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John Tamny in RealClearMarkets: Joe Biden, the New York Times, ‘Dark’ Winters, and ‘Terrifying Surges’

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By John Tamny – Editor

November 11, 2020

“We have found that students are responding well to our voluntary, convenient, and free walk-up testing sites.” The latter is from a press release produced at Penn State University, and that was released this week to the New York Times. It seems Penn State, much like U.S. universities in all 50 states, has an aggressive coronavirus testing program as a way of keeping close track of the virus’s spread on campus.

Please think about the fact that testing for the coronavirus in what is the world’s richest country is increasingly very convenient, and free. Please think about it relative to March and April when tests weren’t anywhere close to this accessible. Not too long ago a quick coronavirus test in the United States cost a privileged subject $400 and above, but in November of 2020 it’s more and more the case that the tests can be had for nothing.

From there, let’s travel to Indonesia on the other side of the world. This country can claim 270 million citizens versus roughly 330 million in the United States. Where it gets interesting is that according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Indonesia has reported 11,000 deaths related to the coronavirus versus nearly 240,000 in the U.S.

At this point the Trump deranged will no doubt rant and rave about how “Trump did it,” that he has no empathy, and that his lack of it has resulted in many sadly quiet, unhappy homes around the U.S. Worse is that according to president-elect Joe Biden, what’s bad now is about to be really bad as the winter months force people inside only for the virus to be given new life. As Biden has put it, Americans face “a dark winter.”

Biden’s likely newspaper of choice, the New York Times, similarly engages in hyperbole. While it routinely reports that nearly half of all U.S. coronavirus deaths have been associated with nursing homes, it leads with splashy front-page headlines that give a rather different impression to readers. Or at least headline readers. The Tuesday, November 10 edition actually led with an alarmist header that included Biden. It read like this:

“BIDEN CALLS FOR UNITED FRONT AS VIRUS RAGES.”

So the virus “rages” if the front page is to be believed, but on A6 those who bothered to look beyond the headlines were able to find the nuance that is not allowed on the front page, and that Biden the politician perhaps understandably can’t employ. You see, on page A6 readers who bothered would have seen the above-referenced press release from Penn State. Think about it again.

In the United States, testing is increasingly convenient to get, plus it’s more and more free. Just a few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins reported that over 150 million coronavirus tests had been administered in the United States. One guesses that number is dated at this point. That it is, and that the New York Times reports daily about a “raging” coronavirus is arguably related. And it doesn’t take a doctor or statistician to understand this.

Stating what should be obvious, the coronavirus “rages” in the U.S. only insofar as Americans have the curiosity and means to be tested for it. If you test hundreds of millions of people you’re going to happen on lots of cases. And even all those U.S.-based tests likely don’t scratch the surface. As Jenkins pointed out after the Kamala Harris/Mike Pence debate, her lament that 7.5 million Americans had contracted the virus was probably off by something like 70 million.

Bringing this all back to Indonesia, it would be fascinating to witness the perpetually alarmed explain the low number of “coronavirus deaths” there. Are Indonesians genetically immune to infection from the virus, do they religiously wear N-95 masks while studiously avoiding touching their faces, do they have their own “genius” Dr. Fauci equivalent whose gameplan has been brilliantly embraced by President Joko Widodo, or is it possible that Indonesia has a low death count precisely because it has a low testing rate?

You see, according to the Journal, testing in Indonesia has been very rare. 8 per 1,000 inhabitants kind of rare. Keep in mind that Mexico can claim 13 tests per 1,000 and even the Philippines can point to roughly 30 per 1,000. Readers with a little bit of common sense probably get where this is going.

The more a country tests, the more infections that country will unearth. Doctors and other experts can decide for themselves whether relentless testing is good, bad, or not terribly relevant, but it presumably explains a lot when it comes to virus spread in the U.S. Rich country that we are, we test a lot which means we have a lot of cases. One guesses tests here will soar even more if the testing procedures ever move beyond the uncomfortable method used now. And as even more Americans get tested, more coronavirus infections will be discovered.

