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George Will writes eloquently and powerfully in opposition to the tyrannical process of plea bargaining as it now plays out in the United States. A slice:

Plea bargaining is, [Clark] Neily argues “pervasive and coercive” partly because of today’s “trial penalty” — the difference between the sentences offered to those who plead guilty and the much more severe sentences typically imposed after a trial. This penalty discourages exercising a constitutional right. A defendant in a computer hacking case, Neily says, committed suicide during plea bargaining in which prosecutors said he could avoid a trial conviction and sentence of up to 35 years by pleading guilty and accepting a six-month sentence.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy takes sharp aim at a deserving target. A slice:

No doubt, the superrich do lead different lives than we do. However, most of their wealth is tied up in productive activities. A vast majority of it is invested in companies. It is used to fund research and development that will create better goods and services for consumers; that wealth is the capital that smaller-scale innovators and producers borrow from banks to grow their enterprises. And it employs workers. The Zuckerbergs’ wealth, for instance, contributes directly to the employment of 45,000 people worldwide.

Deflation or inflation? Richard Rahn ponders.

Jeffrey Tucker asks if the lockdowns saved lives.

Perhaps protectionists are victims of a commonplace psychological quirk.

Eric Boehm rightly tears into the lethal protectionist idiocy hawked by Sen. Josh Hawley. A slice:

Just as importantly, Hawley’s wrong on the economics. Withdrawing from the WTO would leave America cut off from the lower tariff rates that member nations grant to one another, effectively raising barriers to American exports and harming American manufacturing and farming. The global trade that’s possible because of America’s membership in the WTO boosts the U.S. economy by $2.1 trillion every year, according to an estimate from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a trade-focused think tank.

I’m honored and very happy to have been interviewed for this podcast by Keri DiNarda of The Fund for American Studies. The topic is globalization and health.

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