• Opinion

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Published: 09 December 2020

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    One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy or program, then we will do anything because there is a benefit to any action, policy or program.
    Think about one simple example. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 36,096 Americans lost their lives in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2019. Virtually all those lives could have been saved if we had a 5 mph speed limit. The huge benefit of a 5 mph speed limit is that those 36,000-plus Americans would have been with us instead of lost in highway carnage. Fortunately, we look at the costs of having a 5 mph speed limit and rightly conclude that saving those 36,000-plus lives are not worth the costs and inconvenience. Most of us find it too callous, when talking about life, to explicitly weigh costs against benefits. We simply say that a 5 mph speed limit would be impractical.
    What about the benefits and costs of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? Much of the medical profession and politicians say that lockdowns, social distancing and mask-wearing are the solutions. CDC data on death rates show if one is under 35, the chances of dying from COVID-19 is much lower than that of being in a bicycle accident. Should we lockdown bicycles? Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, biostatistician and epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University and an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epidemiologist were the initiators of the Great Barrington Declaration. More than 50,000 scientists and doctors, as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people, have signed the Great Barrington Declaration opposing a second COVID-19 lockdown because they see it doing much more harm than good.
    Efforts to keep very young from getting COVID-19, given most will not even realize they have it or will suffer only mild symptoms, may be counterproductive in that it delays the point where a country has herd immunity. According to the CDC, COVID-19 deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost nonexistent. The first age group to provide a substantial contribution to the death toll is 45-54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths. More than 80% of deaths occur in people aged 65 and over. That increases to over 92% if the 55-64 age group is included.
    Thus, only a tiny number of people under age 25 die of COVID-19. Yet, schools have been closed, and tens of millions of schoolchildren have been denied in-class instruction. Mandating that 5-year-olds wear masks during their school day is beyond nonsense. Virtual learning can serve as a substitute for in-class teaching but it has mixed results. Some parents can provide their children with the necessary tools, perhaps hire tutors, and take an active interest in what their children are doing online. Other parents will not have the interest, ability or the time.
    Here is a lockdown question for you. Government authorities permit groceries and pharmacies to remain open during lockdowns. They permitted stores likes Walmart, Costco and Sam's Club to remain open. However, these stores sell items that are also sold in stores that were locked down such as: Macy's, J.C. Penney, J. Crew Group, Neiman Marcus and Bed Bath & Beyond. The lack of equal treatment caused many employees to lose their jobs and many formerly financially healthy retailers have filed for bankruptcy.
    As political satirist H. L. Mencken said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." By the way, the best time to scare people, be wrong and persist in being wrong is when the costs of being wrong are borne by others.
    Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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Published: 02 December 2020

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        Many of us will give money to charity this month. Americans give more than any other people in the world.
        Good for us.
        56 years ago, because American charities hadn't ended poverty, politicians said they would end it. They declared a "war on poverty."
        That "war," so far, has cost $27 trillion.
        Some people were helped. But the handouts also had a bad effect.
        My new video shows a moving graph of America's poverty rate. It reveals that before the War on Poverty began, Americans had been steadily lifting themselves out of poverty. Year by year, the number of families in poverty -- defined as earning less than three times what they need to feed themselves -- decreased.
        Then welfare began, and for about seven years, progress continued.
        But then progress largely stopped! That downward trending poverty line now rises and falls with economic conditions. America now has an "underclass," generations of people who stay poor.
        "Welfare taught them they didn't have to work," says Yaron Brook, of the Ayn Rand Institute. Handouts perpetuate poverty, he says, "because if you get a job... your checks get smaller."
        That's why charity is better. Charities are free to help people who truly need help while giving a push to people who need "a kick in the butt." Government's one-size-fits-all rules discourage that.
        I donate to a charity called The Doe Fund. It tries to "break the devastating cycle of homelessness" by teaching men to take pride in work. Many are helped.
        But not all charity helps. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to improve Newark's public schools.
        The money disappeared into the education bureaucracy.
        Education consultants and friends of politicians got some. Teachers union contracts grew fatter.
        "But the public schools didn't get better," Brook points out. "The performance of the students didn't get better."
        This year's booming stock prices increased America's wealth gap. Billionaires got richer while store clerks lost jobs.
        "Progressives" gathered outside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's home and set up a guillotine. The message: "Behead the rich." They think that when Bezos makes billions, the rest of us have less.
        That's ignorant, says Brook. "All of our lives are dramatically better because of somebody like Jeff Bezos. Things just appear at our doorstep. They hire hundreds of thousands of people. They make it possible for poor people to make a living by selling me something that I want!"
        I push back. "But he has so much -- when others have so little."
        "It's his money!" Brook responds. "He created it. Once we start deciding what you can or can't do with your property, what we will get is... extreme poverty for everybody. Only one system has brought people out of poverty, capitalism."
        That's what I finally learned after years of consumer reporting.
        Consider three ways to help people: government, charity and capitalism.
        Government is needed for some things, but it's inefficient, and its handouts encourage dependency.
        Charity is better because charities can make judgments about who really needs a handout versus who needs a push. But charities can be inefficient, too.
        Oddly, what helps the most people in the most efficient way is greedy, self-interested capitalism.
        "Two hundred fifty years ago," recounts Brook, "almost all of us were earning what the United Nations today defines as extreme poverty, $2 a day or less. That was 94% of all people on planet Earth. Today, only about 8% are that poor. Why? Not because of charity, not because of foreign aid but by employing people. ... Businesses are the most efficient because they have the right incentives. They won't survive if they're not efficient. Government has no such incentives. And charities are mixed."
        So, why do billionaires and entrepreneurs now rush to donate, rather than doing what they're best at: innovating?
        "They want to be liked," replies Brook. "(But) they're buying into false ideas, both economically and morally. They are acting against their self-interest, and against all of our interests, including the interests of the poor."
        John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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Published: 02 December 2020