Which is exactly as the CDC predicted early on. As the ever-helpful Jenkins has reminded readers on occasion, the CDC’s website alerted visitors from the outset that eventually everyone would be infected. Routine testing in the U.S. presumably supports this contention.

This is a long or short way of asking readers to cast a skeptical eye on dire predictions of “a dark winter” ahead by politicians, along with nail-biting headlines about “terrifying surges.” Probably more than politicians and sub-editors want to admit, their predictions and headers are really just statements of a not so dark or terrifying obvious.

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Vice President at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). His next book, set for release in March of 2021, is titled When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason. Other books by John Tamny include They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers, The End of Work, about the exciting growth of jobs more and more of us love, Who Needs the Fed? and Popular Economics. He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com.  

View Original Article at RealClearMarkets.com

John Tamny in Forbes: They’ve Been Writing America’s Obituary Since Before It Was America

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By John Tamny – Contributor (Policy)

November 1, 2020

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. – Benjamin Franklin

“I was shocked by how little dissent was tolerated at Harvard. Anyone who disagreed with the new orthodoxy was automatically branded a racist or a sexist or a homophobe.” “The prevailing orthodoxy was that concepts like ‘truth’ and ‘beauty’ had no place in contemporary education.” Intimacy with female Harvard students meant “you had to seek the woman’s formal permission at every stage in the seduction process.” One professor “had to abandon teaching his class on the ‘Peopling of America’ after he was dubbed ‘racially insensitive.’” His error was to talk about America’s native “population as ‘Indians’ rather than ‘Native Americans.’”

Harvard University has really gone over the edge. It’s hard to imagine that this is what’s happening at what is realistically the U.S.’s most prestigious university, if not the world’s. Higher education is surely in trouble, which means the U.S. is.

Of course the punch line to this weak attempt at a good set-up is that the above recollections weren’t those of a 2019 grad; rather they’re a few tidbits picked up from Toby Young’s classic 2001 memoir, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. It seems Harvard was ahead of the political correctness pack as the 20th century closed until it’s understood that Young was writing about the Harvard he encountered in 1987. After graduating from Oxford, the essential Young (please bookmark his website Lockdown Sceptics) was given a Fulbright Award, which enabled him to spend a year at Harvard.

Up front, Young would likely admit that part of what makes him so interesting and entertaining is his use of playful exaggeration. We’re talking about someone talented enough to have worked at Vanity Fair in its heyday, but who wrote a memoir about all of all his blunders while there.

Looked at through the prism of his time at Harvard, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that Young cherry-picked the most egregious examples of political correctness. He might admit that the vast majority of students have grand ambitions for their lives after Harvard, many of them are financially motivated, which means most aren’t too politically active one way of the other. Young’s examples of PC-stupidity have a wow factor precisely because they’re kind of rare.

Still, for the purposes of this piece they’re a reminder that PC ridiculousness is hardly an early 21st century concept. It’s as old as higher education is. As I point out in my 2019 book They’re Both Wrong, William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale in 1951. The great British novelist David Lodge published Changing Places, a classic novel about PC-nonsense at Euphoria State (Cal-Berkeley) in 1975. Stanford English professor John L’Heureux published The Handmaid of Desire about the PC-craze at The University (yes, Stanford) in 1996.

All of this requires mention simply because self-serious academics and pundits continue to warn us in grave tones that “this time is different” on college campuses. If the alarmists are to be believed, they’ve expertly uncovered a certain sign of the decline of America as we know it. In truth, they’re revealing how blind they are to history.

The latest academic to sound the alarm is Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Michta alerted readers to the sad truth that “The American Experiment Is on Life Support.” According to the dean, America’s decline is to a high degree a consequence of “five decades of neo-Marxist indoctrination in American schools, colleges and universities.” Michta goes on to write that “The left’s ‘long march’ through the institutions is all but complete. Extreme intolerance has now replaced the liberal notion of negotiated compromise that is the sine qua non of democracy.”

