Sunday November 15 will mark the 188th anniversary of the death of Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), author of the Traité d’économie politique, whose first edition appeared in 1803. The 4th edition (1819) was translated in English and published as A Treatise on Political Economy (1821). I recently directed a Liberty Fund conference of this great economist, mainly known as the discoverer of Say’s Law (supply creates its own demand), against which John Maynard Keynes more or less conceived his 1936 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Among his many ideas that preceded today’s economics by one or two centuries, Say explained that the middlemen between the producer and the final consumer play an efficient role by moving goods to where the consumer can purchase them. The middlemen create value too. Say also developed an idea that many of our contemporaries—think of the defenders of “price-gouging” laws—still do not grasp. He explained how the speculators and hoarders benefit the consumer: There is a further branch of commerce, called the trade of speculation, which consists in the purchase of goods at one time, to be re-sold in the same place and condition at another time, when they are expected to be dearer. Even this trade is productive; its utility consists in the employment of capital, warehouses, care in the preservation, in short, human industry in the withdrawing from circulation a commodity depressed in value by temporary superabundance, and thereby reduced in price below the charges of production, so as to discourage its production, with the design and purpose of restoring it to circulation when it shall become more scarce, and when its price shall be raised above the natural price, the charges of production, so as to throw a loss upon the consumers. The evident operation of this kind of trade is to transport commodities in respect of time, instead of locality. The last sentence is the crux of the matter. Let me also quote these lines in their original French, as they appeared in the 6th edition of the Treatise, the last one in Say’s lifetime. The text is much clearer than the previous translation: Il y a un commerce qu’on appelle de spéculation, et qui consiste à acheter des marchandises dans un temps pour les revendre au même lieu et intactes, à une époque où l’on suppose qu’elles se vendront plus cher. Ce commerce lui-même est productif ; son utilité consiste à employer des capitaux, des magasins, des soins de conservation, une industrie enfin, pour retirer de la circulation une marchandise lorsque sa surabondance l’avilirait, en ferait tomber le prix au-dessous de ses frais de production, et découragerait par conséquent sa production, pour la revendre lorsqu’elle deviendra trop rare, et que, son prix étant porté au-dessus de son taux naturel des frais de production, elle causerait de la perte à ses consommateurs. Ce commerce tend, comme on voit à transporter, pour ainsi dire, la marchandise d’un temps à un autre, au lieu de la transporter, d’un endroit dans un autre. The formulation could perhaps have been more general—for the same speculation happens when, say, facemasks are not produced under their cost of production but the speculator foresees that their demand will jump over the current quantity supplied. But remember that Say wrote in the early 19th century, just a quarter of a century after Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, at a time when the first conceptualization of this sort of economic problems was attempted. In fact, such issues are so difficult to understand that many among our intelligent contemporaries still don’t. On Sunday, raise your glass to Say. Yet, a historical mystery remains. Why was classical liberalism, which was then on its rise, so rapidly restrained by reactionary opinions? Is the classical-liberal or libertarian ideal a mirage? Jean-Baptiste Say foresaw an explanation: To speak the truth, it is because the first principles of political economy are as yet but little known; because ingenious systems and reasonings have been built upon hollow foundations, and taken advantage of, on the one hand, by interested rulers, who employ prohibition as a weapon of offence or as an instrument of revenue; and, on the other, by the personal avarice of merchants and manufacturers, who have a private interest in exclusive measures, and take but little pains to inquire, whether their profits arise from actual production, or from a simultaneous loss thrown upon other classes of the community. A good explanation, no doubt, and which was much improved by the public-choice school of economics that developed a century or more after the Treatise. But is it sufficient? (0 COMMENTS)

