Economics

Economics articles featuring analysis of the global censorship industrial complex, impacts on public health, free trade, liberty, and policy.

All Brownstone Institute economics articles are translated into multiple languages.

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BioNTech’s 30 Billion Reasons

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The real winner in the Covid-19 vaccine sweepstakes is the German company BioNTech, not Pfizer. BioNTech made over $31 billion in Covid-19 vaccine profits on a 77 percent profit margin as compared to Pfizer’s just over $20 billion on the estimated 27.5 percent profit margin. So, BioNTech made 50 percent more profits on a nearly three times higher profit margin.

BioNTech’s 30 Billion Reasons Read Journal Article

essential and nonessential

What They Meant by Essential and Nonessential

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Think of totalitarian societies like in The Hunger Games, with a District One and everyone else, or perhaps the old Soviet Union in which the party elites dined in luxury and everyone else stood in bread lines, or perhaps a scene from Oliver! in which the owners of the orphanage got fat while the kids in the workhouse lived on gruel until they could escape to live in the underground economy. It appears that the pandemic planners think of society the same way.

What They Meant by Essential and Nonessential Read Journal Article

bud light

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class 

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The emergent fissures between the classes – and the diffusions of our ruling class into many sectors public and private – suggest an urgency for a new consciousness of the real meaning of the common good, which is inseparable from liberty. The marketing director of Bud Light talked a good line about “inclusivity” but she plotted to impose everything but that. Her plan was designed for the one percent and to the exclusion of all the people who actually consume the product, to say nothing for the workers who actually make and deliver the product she was charged with promoting.

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class  Read Journal Article

donald trump

The Buck Stops Where?

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The most outrageous breakout of statist excess in US history happened on Donald Trump’s watch with his full complicity. In turn, these Covid-lockdown assaults on normal economic function transformed what was a mediocre economic record during his first 38 months in office into a complete disaster during the last 10 months.

The Buck Stops Where? Read Journal Article

technology tyranny

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison 

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There is a lesson in this as far as the ineluctable need for action is concerned when rational argument with would-be oppressors gets one nowhere. This is especially the case when it becomes obvious that these oppressors are not remotely interested in a reasonable exchange of ideas, but summarily resort to the current unreasonable incarnation of technical rationality, namely AI-controlled mass surveillance, with the purpose of subjugating entire populations. 

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison  Read Journal Article

slow the spread

Three Years to Slow the Spread Marked the Advent of Push-Button Tyranny

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Covid hysteria and the three-year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach. While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Three Years to Slow the Spread Marked the Advent of Push-Button Tyranny Read Journal Article

administrative state

The Administrative State Strikes Again: Monetary Edition

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They have done it again, and in a way that makes a flaming mockery of both honest market economics and the so-called rule of law. In effect, the triumvirate of fools at the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC have essentially guaranteed $9 trillion of uninsured bank deposits with no legislative mandate and no capital to make these sweeping promises good.

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chickens

Why Are the Chickens So Sick?

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The parallels between HPAI expert orthodoxy and covid orthodoxy are too numerous to mention. Fear porn is rampant in our culture. The HPAI worry feeds food worry, which makes people clamor for government security. People will accept just about anything if they’re afraid. Does anyone really think human cleverness is going to beat migratory ducks? Really? Think it through and then embrace a more natural remedy: well-managed decentralized pastured poultry with appropriate flock sizes.

Why Are the Chickens So Sick? Read Journal Article

Occupy Silicon Valley

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley?

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Silvergate’s failure was not a scandal. SVB’s failure per se was not a scandal (except to the extent that our vaunted banking regulators failed to prevent the most prosaic type of failure). Again–the scandal is the politically tainted response that will have baleful consequences in the future, as the response virtually guarantees that there will be more SVBs in the future.

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley? Read Journal Article

doctor trust smoking vaccines

The AMA Said Trust Your Doctor on Smoking

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Doctors who opposed smoking faced ridicule from their colleagues.  Dr. Alton Ochsner, a renowned surgeon and sentinel voice warning of the dangers of tobacco, began publishing on the connection between smoking and lung cancer in the early 1940s.  His 1954 book Smoking and Cancer: A Doctor’s Report was negatively reviewed in prominent medical journals, characterized as a medieval model of logic that belongs in the nonscience section of a library.  Prior to his appearance on Meet the Press, Dr. Ochsner was told he could not discuss the relationship between smoking and lung cancer on air.

The AMA Said Trust Your Doctor on Smoking Read Journal Article