Michta laments that “America’s young, especially those raised in middle-class or affluent homes, have been so brainwashed that they no longer notice how absurd it is to call for the eradication of their own nation-state, and to do so in the lingo of Iran’s mullahs.” If Michta is to be believed, their “ignorance of history is the hallmark of the current crisis.”

America in crisis. Because of young people. Where have we heard this before? The view here is that Michta is overreacting, as pessimists about the U.S. always have.

For one, what’s his basis for making a blanket statement about “America’s young”? Is there a sample size he can point to, or is he, like others have always done, cherry-picking the most shocking examples? If so, let’s please keep in mind that wondrous as country prosperity is, it frees people to be stupid in ways that they can’t where mere survival on a daily basis is less than certain. Hard as it may be for some to grasp, raging stupidity can be a contrarian, and very bullish, indicator.

Investment flows support the above assertion. While Michta would give the impression of “America’s young” as this massive blob of thumb-suckers unable and unwilling to contemplate what doesn’t feel or sound right, investors around the world continue to aggressively invest copious amounts of capital in the U.S. Can Michta be right and markets wrong?

Speaking of, assuming “America’s young” were arriving on campus in normal form only to be “brainwashed” as Michta moans, wouldn’t markets correct here too? Would middle class and affluent parents continue to spend gargantuan amounts to have their offspring ruined? And why do America’s businesses, you know the most valuable ones in the world, continue to hire what Michta deems “absurd” creations of “neo-Marxist indoctrination”? Really, does Michta know something that the most successful businesses in the world don’t?

Probably not. Not only does he base his overdone pessimism on provocative anecdote, his anecdote is only original insofar as he himself suffers the very “ignorance of history” that he decries in America’s youth. Needless to say, people like Michta have existed as long as America has existed, and realistically before. They’ve never been right.

I’m the editor of RealClearMarkets, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading. I’m also the author of five books. The next is When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason (Post Hill Press). Others are They’re Both Wrong (AIER, 2019), The End of Work (Regnery, 2018), , Who Needs the Fed? (Encounter, 2016) and Popular Economics (Regnery, 2015).

View Original Article on Forbes Website

John Tamny in RealClearMarkets: Wouldn’t Republicans Be Ill If Masks Were Effective?

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By John Tamny – Editor

October 22, 2020

Here’s a revelation that it’s probably redundant to refer to as a revelation: nearly every Republican and libertarian-leaning person I know doesn’t wear a mask. No doubt they wear them where they’re required, most notably inside businesses, but generally the masks come off in places they’re not required; outside in particular.   

What about at home? Forget about it. As for indoors with friends, most often not. Sometimes jokes are made about them.

About this, it should be made clear that death and sickness are not jokes to any of the people I know. Particularly during the early days of March, most of the people I know were quite a bit more cautious. This was a known that the New York Times reported: in those red, allegedly science denying states that were the last to impose hideous and needless lockdowns, citizens were taking greater care on their own. Among the Republicans and libertarians whom I know, the notion of laws or forced lockdowns bring and brought new meaning to superfluous. If illness or death threatens, who would need to be told to be careful?

To repeat, no one I know laughs at illness or death. On the other hand, the Republicans and libertarians I know tend to think masks not terribly effective at deterring illness. As for death, the New York Times in particular has been a rather excellent source of information about the virus. Though the Times routinely runs headlines that would give the impression that there’s Covid blood on every American street, a read of the stories with alarmist headlines has routinely revealed a sad, but less tragic truth within: nearly half of all U.S. deaths related to the virus have been associated with nursing homes. From this, many Republicans and libertarian leans in my world have had a tendency to conclude that a high percentage of Covid deaths in the U.S. were associated with already ill people who were also very old. Which is why the same Republicans have a greater tendency to wear masks around the old and ill. Again, people don’t need a law to be more respectful about and around those who are both elderly and sick.