President Trump is such an unusual politician that people (myself included) have trouble seeing him clearly. For instance, Trump is often seen as an opponent of lockdowns. But while he did often speak out against lockdowns during the waning days of the campaign, he actually supported them during the period they were most restrictive.  Here’s a NYT headline from April 22: Trump Criticizes Georgia Governor for Decision to Reopen State “I think it’s too soon,” said the president, who joined several mayors in questioning Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who had said some businesses could resume on Friday. And here’s a tweet from April 30: And it’s not just lockdowns.  I could easily dredge up Trump quotes for and against masks, for and against testing, or for and against any of a number of other policies. Trump needed substantial votes from two groups that had very different views on Covid-19.  One group, mostly made up of his “base”, included small businesses worried about the economic effects of lockdowns, libertarians opposed to mask mandates, and Hispanic workers who lost jobs due to lockdowns.  Another group included moderate Republicans in the suburbs with professional jobs, who were economically insulated from the crisis but worried about the effects on their health. It seems to me that early on he sensed that there was a risk of going too far “right” on the issue, losing those swing suburban voters.  Later in the year, it became clear that the problem wasn’t going away and indeed was picking up again.  At that time, he decided to go down the final stretch by appealing to his base with an anti-lockdown message. I’m not sure that Trump had any good options politically (once the epidemic was out of control), although it’s intriguing to speculate as to what would have happened if he had followed me in questioning the experts (skeptical) view on masks back in early March.  The actual issue in which Trump questioned the experts (chloroquine) didn’t seem to pan out for him in the end, but by late April, experts throughout the world had basically decided that masks were indeed the way to go.  It might have been a big political win for Trump if he’d been ahead of the experts.  In addition, masks are a more attractive solution for small businesses than lockdowns.  In conservative Mission Viejo, almost everyone wears mask when in stores.  In contrast, very few people in North Dakota wore masks, and now they are paying the price. When politicians encourage people to voluntarily wear masks, they are actually promoting liberty.  That’s because the more people that wear masks, the less political pressure there will be for lockdowns. (0 COMMENTS)

Don’t mess with taxes   According to The Dallas Morning News, [Texas governor Greg] Abbott’s office has been talking with Nasdaq and other exchanges about moving their data centers to Dallas because of a potential tax on financial transactions in New Jersey. The proposed tax would charge a quarter of a cent per “financial transaction” at entities in New Jersey that process at least 10,000 transactions annually via electronic infrastructure, the Dallas Morning News reported. That tax would generate an estimated $10 billion annually for the state. Most major stock exchange operators, including the New York Stock Exchange operate their trading platforms from data centers in New Jersey. This is from “Wall Street moving to big D? Nasdaq, other stock exchanges consider relocating to Texas,” ksat.com, November 10, 2020. One of the dumbest things to tax, whether your goal is raising revenue or minimizing deadweight loss, is goods or services whose elasticity of supply or demand is high. The reason is that in response to those taxes, the equilibrium amount that’s left to be taxed falls substantially. The Tobin tax, named after Yale University economist and Nobel Prize winner James Tobin, is a small tax on conversions of one currency into another. But since his proposal in 1972 in, coincidentally, New Jersey, others have extended the idea to taxing transactions in the stock market. The New Jersey tax above is not literally a Tobin tax but is a tax on transactions in the stock market. One of the easiest things to do, when your service is sold electronically, is to move to a place where you can still do it electronically but where it is untaxed. Thus Texas. (0 COMMENTS)

During the Euromaidan protests, journalists routinely described Ukraine’s prosecution and imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko as “politically motivated.”  The phrasing always struck me as odd.  If she were innocent, you’d expect journalists to call the charges “trumped-up” or “false.”  And this “politically motivated” meme is still going strong.*  Which raises a general question: When people dismiss charges as “politically motivated,” what do they actually mean? As far as I can tell, the “politically motivated” label means: “Yeah, the accusations are probably true.  But so what?  Either (a) the laws are stupid, or (b) they’re so broad that practically everyone is guilty, or (c) practically everyone in power is just as bad or worse than the accused.” Now notice: If true, all three of these claims are far more noteworthy than any specific set of accusations.  Imagine these headlines on the front page of the Wall Street Journal: “Ukraine Has Tons of Stupid Laws” “Ukraine’s Draconian Laws Turn Practically Everyone into a Criminal” “Ukraine’s Leaders Are a Pack of Crooks” Most journalists would no doubt be horrified to see these ugly generalizations published as news.  But when you casually dismiss accusations as “politically motivated,” you’re implicitly doing precisely that.  The only difference: When you openly declare, “Ukraine has tons of stupid laws,” you’re expected to provide evidence and arguments.  You’re expected to look for counter-evidence.  And you’re expected to choose between similar yet conflicting versions of your story. The upshot: It is the status quo that should horrify journalists, not my hypothetical.  Journalists already present ugly generalizations as fact.  But instead of sticking their necks out and responsibly defending these generalizations, they do so via vague innuendo and imprecise insinuation. * According to Google’s Ngram, the “politically motivated” meme has sharply declined since its peak in 1998, but remains at historically very high levels. (0 COMMENTS)

