The debate on the effectiveness of gun control measures to reduce firearm violence distracts attention from the real motive behind gun control. Nobody wants more gun violence, so focusing on gun violence shifts the debate in favor of gun control. What the proponents of gun control really want is control, and the gun violence argument is merely a means to the end that they actually seek–a disarmed population. Arguments that look at the facts to see whether gun control achieves those ends are ineffective persuaders, because gun control advocates want regulation, regardless of its effectiveness.

It should be obvious that proposals such as those to tax ammunition sales will be ineffective controls on firearm violence. Can anyone really think that someone intent on illegally using a firearm would be deterred because ammunition is so expensive? For people who know little about firearms, limiting the number of rounds a magazine is capable of holding may sound promising, but magazines can be swapped out in seconds.

Focusing the debate on gun violence rather than on individual rights gives a debating advantage to gun control advocates, because nobody wants more gun violence. The argument shifts to whether regulations are effective rather than on preserving the rights of citizens. Arguing that proposed gun control measures would be ineffective cannot persuade gun control advocates, because that’s not their big concern. Their ultimate objective of gun control advocates is not safety. They want control.

The post The Name Says It All: Gun Control Isn’t About Reducing Firearm Violence; It’s About Control appeared first on The Beacon.

For those who are concerned about getting the virus from unvaccinated people, get vaccinated! Unvaccinated people pose a very small threat to those who have been vaccinated. Sure, the threat’s not zero, but any time you are around other people, you could catch a cold, or the flu, or Ebola, from them. You could get hit by their cars or knocked down if they bumped into you on the sidewalk. The risk to the vaccinated from being around the unvaccinated is small compared to other risks of being in places where other people are present.

I’m not discussing whether people should get vaccinated (I think they should, and I have been) or whether they should be required to be vaccinated (I don’t think they should; their health care decisions should not be mandated to them). The fact is that vaccination is not mandatory, and what I’m considering here is whether vaccine passports should be required

The simple answer is no: people can protect themselves from unvaccinated individuals by getting vaccinated themselves. The only reason to mandate passports is to coerce those who don’t want the vaccine into getting it. That’s a violation of their individual liberty.

That’s the why. The how is more complicated. Some issues are discussed here. What constitutes vaccination? If someone gets the Russian vaccine or the Chinese vaccine, does that count? Some proposals would allow a negative COVID test or a positive antibody test to count.

What form would the passport take? Some have suggested a smartphone app, or perhaps a paper passport with a QR code. Could they be forged? Could one person game the system by using someone else’s passport?

Another issue is that people in disadvantaged groups might lack access to a smartphone, or even lack access to the vaccine. Much has been made of the fact that minorities are disproportionately vaccinated.

How would a passport requirement be enforced? Would Wal-Mart greeters be trained to inspect and certify those who want to enter their stores? We’ve already seen the confrontations that have resulted from mask mandates. Airlines could probably handle this easily. They already require substantial documentation. Restaurants? Not so much.

Imagine the burden on restaurants if they were prohibited from serving those without passports. “Whoops. I have a passport but I forgot my phone, but here I am with my party of six.” I suppose the restaurant would have to say “We can serve five of you, but the one without the phone will have to wait outside.”

All of this is fairly hypothetical at the moment. The Biden administration has said they have no plans for a national COVID passport, and some states like Florida have said such passports are absolutely out of the question. But the Biden administration has opened the possibility that the private sector could issue COVID passports, and other states might require their own.

There are too many unspecified parameters to determine how such a passport system could be implemented. Another wild card, though, is that the European Union might require COVID passports to enter, meaning that Americans who want to travel there might need one.

There are many problems with the idea of COVID passports. First, because a vaccine is not required, they would compromise people’s liberty by pressuring them into getting one. Second, despite promises that such a system would not compromise individuals’ medical and other records, the necessity of linking the vaccine information with one’s individual identity always opens this risk. Third, if required by the government, this overreach would extend the power of the government to collect personal information and track individual behavior. As long as the vaccine is not mandatory (which is how it should be), nobody should be required to disclose whether they have had it.

