses preferential treatment we guarantee that they'll never believe themselves as good as we are. Essentially putting them back on a plantation- Then she went on to explain that when the gov't favors one group over another, that group proliferates and yet does not prosper. Opened my eyes to the existence of wrongheaded/good heartedness. That was the day. Kenneth

Are you smarter than the average politician?

The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%.  Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office.  I scored 93.94%.  Try it.

http://www.isi.org/quiz.aspx?q=FE5C3B47-9675-41E0-9CF3-072BB31E2692

Basic Economics for Christians--Please write this book

I read in the November Columbus CEO that business owners/executives scored only 38% on tests of financial literacy. So that got me to thinking. How would the rest of us score? So I decided to look into starting a book discussion group that would read a title (I made this up--doesn‘t seem exist) “Basic economics for Christians.”

We know the "Occupiers" know diddly squat about economics, but what about educated conservatives? I think most people who identify themselves as conservatives or Tea Party supporters and who want the government shrunk don’t realize how dependent they’ve pesonally become on the federal government through block grants to states for housing, mandated education standards like NCLB, and churches that accept government money for their “social justice” programs. Maybe they know the Federal Reserve System is not a government agency, but I’m guessing they don’t. Do they know the government has been involved in housing since the Royals were handing out land grants and charters (original colonies mostly named for royalty--North Carolina, Virginia--west of that for Indian names).

Socialism and Keynesian economics might be terms Conservatives have heard of, or even disparage, but do they know they are both anti-Christian and anti-saving for the future? John Maynard Keynes was a homosexual who had little use for families or Christian values--especially not providing for them in the future. He thought money should be spent today and not taken out of circulation for future needs. Do conservatives realize that both GW Bush and Barack Obama are Keynesians? They say they understand what it means that Obama’s advisors at the highest level are Socialists--but so were FDR and his advisors, an era that many revere?

Do they know that for the first two hundred years of the United States our history was taught with a moral and ethical base in public schools, and that since the 1920s God has disappeared from textbooks and in his place is an economic view of history? Do they know what has happened to manufacturing, transportation, and technology just within their own lifetimes? Do they even realize what their own consumerism and desire for more stuff have contributed? Do they know there didn’t used to be an income tax, or how many pages the current code is?

Do conservatives really understand the words million, billion and trillion? When conservatives complain about the cost of federal government do they know that from one dollar in taxes 21 cents go to Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP, 20 cents to Social Security and 20 cents to defense? Medicare, Social Security, and Defense are HUGE issues for conservatives, and a huge drain in a bloated government. Franklin County, Ohio, where I live gets $1.2 Billion in defense contracts. Want that cut? Even if we could reduce fraud, graft and waste, there would be a lot even with a squeaky clean payout.

What we understand and how we vote might be easier if we all understood consumer price index, gross domestic product, corporation, dividends, Laissez-Faire, Marx, Adam Smith, deficit, human capital, price controls, non-profits, for profits, etc. Time to get informed.

Has anyone written the books I'd like to read?

Did You Know--Light Rail economics

Instead of pouring money into low return light rail, the government could simply purchase cars for the light rail riders without them, still have enough money left over to provide all the other riders with substantial credits to use for bus service or other subsidized mass transportation options. Political Calculation

Why the left wants to raise taxes on the rich

We don't have enough billionaires and millionaires to do what Obama wants--fund all our government programs, so why is he going down this road again for the 2012 campaign? If it doesn't help the poor and middle class, why do it? To punish the rich--it's a deeply held moral philosophy.

Republicans need to unmask the philosophy guiding modern liberalism when it comes to taxes. What liberals are interested in isn't growth so much as egalitarianism and redistribution for its own sake. For many on the left, increasing taxes isn't about economics as much as morality. They believe taxing the wealthy is a virtue, to the point that they would penalize "the rich" even if that has harmful economic consequences. Recall that during a campaign debate, when asked by Charles Gibson about his support for raising capital gains taxes even if that caused a net revenue loss to the Treasury, Obama sided with tax increases "for purposes of fairness."

