Economics ⋆ Page 5 of 18 ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed by Lockdowns

Jeffrey A. Tucker / June 5, 2023 / Economics, History, Policy, Society / 14 minute read

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If you haven’t changed your thinking over the last three years, you are a prophet, indifferent, or asleep. Much has been revealed and much has changed. To meet these challenges, we must do so with our eyes wide open. The greatest threats to human liberty today are not the ones of the past and they elude easy ideological categorization. Further, we have to admit that in many ways the plain human desire to live a fulfilling life in freedom has been subverted. If we want our freedoms back, we need to have a full understanding of the frightening challenges before us.

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How the Medical Industry Burned Its Trust Capital

Robert Blumen / June 4, 2023 / Economics / 9 minute read

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Reputation and trust is a bit like capital. The opinions that peers and customers have about a person, institution or business is earned over a long time through honesty, reliability. Consistent virtuous action is a form of investment.

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The Economics of Lockdown Panics

Robert Blumen / June 1, 2023 / Economics / 10 minute read

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Economics alone cannot tell us if any cost is too much to “save one life.” But economic thinking can help us understand that preserving human life entails bearing costs. It requires resources and people with skills. We must provide ourselves with the means to bear those costs if we wish to continue to have the ability to preserve human life in the future.

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How Lockdowns Bolstered an Industrial Cartel

Jeffrey A. Tucker / May 27, 2023 / Economics / 7 minute read

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The introduction of digital commerce in the late 20th century threatened a new age of commercial freedom that came to a screeching halt with the lockdowns of 2020. In this sense, lockdowns were not “progressive” at all but profoundly conservative in the old-fashioned sense of the term. It was an establishment fighting to preserve and entrench its power. Perhaps that was the whole point all along.

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The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job

James Bovard / May 26, 2023 / Economics / 8 minute read

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During the Covid debacle, kids were locked out of school or otherwise condemned to an inferior Zoom education for up to two years. What were the alternatives? Unfortunately, since the New Deal, the federal government has severely restricted teenagers’ opportunities for gainful employment. But new evidence proves that keeping kids out of work doesn’t keep them out of mental health trouble.

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Why Economic Cost Was So Seriously Neglected

Per Bylund / May 24, 2023 / Economics / 5 minute read

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Economic illiteracy is an important part of the explanation of why there was such broad acceptance of the pandemic policies. And also why there was very limited skepticism among common people. Had they understood economic reasoning, they would have been inoculated (if you excuse the pun) against being deceived by experts. They would have been able to see through the promises and would have asked the necessary questions.

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The Battle Against Inflation Is Nowhere Near Won

David Stockman / May 19, 2023 / Economics / 8 minute read

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In a word, American fiscal governance is broken and broken badly. Owing to the Fed’s massive monetization of the public debt over last several years Washington has lost all sense of the economic costs and consequences of massive borrowing. And that’s because there has been no “crowding out” and no spiraling interest rate signals from the bond pits of the type which historically kept Washington pols close to the fiscal straight and narrow.

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BioNTech’s 30 Billion Reasons

Robert Kogon / May 3, 2023 / Economics / 4 minute read

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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.

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What They Meant by Essential and Nonessential

Jeffrey A. Tucker / April 17, 2023 / Economics, History, Society / 6 minute read

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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.

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What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class

Jeffrey A. Tucker / April 13, 2023 / Economics / 8 minute read

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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.

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The Buck Stops Where?

David Stockman / March 30, 2023 / Economics / 16 minute read

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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.

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Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison

Bert Olivier / March 27, 2023 / Economics, Philosophy, Technology / 12 minute read

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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.

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