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The US population is about 330 million, so if $1.9 trillion was just divided up evenly and given to every American, each person could receive $5,758. A family of four would get $23,030. Given a choice, would most Americans prefer that everyone receive that much cash, or have the bill as it passed, where some get $1,400?

The bill doesn’t give that $1,400 to everyone. What if the $1.9 trillion were just divided up and given to the bottom 50% by income? A family of four would then get $46,060. What would do the most good, the current relief bill, or giving half of American families $46,060? And if the money were just divided among the bottom 25%, the most needy, each family of four would get $92,121. That could be truly life-changing for those people.

The national debt now stands at about $28 trillion, so this one piece of legislation alone adds about 6.8% to the already bloated national debt, and interest has to be paid on that debt. Twenty year government bonds currently pay a bit more than 2% interest, so the annual interest on that increment of government debt will be more than $38 billion. But interest rates are low today, and it is easy to picture, by historical standards, interest rates two or three times higher than that, which could push the annual interest cost of the bill beyond $100 billion.

So far, that interest cost hasn’t hit the federal government hard, because the Federal Reserve has been buying up those bonds and converting them into money. The monetary base, which is composed mostly of federal debt, has increased by $1.8 trillion over the past year, an increase of 52%.

Eventually, that monetary increase will turn into inflation, and one thing that comes with inflation is rising interest rates, which will impose those higher interest costs on the Treasury. Currently, interest payments are about 5.3% of federal spending. If interest rates triple, which they easily could, we’d be looking at interest taking up more than 16% of the federal budget.

That 5.3% figure doesn’t include payments on the recent COVID relief bill, so it’s not unreasonable to think that five years down the road interest payments might make up 20% or more of the federal budget. That’s money that could be spent on other things (including tax cuts).

The fiscal irresponsibility of our Congress and president has us rushing toward the fiscal cliff, bringing with it inflation, rising interest rates, increased government debt, and an increasing share of the federal budget going to interest payments rather than government programs. But, some will say, people are suffering because so many governments shut down their economies in response to the pandemic.

One answer to that defense of fiscal irresponsibility is that if the government really wanted to help those who need it the most, that amount of money is enough to give every family of four in the bottom 25% of the income distribution more than $92,000. Which do you think would help those in need more?

The post Rushing Toward the Fiscal Cliff appeared first on The Beacon.

Google, Facebook, and the others are private companies and people voluntarily choose to use their services. Freedom-loving people should not advocate interfering with those voluntary relationships. If people dislike using those platforms because of their biases, they have the right to start their own. People of a certain age will remember when Myspace was the dominant social media platform, only to be displaced by Facebook.

In the short run, alternatives are limited. Google, Facebook, and others gained their market dominance because of their reputations for lack of bias. Looking for something? Google it and you’ll find it. But if people begin perceiving that their searches are biased, they can use other search engines. Want to interact on line with your friends? Use Facebook. But if people begin perceiving Facebook as biased, that opens the opportunity for competing social media platforms.

That’s the freedom-oriented way to deal with companies when people perceive problems with their product offerings. To advocate government intervention is to advocate replacing freedom of choice in the market with government control of the flow of information. Does anybody really think that government control of information would lessen bias compared with free market competition?

Yes, it takes time for alternatives to establish themselves after people perceive problems with the status quo, but the “creative destruction” that Joseph Schumpeter saw in capitalism will provide alternatives when consumers want them. Let the market work rather than clamoring for government intervention.

While some social media platforms seem to be leaning decidedly left, there is still a lot of information available from the right, starting with talk radio and Fox News. Don’t like what you’re getting on Facebook? See what Tucker Carlson has to say.

