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Stephanie Slade eloquently decries the rejection of libertarianism by many American conservatives. Here’s her conclusion:

In trying to direct the economy from Washington, conservatives would be doubling down on progressives’ mistakes. And in trying to duplicate their political success from 2016, Republicans may be tearing out their movement’s heart and soul.

Jacob Sullum bemoans Trump’s hostility to economic freedom

and Scott Lincicome documents the predictable, harmful consequences of the tariffs that Trump so absurdly embraces.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy explains why there is no good reason to trust declarations that government will ‘this time’ perform better. Here’s her conclusion:

I could go on and on and list many more failures of government. But the bottom line is that all these failures are impossible for me to forget when I am promised by the same politicians who have been in power for decades that this time around things will be different. They sadly never are.

Brown University economist Emily Oster writes wisely about the media-stoked public overreaction to covid-19. A slice:

Because of the overwhelming bias in what gets reported about covid-19, the public lacks essential context for making reasoned, well-informed decisions. Researchers found, for example, that droplets containing the virus can, in theory, travel far in the air. That discovery was widely reported. Overlooked was the fact that, even if droplets can travel far in the air, we don’t have evidence that they usually do. So hiking trails and other open-air facilities were closed, despite the fact there are no documented cases of covid-19 caused by hiking.

When I read Greg Ip’s long, new essay in the Wall Street Journal about the costliness of the covid lockdowns I thought just what David Henderson thought: Where’s Ip been? Many of us – including David – have been expressing such thoughts for some time now.

Juliette Sellgren talks with GMU Econ alum Ben Powell about sweat shops.

Here’s part 8 of  George Selgin’s marvelous series on the New Deal.

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