Family life has long frustrated economists who struggle to measure the various utility functions involved in spending 18 or more years of one’s life changing diapers, listening to screaming fights, spending money on food and daycare and diapers and summer camps, and cleaning up vomit on road trips.   A new paper by Ariel Karlinsky and Michael Sarel published in the Israel Economic Review helps clarify the picture of how much kids cost in immediate monetary terms, which is a helpful thing to know. Traditional approaches have focused on comparing household income with household expenditures between households with and without children. The authors note that this very narrow monetary analysis doesn’t tell us much about anything. It ignores the question of living standards, the fact that people’s preferences and spending habits change dramatically after they have children, and the fact that children of different ages cost significantly different amounts of money (and time). Karlinsky and Sarel refine the traditional model through measures of standard of living (based on the proportion of income spent on shared household products), total household expenditure, and age and number of children. While this kind of analysis doesn’t — by design — have anything to say about broader economic sacrifices families make in order to raise children, it does clarify questions that may be helpful to policy makers or to judges in deciding child support payments, as the authors note. The authors also created a fun and useful calculator for estimating the costs of raising children at various income levels, ages, and numbers of children that you can play with here.    But even with the improvements they make to traditional methodologies, the study and its intentional limitations highlight how hard it is to study whether kids are worth it. They also emphasise that the kinds of economic and other sacrifices we make for our kids may be unmeasurable with any tools we have.    How and In What Ways Kids are Worth It There seem to be three ways (at least) of thinking about the costs and benefits of parenting. The narrow version, which Karlinksy and Sarel refine in their paper, focuses on the upfront monetary costs involved in having children. Whatever the various cost estimates and models, this is relatively straightforward (which is not to say simple).   Where things get more complicated though, is the second level of analysis, the one that policymakers really want, particularly for areas like gender equality and welfare policies. Areas the study does not cover, largely because these questions remain too complex, are questions of opportunity costs involved in raising children in terms of lost income, particularly for women.    As the authors note, we don’t have accurate data on how parenting affects male work habits, particularly over lifespan, but there’s a fair amount of research that demonstrates that women take an economic hit, not only in the direct costs of childrearing, but also in lost income over lifespan. In the COVID-19 era, more and more women are struggling under the combined burdens of working or searching for work while managing children’s schoolwork at home and also contributing to the usual burden of housework and food preparation. This takes a toll on women’s earnings and mental health. A recent U.S. report finds that over 800,000 women left the workforce between August and September alone, representing a full 80% of the workers who left. The timing of this mass exodus – just before a brutal school year with large numbers of children learning at home – is hardly accidental.   Questions of equity are also lost in these more narrow analyses. Karlinsky and Sarel, for example, use the standard adult two parent household as their baseline, which makes sense in a narrow material analysis like this one, but that decision makes it difficult to estimate the lifetime costs of having children for a lot of parents (more so in the United States, where a quarter of children live in single-adult homes), since single parent households face burdens dual parent households do not, and mothers face economic burdens that fathers do not, which are compounded if couples divorce. Even with the addition of child support (whose ad hoc character in Israel is one reason the authors leave single parent families out of their model), single parents face lost income due to childcare limitations, unshared direct costs like mortgages and childcare, or lost time shuttling children around or supervising housework. Dual parent households either do not face these issues, or they absorb them more easily because they have twice the manpower.   Similarly, the narrow expenditure model may obscure patterns in how the costs of child-rearing are distributed. Breastfeeding, for example, is cheaper in direct costs than formula, but in fact has an array of indirect costs that are hard to measure. Working mothers must have time to pump (or we must take into account a mother’s lost wages if she chooses to stay home). For low income women, particularly hourly wage earners or those who work in physical jobs where pumping may be extremely difficult, formula may be “cheaper” than breastfeeding on a variety of measures. But because these are indirect costs, the cash outlay for an infant may be higher for lower income wage earners who use formula than it is for higher income salaried workers who can more easily breastfeed, a disparity that only becomes apparent once we dig past the average expenditures and start measuring indirect costs. And in the U.S. women below a certain income level qualify for WIC, which covers formula, so one would have to take welfare benefits into consideration too. There may in fact be a group of lower middle class parents who pay proportionally more than either the very poor or the upper middle class, simply because they are more likely to be single parents, face greater indirect costs of parenting, do not benefit from economies of scale, and face greater opportunity costs. But this same group also does not qualify for government aid. Karlinksky and Sarel’s model does suggest, unsurprisingly, that the poor pay proportionally more to raise children than the wealthy do.   