That said, social media platforms are trying to have it both ways in taking responsibility for the content on their platforms. On the one hand, they say that they are merely the platforms for people who are posting content, and as platform providers are not responsible for what appears on their platforms. On the other hand, they are actively determining what appears on their platforms, in the same way that newspapers decide what stories to run or television networks decide their programming.

They are taking responsibility, and then saying they are not responsible.

The arguments those platforms make for escaping legal liability for their content hinges on their being open platforms. People can say what they want, and they are responsible for their speech. But if the platforms are actively deciding who can speak, and if some of what they say can be censored, then the platforms are actively taking responsibility for their content, and should be held liable for that responsibility that they have voluntarily assumed.

Either, they are open platforms and people can say what they want, making contributors responsible for what they say, or they are managing what can appear on their platforms, making the platforms themselves responsible for what appears on them.

Can social media platforms really say they are not responsible for what appears on their platforms, when in fact they are taking the responsibility of determining what constitutes suitable content?

Keep government out of regulating social media platforms, but make them assume responsibility for their actions. If they determine what content can appear on their platforms, they should be responsible and legally liable for that content, just like a newspaper or television station.

The post Social Media Platform Bias: It’s Their Right, But... appeared first on The Beacon.

The linked article notes that about 25 percent of Black workers and 19.1 percent of Hispanic workers earn less than $15 an hour, compared to 13.1 percent of white workers, so the law would disproportionately throw minority workers out of work. The article says this would “help” minority workers, but it is difficult to see how making their employment illegal would help them. Could anyone believe that if the minimum wage were raised to $15 an hour, no low-wage workers would lose their jobs?

It’s actually worse than that for low-productivity workers, because one way people can increase their productivity and earn a higher income is by learning on the job. If people are priced out of the labor market and can’t get their first job, they won’t be able to increase their productivity through on-the-job training. In a society that increasingly is cognizant of enacting public policies to help minorities, it is shocking that some are proposing a policy that would make it illegal for many minorities to hold jobs.

Some people think that corporations make lots of money and so can afford to pay their workers more, but corporations are not charities, and this thought misunderstands what motivates employers to hire people. Regardless of how profitable a company is, it will not hire people who cost the company more than they bring back in income.

Do we really want to make it illegal for low-productivity people to work? Do we really want to enact a policy that disproportionately disadvantages minorities? Many states have already done so, and there appears to be increasing support at the federal level to limit the right to work for some of our most-disadvantaged citizens.

The post Should It Be Illegal for Low Productivity People to Work? appeared first on The Beacon.

But this is how the American Founders designed their government to work. The president is not a dictator. Government was designed to have a system of checks and balances that limit the powers of any individual, and of any branch of government. The president is the head of one of three branches of government that were designed to have the power to check and balance the actions of the others.

President Biden is not unique in having his powers limited by the other branches of government. The CNN article linked above quotes Trump administration Attorney General William Barr lamenting that the courts have stood in the way of President Trump’s agenda, saying “These nationwide injunctions have frustrated presidential policy for most of the President’s term with no clear end in sight.”

Again, that’s how the system of checks and balances is supposed to work. A judiciary that “can thwart Biden’s agenda,” which the CNN article laments, is desirable. The concern should be that the powers of the president continue to expand, as they have since the early twentieth century, so that they cannot be checked by the other branches of government. Should those checks and balances break down, we are headed toward tyranny.

The post Checks and Balances Are a Feature, Not a Bug, of American Government appeared first on The Beacon.

Part of my optimism comes from beginning my professional life as an economist in the 1970s, when rising inflation, rising unemployment, price controls, and lines at the gas pumps seemed to point toward both a loss of liberty and economic decline. The motto of the decade was “Think small.” And if that wasn’t enough, the decade also brought with it disco music and leisure suits.

The Club of Rome predicted a Malthusian economic collapse in its book, The Limits to Growth. We were in a Cold War that pitted two “superpowers” against each other, just one misstep away from global nuclear war, and the consensus of the economics profession was that central planning was a more productive way to manage an economy than relying on markets.