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        Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom.
        Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.
        He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone.
        But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.
        As an economist, Walter Williams never got the credit he deserved. His book "Race and Economics" is a must-read introduction to the subject. Amazon has it ranked 5th in sales among civil rights books, 9 years after it was published.
        Another book of his, on the effects of economics under the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, was titled "South Africa's War Against Capitalism." He went to South Africa to study the situation directly. Many of the things he brought out have implications for racial discrimination in other places around the world.     
        I have had many occasions to cite Walter Williams' research in my own books. Most of what others say about higher prices in low income neighborhoods today has not yet caught up to what Walter said in his doctoral dissertation decades ago.
        Despite his opposition to the welfare state, as something doing more harm than good, Walter was privately very generous with both his money and his time in helping others.
        He figured he had a right to do whatever he wanted to with his own money, but that politicians had no right to take his money to give away, in order to get votes.
        In a letter dated March 3, 1975, Walter said: "Sometimes it is a very lonely struggle trying to help our people, particularly the ones who do not realize that help is needed."
        In the same letter, he mentioned a certain hospital which "has an all but written policy of prohibiting the flunking of black medical students."
        Not long after this, a professor at a prestigious medical school revealed that black students there were given passing grades without having met the standards applied to other students. He warned that trusting patients would pay -- some with their lives -- for such irresponsible double standards. That has in fact happened.
        As a person, Walter Williams was unique. I have heard of no one else being described as being "like Walter Williams."
        Holding a black belt in karate, Walter was a tough customer. One night three men jumped him -- and two of those men ended up in a hospital.
        The other side of Walter came out in relation to his wife, Connie. She helped put him through graduate school -- and after he received his Ph.D., she never had to work again, not even to fix his breakfast.
        Walter liked to go to his job at 4:30 AM. He was the only person who had no problem finding a parking space on the street in downtown Washington. Around 9 o'clock or so, Connie -- now awake -- would phone Walter and they would greet each other tenderly for the day.
        We may not see his like again. And that is our loss.
        Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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Written by Editor

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Published: 25 November 2020

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        I'm thankful.
        Yes, we've got the pandemic, lockdowns, a worsening deficit, etc.
        But we still live in a relatively free country at the most prosperous time in human history.
        The pandemic showed that when people are faced with crises, we adjust. Restaurants switched to takeout and outdoor dining. Grocery stores began curbside pickup. Companies mass-produced masks, hand sanitizer, ventilators and, now, vaccines. I hide from COVID-19 by staying home; yet, thanks to new services such as Zoom, I can research this column and make my weekly videos from my couch.
        That's brought benefits. I no longer have to deal with traffic congestion.
        Traffic jams are a good example of what ecologist Garrett Hardin called the "Tragedy of the Commons."
        Because roads are free, more people drive, and roads are often congested. If roads were subject to "peak-load pricing, charging higher prices during times of peak demand and lower prices at other times," Hardin wrote, then we'd have fewer traffic jams.
        I bring this up now, before Thanksgiving, because a similar Tragedy of the Commons nearly killed the Pilgrims. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they started a society based on sharing.
        Sharing sounds great.
        But sharing, basically, is collective or communal farming, which is socialism. Food and supplies were distributed based on need. Pilgrims were forbidden to selfishly produce food for themselves.
        That collective farming was a disaster. When the first harvest came, there wasn't much food to go around. The Pilgrims nearly starved.
        Since no individual owned crops from the farm, no one had an incentive to work harder to produce extra that they might sell to others. Since even slackers got food from the communal supply, there was no penalty for not working.
        William Bradford wrote in his "History of Plymouth Plantation" that the colony was ridden with "corruption" and "much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable."
        People eager to provide for their families were less eager to provide for others. Bradford wrote, "young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense."
        Ultimately, said Bradford, shared farming "was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort."
        The Pilgrims "begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could, and obtaine a beter crope (so) they might not still thus languish in miserie."
        Languishing in misery is what people in Venezuela do now.
        The Pilgrims' solution: private property.
        In 1623, the collective farm was split up, and every family was given a plot of land. People could grow their own food and keep it or trade it. "It made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." wrote Bradford. "Women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability."
        The Pilgrims flourished because they turned to private property.
        So, this Thanksgiving, be grateful for private property, a foundation of capitalism.
        Your grocery may not have the small turkey you wanted this year, but they have much more of what you want than people in the Soviet Union ever got.
        When you're shopping for dinner or stocking up for Lockdown 2.0, be glad that you have so many options available.
        If government controlled the production of turkeys and toilet paper, this would be a very, very unhappy Thanksgiving.
        John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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