This broader analysis wasn’t the goal of the paper, so none of this is a criticism of the authors, but merely a reflection that what we think we know about families in the aggregate is much more complicated when we look at individual families and how income, family structure, education, and support networks affect the cost of raising children, both in economic and in more subjective terms.    Finally, there’s a much deeper question that the authors allude to when they argue that prospective parents might use their cost estimator to determine whether or not to have children. I’m not sure most parents think about parenting the way economists do. The question most parents ask is not “How much do kids cost?” but “Do kids make us happier? Are we better people for having children? Do the economic sacrifices we make balance out against the immeasurable joy and anxiety and grief that parenting entails?” These are not questions for economists, but one that most of the parents I know think (usually) has a relatively easy answer. I suspect this is one area where economics will continue to be trumped by a much more complicated and unquantifiable set of values. And that’s okay.       Lauren Hall is associate professor of political science at Rochester Institute of Technology.  She is the author of The Medicalization of Birth and Death (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and Family and the Politics of Moderation (Baylor University Press, 2014) as well as  the co-editor of a volume on the political philosophy of French political thinker Chantal Delsol. (0 COMMENTS)

In 1960, San Mateo County voted for Nixon over Kennedy. On Tuesday, this highly affluent suburban county near Silicon Valley voted 4 to 1 for Biden. In 1960, West Virginia voted for Kennedy. This time around it went 68% to 30% for Trump. These two areas were “canaries in the coal mine” that is, early indicators of broader national trends. The affluent, highly educated and socially liberal people of Silicon Valley moved sharply to the Democrats in the 1980s, while West Virginia moved sharply to the GOP in the early 2000s. Other similar areas have been following along more recently. If you try to analyze America politics with 20th century conceptual frameworks you’ll be hopelessly confused. Why do blue collar areas vote for an anti-union party, while affluent areas vote for a party promising to raise taxes on the rich? Some people argue that the GOP now appeals to uneducated voters, but that’s way too simple. People who run 2000-acre farms producing corn and soybeans are highly skilled. So are petroleum engineers. You need to be highly skilled to run a large Ford dealership. I wouldn’t be very good at any of those jobs. And all three job categories are very likely to vote Republican. Industries where people work with “things” are much more Republican than industries where people work with ideas. We’ve seen politics change dramatically over my lifetime, with the South going from Democrat to Republican and places like California and New Jersey moving in the opposite direction. Expect further such changes in the future. Southern states with big “post-industrial” cities like Atlanta, Austin and Charlotte will gradually become more blue, while declining Midwestern Rust Belt states will continue to trend red. As recently as 1988, Iowa was one of the two or three bluest states in the country—that’s how fast things can change. Illinois and Ohio used to be similar Midwestern “swing states.” Now Illinois is very blue because Chicago has become a post-industrial city, an “idea city”, not the old “city of broad shoulders” that Carl Sandberg wrote about. In contrast, most Ohio cities (except Columbus) have not been able to successfully re-invent themselves, and thus Ohio has become quite red. In the recent election, we’ve also seen Hispanics shift somewhat toward the Republicans, and even black voters have moved modestly in that direction (albeit still overwhelming Democratic.) This Hispanic shift may be important for the future, given America’s large and growing Hispanic population, the high rate of intermarriage with other groups, and the tendency of many Hispanics to work in the same sort of industries as non-college white voters. A situation where low-skilled whites vote Republican and low-skilled Hispanics vote Democratic is not stable in the long run. Think of the earlier migration of working class Catholics from the Democratic to the Republican Party. The only constant in American politics is continual change. (0 COMMENTS)