The Incredible Shrinking Obama

Basic Economics--Thomas Sowell

No charts, graphs, and just plain English. New revised edition. How is wealth created? (Hint: not by government). The housing bust began the current melt down. Politicians created this by interferring and changing the rules (more home ownership, more affordable housing). Stimulus and bailouts in both the Bush and Obama administrations created boondoggles and didn't help the economy. Lending went down when money was given to banks. GM bailout? Bernanke's QE-2 (printing money)? What was he thinking? Bush tax cuts extension are an acknowledgement by Obama that his policies have failed--that cuts are superior to handing out money for stimulating the economy. All spending begins in the House--Clinton had a Republican Congress, so he can't take any credit for that era's tax policy or deficit reduction. 17% of GDP to health care. Americans chose much of that spending, so how can the government say it's wrong for us to have less waiting time, nicer hospitals, and more available drugs? We pay more and get more says Sowell--it's that simple. People buy what they want. If you're a Swede and you want more or better or faster, you can leave the country to get it, but you won't get it there. About 50% of our health care is already socialized--Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP--is this a good system or is there corruption and graft that could be reduced?

Watch the interview with Thomas Sowell.

Made in China--guest blogger Nelson

Recently I came to the railroad crossing on the Lowell Park Road on the way to Dixon, Illinois. The gates were down, the red lights flashing and presently a long freight train came through heading west toward the Mississippi River. Every flatbed held a Chinese container, empty and heading back home to be refilled and shipped again.

Factories close, people are let go and the economy slumps. And the reason started with greed.

I worked for a Mattel company in Orange County, California in the early 1970s and I can recall that one Christmas there was a stevedore's strike that prevented the freighters from coming into the San Pedro docks. Mattel was going mad, realizing that if they couldn't get the ships in and unloaded in time for Christmas, their profits would slump.

And why were these ships loaded with Mattel toys? Because Mattel had found that they could have them made much cheaper in Japan than in the US. Some might call that good business for them to go overseas; I call it greed.

And later, when the Chinese came into the picture, Mattel had toys made there. . .which meant that if any other toy manufacturer wanted to compete, they would have to go to China too.

I am appalled, horrified by this but maybe, if I were in the manufacturing business, I would have done the same thing. I hope not, but making money becomes a terrible obsession sometimes.

The problem is that this going to China for the cheapies has had a reverse effect. As more companies have closed here and opened in China, the local economies have staggered and fallen. if that nut-and- bolt maker in Rockford has to close, the people he had working for him have to get other jobs or do with less. The result - and I see this every time I go to Rockford - street after street of vacant factories; which has meant a loss of the tax base, increase in crime and fewer city services.

It used to be I would refuse to buy anything made in China. I cannot do that anymore because to refuse Chinese goods would mean I wouldn't be able to buy a thing.

Good politics is bad history and bad economics

It's a toss up. The demeaning and foot shuffling dance of the United States abroad by Biden-Obama, or Obama's negative rhetoric at home to completely gut the spirit of the American people. What is he up to? Certainly there's no hope, no change in the constant barrage of negativism we've heard since November 4. He gets his stimulus package through duplicity and lies, and before it even gets to his desk tells us it won't work and there will be more! I don't know if a positive attitude helps cancer patients, but if I had stage one cancer, I certainly wouldn't be encouraged by being knocked to the floor with the stats and treatment regimen for stage four.

[Obama’s] fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82. Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'

Great myths of the great Depression

If you can count, you know that 1929-1941 (or 1943 by other research) is a very long time, and that both the Hoover Administration and the Roosevelt Administration created and fine tuned the so-called Great Depression with massive government interference. And now President Obama and the Reid Pelosi gang that can't shoot straight want to do it all over again and are lying to us about capitalism and about recovery. Why does anyone, president or pauper, want to recreate the pain of the 1930s? I've pointed out this article before, but in light of Obama's lies, it's worth another look.

"Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the twentieth century’s greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America’s economic recovery."

What if there were a recession

and the federal government and the Fed did nothing, with Congress going home on an extended vacation. Based on what has happened in the last 8 months (and what happened 1929-1943), we'd be way ahead. The stock market has done nothing but drop since the markets woke up one day and realized Obama would be president after the Democrats met in the summer. When the congressional whiz kids decided to bail out the banks with the Ben and Hank (Fed + fed govt) dog and pony show, nothing recovered and everything got worse. The President's solution? Do more interfering. If a lot didn't work, much more might! Obama's numbers are dropping like a Bush in Iraq, and he's heading for the heartland to drum up support. Hope and Change.
Hopeless change.
Less change,
changing hope.

A good book for the New Year

I really like key #2. That was the name of the newsletter I used to write--No Free Lunch--about coupons, refunds, green stamps (remember those?), wooden nickles, sweepstakes, and so forth. Loyalty cards and clubs hadn't yet made much of an appearance in the early 1980s, but it's all the same--the belief that there is a free lunch. The latest edition is 2005, the 10th. We'll see if the basics have changed to meet the challenges of today's investment climate.

