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Our policy on fights between the US and China, until now, has been to avoid them, regardless of the merits. On the coronavirus, both are badly at fault, arguably the US more so. And there’s no obvious reason why Australia has any special interest in working out who is to blame. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Arnold Kling writes (my bold): Yesterday’s post on lockdown socialism was unusual for me, in that it was not aimed at persuading someone who might disagree. Let me approach the topic by trying to make the best case for the other side. If I were a lockdown socialist, I would argue as follows. We want people to engage in less economic activity, because we believe that will save lives. [details omitted] Because we want everyone to comply with lockdowns, we...

from Dean Baker Last week the Boston Review (BR) published an exchange on a wealth tax that included a proposal from Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, with a number of responses, including one from me. I was critical of the proposal for both political reasons and because I think avoidance and evasion will be massive problems. On the political side, in addition to the difficulty of getting a wealth tax through Congress, there is the virtual certainty that the current...

Arnold Kling has a recent post up on “Lockdown Socialism”: I’ve seen headlines about polls showing that people are afraid of restrictions being lifted too soon. To me, it sounds as if they prefer what I call Lockdown Socialism. Under Lockdown Socialism: –you can stay in your residence, but paying rent or paying your mortgage is optional. –you can obtain groceries and shop on line, but having a job is optional. –other people work at farms, factories, and...

How can deployment of a Sars Cov2 vaccine be speeded up ? One important step is to make a lot of candidate vaccines while testing for effectiveness. Usually, there is testing, approval than producing. Since producing a lot then testing makes no business sense, it is a project for states or charities. Unsurprisingly the Gates foundation is on it committing to mass produce 6 candidate vaccines. A remaining problem is that proof of effectiveness takes a...

from Maria Alejandra Madi The fundamental structural flaws in the global economy have not been addressed after the 2008 global crisis.  Monopoly-finance capital became increasingly dependent on bubbles that, both in credit and capital markets, proved to be globally the sources of endogenous financial fragility. This process was reinforced, in a vicious circle, by a concentration of income, wealth and power. By negatively influencing labour and working conditions, it became increasingly...

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 29: actual good news on testing,deaths  Here is the update through yesterday (April 28). This is somewhat abbreviated since I want to post about a couple of other items. As usual, new items of significance are in italics. Yesterday was the 3rd day in a row of not just significantly increased testing, but actual lower number of infections found by that testing – a very good sign. The 7 day average of deaths also...

Most of us are six weeks or so into some kind of lockdown by now, so it would be interesting to read some comments on our experiences. From the discussions I’ve had (almost entirely online rather than in person) my perception is that people with office jobs and no kids at home are finding it much easier than might have been expected, but that those with kids at home are finding it every bit as hard as you would think. So far, the impact on those who have lost jobs (or work like...

Unequal Effects        The Aftermath         Averting Catastrophe from Jayati Ghosh There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence. But some things are already certain: we know that the economic impact of this pandemic is already immense, dwarfing anything that we have experienced in living memory. The current...