The 1970s was a decade that could promote pessimism, but the Reagan and Thatcher revolution followed. Then the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved. In many ways we are freer today than we were in the 1970s. I can see threats to our freedoms, but I also see people (like those at the Independent Institute and other organizations that promote classical liberal ideas) who are championing the ideas of liberty. Part of my optimism is based on that good work.

In the 1940s Friedrich Hayek saw the threat of socialism as The Road to Serfdom, and Joseph Schumpeter, in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, feared that capitalism would not survive because those who received the greatest benefit from capitalism would not stand up to defend it. Liberty probably looked more endangered in the 1940s than in any time since the nation’s founding.

The first half of the twentieth century brought with it the establishment of a federal income tax, the Federal Reserve, two World Wars, the Great Depression and the accompanying New Deal, and a progressive income tax with rates that topped out above 90%. No wonder Hayek and Schumpeter were pessimistic. Seventy-five years later, we are freer in many respects than in the 1940s, or the 1970s.

Yes, allure of socialism seems to be making a comeback among younger people who do not remember the horrors of the Soviet Union or life behind the Berlin Wall, but the ideas of Karl Marx hold less sway today than they did throughout most of the twentieth century. Socialism was viewed by many as a mainstream viable alternative to capitalism right up until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. By the mid-1990s, socialism had been demoted into a system championed only by a few on the extreme left.

We need to be on our guard to protect the liberty we have. Ronald Reagan said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” That’s why it is important to champion the ideas of liberty. Liberty has had some setbacks, but mostly has been on the rise for half a century. I am optimistic that those ideas will win out.

The post Liberty’s Prospects? I’m Optimistic appeared first on The Beacon.

Some people consider themselves conservatives, others view themselves as progressives, some as socialists, others as libertarians. They support candidates and parties based on the ideologies behind those labels. Republicans (mostly) self-identify as conservatives, and political institutions give them the opportunity to join with others to further those views on the appropriate role of government.

There is an analogy with sports teams. University of Alabama fans love Nick Saban because he’s made the Alabama football team a consistent winner. At my own school, Florida State University, Bobby Bowden was revered for decades for that same reason, but fired before he wanted to go because the team’s performance was declining. It was sad to see him go (everybody loves Bobby Bowden!) but allegiance was to the team. Nick Saban won his first national championship at Louisiana State University. How many LSU fans shifted their allegiance to Alabama after Saban went there? Not many. The allegiance sticks with the team, not the coach.

This should be even more true in government, where outcomes have a direct effect on everyone’s lives. A nation slips into dangerous territory when citizen loyalty shifts from ideas to individuals. Trump lost the election. It is time for Republicans to move on and support politicians who can further their ideas on the appropriate role of government.

Some Republicans might agree with Trump’s claim that the election was stolen from him. Fine. But he still lost, and for Republicans who hold that view, the appropriate response is to work for election reform to prevent stolen elections, not to support Trump. Do you think that mail-in ballots and early voting contribute to voter fraud? Then put your energy into those issues rather than supporting a loser.

We enter dangerous territory when people give their political allegiance to people rather than to ideas. That moves us closer to the types of governments ruled by the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Castros, and Putins of the world. Trump has been very effective in shifting the loyalties of some Republicans from the conservative ideas of the party to his own persona. This is unambiguously bad for the Republican party.

One reason term limits are desirable is that they are a check on having people’s loyalties shift from ideas to individuals–they are an impediment to having the United States become like Russia, ruled by Putin, or China, ruled by Xi. Like it or not, Trump lost the election, and it is time for Republicans who are committed to the ideas of limited government that have defined the party to move on—to support their party’s ideas rather than the man who lost the election.

The post Is It Time for Republicans to Move Past Trump? appeared first on The Beacon.