As we gather to enjoy Thanksgiving

Let's remember one of the popular myths from our history--The Great Depression. Myth #4, Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.

"Hoover's disastrous agricultural policies involved the know-it-all Hoover acting as his own agriculture secretary and in fact writing the original Agricultural Marketing Act that evolved into Smoot-Hawley. While exports accounted for 7% of U.S. GDP in 1929, trade accounted for about one-third of U.S. farm income. The loss of export markets caused by Smoot-Hawley devastated the agricultural sector. Following in Hoover's footsteps, FDR concentrated on trying to raise farm income by such tactics as setting quotas on production and paying farmers to remove acreage from production -- even though this meant higher prices for hard-pressed consumers and had the effect of both lowering productivity and driving farmers off their land."

It was the poor who were hurt the most by the government's policies during the depression. We did not get out of it through benign, enlightened federal programs, taxing the people with one hand, and handing a little back with the other. Don't be fooled again!

Yes, do contribute to your local food pantry--there really are hungry people, and in keeping with a long tradition in the USA, conservative Christians will be contributing the lion's share. But keep in mind how poverty figures are juggled by bureaucrats so that it is never eleminated (they would lose their jobs). These figures do not take into consideration the huge transfer of wealth in the form of health care (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP), food programs (food stamps, school nutriton, etc.), housing programs (vouchers, affordable housing trusts, etc), Social Security and tax right offs, so that the 95% of us who were to get a tax break under Obama can't, because so many people don't pay federal income tax. Also, about 50 million of our 300 million people aren't citizens and probably need to go home and live on the kindness of their own governments. That would considerably reduce our expenses. If women would marry the father of their children, that could also reduce some government spending. The proportion of children living in female-headed households doubled between 1970 and 2003, rising from 11.6 percent in 1970 to 23.6 in 2003. There are a lot of women living with men who should be kicked out of the house simply for not contributing to expenses! Also, poverty figures include people who are only in that group briefly, such as college students or people just starting out, or the elderly who have wealth, but not income.

Indeed, there will always be a gap between the rich and poor, even if the bottom makes $200,000 a year and the top $200,000,000; and it is the gap and not the actual income or benefits that determines the philosophy of the party about to take over the $400 billion or 12% of our GDP we're currently spending on low-income and poor people.

Paper mills in Fitchberg, Mass

Another strange economic analysis in the USAToday today, to prove, I suppose how bad "this economy is." There's a large photo in the print edition with caption, "Troubled times: the paper mills have closed in Fitchberg Mass., on the Nashua River, and the city is in an economic slow down." We visited that part of the East in the late 70s, and most of the paper mills, furniture factories, and textile mills were on their way out then or were being turned into renewal projects from the perfect storm of union strikes, environmental regulation, and improved technologies which reduced the number of workers, or required expensive upgrades to old buildings. I've checked several web sites about Fitchberg, and can't find anything about a recent closing of paper mills, at least not since its unemployment rate of 5% in April 2008.

But also, I found on the web the 2000 census, and guess what? In 1999 (i.e., long before George W. Bush), Fitchberg was below the national average in college and high school graduates, it was above average in disabilities, it had fewer foreign born than the rest of the U.S. (was about 1/3 foreign born in 1920), had a lower household income than the rest of the country, lower median income, and families below the poverty rate was 12.1% compared to 9.2% for the country, and 15% for individuals, compared to 12.4% for the country. Clearly, Fitchberg was in trouble a decade ago, but it certainly wasn't "this economy" and the current slow down.

Also, the reporter decides to feature a 47 year old divorced mother of 17 year old twins who was 9 months behind on her mortgage before she sought help from the non-profit counseling agency. This is the example of what "change" is needed? Four years ago she had purchased a home for $210,000 on an income that was from 2 jobs--a house cleaner and a home health care worker. Her patient went to a nursing home, and she lost that part of her income. What she did to bury herself even further is not told, but clearly, she shouldn't have had that level of indebtedness no matter who was in the White House.

And yet she's hopeful that a "change" in Washington might make a difference in her life. Yes, 'mam the way FDR dug the hole deeper that Hoover started in the late 20s and extended for 10 years.

The good news about Fitchberg is its 29 year old woman mayor. Seems to be a trend, because she looks like a woman who plans on big things, just like another small town mayor who's been in the news lately.

Also, the rivers are clean now, not brown like they were when the paper mills were running.