This fall, LIFE magazine has published a special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the movie M*A*S*H. Despite the hook, the issue focuses on the ensuing TV series, which ran from 1972 to 1983. Though the show has often been characterized as being politically left-wing, it actually is heavily classically liberal, celebrating the individual, civil liberties, and the market, and harshly criticizing anti-individualism, government compulsion, and government decision-making. In a series of essays, I examine the classical liberalism of M*A*S*H. This is Part 4. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.   When M*A*S*H debuted, the U.S. armed forces still used conscription to fill out its ranks. The peacetime draft began in 1948, following the expiration of World War II conscription, and included a special “doctor’s draft” for medical personnel. Selective service was vital to staffing up the U.S. military for both the Korean and Vietnam wars and was particularly despised by Vietnam protesters. Partway through M*A*S*H’s first season, the Pentagon announced that it would shift to an all-volunteer force, with the last inductions occurring before the TV season ended. Among government institutions, conscription is one of the most disturbing. People of a particular demographic group — young men — are taken from their private lives and forced to work and live under strict government direction, at great risk to life and limb. The draft is regularly derided on M*A*S*H; as Hawkeye explains about his draft board in “Yankee Doodle Doctor” (s. 1), “When they came for me, I was hiding, trying to puncture my eardrum with an ice pick.” No element of the show better represents opposition to the draft than the character Klinger. The show’s first seven seasons depict his many schemes to get discharged from the Army: trying to hang-glide out of Korea (“The Trial of Henry Blake,” s. 2), preparing to raft across the Pacific to California (“Dear Peggy,” s. 4), threatening to immolate himself (“The Most Unforgettable Characters,” s. 5), attempting to eat a jeep (“38 Across,” s. 5), pretending to believe he’s back home in Toledo (“The Young and the Restless,” s. 7). In “Mail Call” (s. 2), he claims his father is near death, hoping for a hardship discharge. Blake then flips through Klinger’s file: BLAKE Father dying last year. Mother dying last year. Mother and father dying. Mother, father and older sister dying. Mother dying and older sister pregnant. Older sister dying and mother pregnant. Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying. Here’s an oldie but a goody: half of the family dying, other half pregnant. Klinger, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? KLINGER Yes, sir. I don’t deserve to be in the Army. Klinger’s longest-running scheme is pretending to be a transvestite in the hope of earning a “Section 8” psychiatric discharge. Among the outfits from 20th Century Fox’s wardrobe shop that Farr wore (sometimes while puffing on a stogie) were Ginger Rogers’ Cleopatra costume (“April Fools,” s. 8) and a woolen coat of Betty Grable’s (“Major Ego,” s. 7), as well as reproductions of Dorothy’s pinafore dress from the Wizard of Oz and a Scarlett O’Hara gown from Gone With the Wind (“Major Ego,” s. 7), and a flare-torched Statue of Liberty get-up (“Big Mac,” s. 3). Klinger usually provides comic relief, but in “War of Nerves” (s. 6) he delivers a serious condemnation of the draft. Confiding in Sidney, who previously knocked down several of Klinger’s Section 8 schemes, he says he really does fear he’s going crazy because of his attempts to get out of the Army. Sidney asks Klinger why he wants out: KLINGER Why? Well, there’s — there’s lots of reasons. I guess death tops the list. I don’t want to die. And I don’t want to look at other people while they do it. And I don’t want to be told where to stand while it happens to me. And I don’t want to be told how to do it to somebody else. And I ain’t gonna. Period. That’s it. I’m gettin’ out. SIDNEY You don’t like death. KLINGER Overall, I’d rather lay in a hammock with a couple of girls than be dead — yes. SIDNEY Listen, Klinger. You’re not crazy. KLINGER I’m not? Really? SIDNEY You’re a tribute to man’s endurance. A monument to hope in size-12 pumps. I hope you do get out someday. There would be a battalion of men in hoopskirts right behind you. (0 COMMENTS)

I’ve always been weird, but at this point in my life I feel like I understand non-weird people quite well.  If you’re still baffled, my weird friends, one simple principle captures most of what you need to know.   The Principle of Normality: A normal person says what others say, but does what others do.   Notice that this principle captures two distinct features of normality. First, conformism.  People dislike expressing views or taking actions unless other people express the same views and take the same actions. Second, the chasm between words and actions.  Normal people lack integrity.  They feel little need to bring their actions in harmony with their words – or their words in harmony with their actions. Example: A normal person will say, “We should do everything possible to fight global warming” – yet donate zero to environmental charities.  How can they cope with the cognitive dissonance?  Because this psychological experience is alien to them.  They speak environmentalist words to echo the environmentalist words they hear other people say.  They donate zero to environmental charities because to mimic what they see other people do. For normal people, Social Desirability Bias is far more than a bias; it is their way of life. Once you understand the Principle of Normality, my weird friends, you are also ready to look in the mirror and understand weirdness in all its manifestations.  