As for those who are just old, my parents fall into the late seventies category. So do their friends in Pasadena, CA. Though they abide business rules, they don’t wear masks while socializing with one another. Nor do they require their offspring to wear masks around them. While their age has them increasingly aware of their mortality, they don’t view the virus as a major threat. They continue to live as they used to, before politicians decided we couldn’t be trusted to look after ourselves free of force.

Realistically, all that’s been written so far is redundant. The mask-reverent already know all-too-many Republicans don’t share their alarmism. Just turn on MSNBC for confirmation of this truth, or sign up for a neighbhorhood list serve. Those who don’t wear masks are pilloried by the expert reverent. It’s purely anecdotal, but I’ve been accosted in an outdoor parking lot by a “Karen” for not wearing a mask. Once, while in an elevator, the door opened to a “Ken.” In the company of others I don’t know, I always wear masks, But I was alone in this case. That I was didn’t keep “Ken” from telling me to “Wear a mask, Dude.” Oh well, add up enough anecdotes and you have statistic. My experiences with the self-righteous are hardly unique. They’re on a mission to get everyone to mask up.

Except that it’s not happening. Call if defiance, call it reverence for research that doesn’t view masks as protectors (really, it’s not “science” without doubt), or call it political, but the Republicans and libertarians in my world increasingly dismiss masks in haughty fashion. And in truth, they’ve dismissed them for months.

The above is important simply because reality has a way of intruding on stridency. Or hubris. About anything. And it changes behavior. If our behavior causes us harm, we tend to change the behavior. I don’t know anyone who is Republican or libertarian who doesn’t aggressively avoid what could make him or her sick. Colds, fevers and flus are awful. We try to avoid all three, but at the same time we once again dismiss masks.

Which raises an obvious question: have Republicans been abnormally sick the last four to five months, or seven? They should be, or should have been assuming masks were a powerful barrier to the virus. Statistics reveal the opposite. Figure that the states with the most cases and deaths have largely been Democratic leaning. But correlation isn’t always causation, not to mention that it could be science and mask-denying Republicans in those blue states taking up the most hospital beds.

The main thing is that if Republicans who despise masks were getting sick in dominant fashion, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that they would be morphing into GOP Karens and Kens due to illness that was a consequence of mask denial. If not Karen or Ken, it’s easy to at least say that a surge in virus infections among Republicans would increase mask usage among them. Except that there’s no evidence supporting a GOP or libertarian coronavirus lean, nor is there evidence that they’re wearing masks with greater frequency.

So what of the Democrats who are more reverent of masks and the experts telling them to don them? Are they notably healthy relative to Republicans, or do the masks not make much of a difference? Do they just enjoy being told what to do?

Or maybe it’s just political. Maybe Democrats are equally cynical about masks; aggressive about wearing them in public, but Nancy Pelosi, Chris Cuomo, and Barbara Feinstein-like in private. If so, shame on them. Hundreds of millions around the world are racing toward starvation based on parts of the U.S. locking down due to the coronavirus. No compassionate person would continue this public, and very hysterical charade if privately doubtful.

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Vice President at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). His new book is titled They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers. Other books by Tamny include The End of Work, about the exciting growth of jobs more and more of us love, Who Needs the Fed? and Popular Economics. He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com.  

View Original Article at RealClearMarkets Website

FreedomWorks Foundation Center for Economic Freedom Responds to CBO Report on Impact of Shutdown

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — In response to the CBO’s recent report that the partial federal government shutdown cost the U.S. economy $3 billion, John Tamny, Director of the FreedomWorks Foundation’s Center for Economic Freedom, commented:

“To say that the economy has suffered as a result of the partial shutdown is not a serious presumption. Those who think the partial shutdown weighed on growth are losing sight of one key fact– the federal government has no resources.

“Governments can only spend insofar as they can access wealth already produced in the private sector. In short, the growth already happened. To believe that the shutdown actually slowed the economy down is to embrace the sort of double-counting that would make even the most crooked of accountants blush.”

Dear Shutdown Alarmists, the Economic Growth Already Happened

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Originally Published in Real Clear Markets by Adam Brandon and John Tamny on 1/17/19.