While some weird people exhibit multiple manifestations, most weird people strongly emphasize just one.  (I think). Manifestation #1: Saying unconventional things.  Some weird people like speaking about odd, off-putting, or socially disapproved topics, despite strong social pressure.  Picture the comic book nerd, the gaming nerd, the literary nerd, or the anti-religious nerd.  They still live much like other people; they just say weird things. Manifestation #2: Doing unconventional actions.  Other weird people focus on doing odd, off-putting, or socially disapproved things, again despite strong social pressure.  Picture the polyamorist, the punker, the Hare Krishna (in Western societies), or the junkie.  They still speak much like other people; they just do weird things. Manifestation #3: The integrity of good.  A third variety of weird person starts with plausible, even popular verbal premises.  Then they stun the rest of the world by striving to bring their behavior into strict conformity with these premises.  Picture the Effective Altruist, the vegan, the abolitionist, or the proponent of radical honesty. Manifestation #4: The integrity of evil.  The last variety of weird person starts with bizarre verbal premises that seem absurd unless you’re thoroughly brainwashed.  They they horrify the rest of the world by striving to bring their behavior into strict conformity with these premises.  Picture the Islamic fundamentalist, the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, or the theonomist.   To point out the obvious: Manifestation #4 is responsible for almost all of the political horrors of the last three centuries.  Most weird people are not violent fanatics, but all violent fanatics are weird.  So while I’m personally high on Manifestations 1, 2, and especially 3, I can understand why weird people tend to frighten normal people.  In defense of the weird, however, I have to point out that most moral progress comes from Manifestation #3 – the abolition of slavery being the greatest example.  Normal people rarely initiate awful crimes on their own, but once violent fanatics make awful crimes normal, normal people will support them by word and deed. (0 COMMENTS)

No, but it might have cost him Georgia’s electoral votes. My friend and fellow economist Walter Block has an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal (November 8 and November 9 print edition) titled “Libertarians Spoil the Election.” Here’s his argument: Did the Libertarian Party throw the election to Joe Biden? Maybe. At this writing nominee Jo Jorgensen’s vote total exceeds Mr. Biden’s margin over President Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, enough to change the outcome. First, he’s wrong about Pennsylvania and Nevada. Jorgenson’s vote doesn’t cover the spread. He has a better case for Arizona and Georgia. But even there, here’s the problem: Walter is assuming implicitly that the vast majority of votes that went to Jo Jorgenson would have gone to Trump. I think that’s wrong for two reasons. First, I would bet that about 20 percent of the people who voted for Jorgenson would not have bothered voting had they not been offered that alternative. (What’s my evidence? I admit that it’s gut feel.) Second, consider the remaining 80 percent. I would bet that at most 2/3 of this remaining 80 percent would have voted for Trump had Jorgenson not run. Why as much as 2/3? Because what I have observed is that young libertarianish people would have preferred Biden over Trump and older libertarianish people would have preferred Trump over Biden, and a much higher percent of older people than of younger people vote. If I’m right, that means that we would have to take the difference between 2/3 of 80% and 1/3 of 80%, which is, of course 1/3 of 80% and apply that to the Jorgenson totals in each state. Do that and Walter’s point might work for Arizona and Georgia but it’s not a slam dunk. Arizona: Biden gets 1,645,277 votes, Trump gets 1,629,845 votes, and Jorgenson gets 50, 121 votes. 80% of the Jorgenson vote = 40,097 votes. 1/3 of that = 13,366 votes. Biden minus Trump = 15,432. So even there, not clear that Trump would have won Arizona. Georgia: Biden gets 2,467,870 votes, Trump gets 2,456,275 votes, and Jorgenson gets 61,951 votes. 80% of the Jorgenson vote = 49,561 votes. 1/3 of that = 16,520 votes. Biden minus Trump = 11,595 votes. So there there’s a much better shot at Walter’s point. In his op/ed, Walter makes a strong case for Trump over Biden, most of which I agree with. Walter is critical of Trump on protectionism, as he should be. But he does leave out a major issue, one on which Biden is head and shoulders above Trump: immigration.     (0 COMMENTS)

A few years ago, Germany was heavily criticized for taking in roughly a million refugees from mostly Muslim countries. Today we discover that the promising Pfizer vaccine that might help to end the pandemic was developed by the children of Turkish migrants to Germany: Admittedly, most of the recent refugees are not likely to produce important medical breakthroughs.  But Şahin’s father worked in a German car factory, and I doubt that many people in Germany thought the child of one of those Turkish factory workers would someday help to save the world economy.  As Bryan Caplan likes to point out, more people leads to more ideas–especially when the extra people are given opportunities denied in their home country. Once this pandemic is over, I very much hope the US government reconsiders the ban on travel from certain Muslim countries. (0 COMMENTS)