According to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the federal government spent $3.9 trillion in 2017. In Argentina, total federal spending in 2017 was $161 billion.

The above statistical disparity rates mention in consideration of all the hand wringing related to the partial federal government shutdown in the U.S. Supposedly an elongated one would slam the brakes on the U.S. economic expansion. No less than J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon observed this week that a prolonged shuttering of one quarter of the federal government could “reduce growth to zero.”

Dimon would be wise to relax. So would others convinced that government spending is a substantial driver of U.S. economic vitality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Implicit in what’s wholly false is that Argentina’s economy is a fraction of the U.S.’s simply because its politicians are quite a bit more parsimonious than are the members of Congress. Such a view isn’t serious, but it’s a reminder of just how much statistics can obscure reality.

Simply put, Argentina’s federal spending is a fraction of U.S. federal spending precisely because its economic output is a fraction of what takes place stateside. Just the same, federal spending in the U.S. dwarfs that of other countries precisely because the U.S. economy is quite a bit larger than other country economies.

Governments only have money to spend insofar as the private sector in countries produces wealth for them to spend. Congress was able to spend $4.1 trillion (according to CBO data) in 2018 because American output is many multiples of $4.1 trillion.

Governments can’t stimulate economic growth with spending; rather their spending is only possible because of economic growth. Applied to the partial shutdown of the federal government, what limits government spending logically cannot limit economic growth. Figure that if there were a permanent cessation of a quarter of federal activity, the result would be trillions worth of extra resources for private actors to put to work.

Readers might think about the above for a moment. When our federal government spends, it means that Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are playing a substantial role in the allocation of trillions worth of wealth first created in the private sector. On the other hand, when fewer dollars flow to Washington it happily means that people like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Travis Kalanick have more in the way of resources to experiment with. Yet defenders of the big government status quo persist.

In a client report written last week, Regions Bank chief economist Richard Moody lamented that the partial shutdown would disrupt the “flow of economic data” at a “most inopportune time given increased uncertainty about over the course of the U.S. economy.” Moody unwittingly makes the case the case for a more permanent shutdown.

Lest he forget, arguably the most scrutinized of all economic statistics produced by the federal government is the one that measures the rate of unemployment in the U.S. Yet too often unsaid here is how totally unnecessary the report is. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employs 2,500 people at a cost of $640 million annually to produce its monthly unemployment report. Each month, meanwhile, the private company ADP releases a report two days ahead of the BLS’s that nearly mimics the BLS’s, all at no expense to the taxpayer. There is a market demand for reliable employment data, and the market is providing it. What works for unemployment can logically work for any other statistic that economists claim to be necessary for them to do their jobs. If it’s necessary, private actors can do it without burdening every American with the cost.

The point of all this is that true believers in limited government would be wise to not let this partial government shutdown go to waste. Instead, proponents of a shrunken federal footprint should seriously address whether or not many people in a country populated by over 300 million have actually noticed a difference in their lives in the past few weeks.

Indeed, arguably the most vivid lesson of the shutdown is being overlooked. 800,000 furloughed federal employees, and what, exactly, is the noticeable harm? The media trumpet the federal employees’ missed paychecks and niche difficulties faced by the citizenry (economists and financial types lacking economic data, for instance), but what goes unreported is that for 95% of the population, life goes on essentially unaffected in any material way. What better evidence that our government spending is mostly waste and make-work?

So while alarmists will continue to promote false notions about the “lost” economic growth that will result from the political class wasting fewer dollars, reality will continue to intrude on what’s not serious as most get on with their lives properly indifferent to what at least temporarily limits the activities of ¼ of our federal behemoth.

Which brings up a challenge that is also an opportunity. What hasn’t affected voters after three weeks will similarly not affect them after three years. If Republicans really want to prove how unnecessary our $4 trillion federal government is, keep it shut down through the 2021. The economy will boom in the interim thanks to a shrunken federal burden, and a long-term point will have been made about the good of shrinking Leviathan to all of our betterment.

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