“I’m very concerned that we’re going to see another surge related to that rally,” Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told reporters, in reference to the annual motorcycle run to Sturgis, South Dakota.

“It’s understandable that people want to do the kinds of things they want to do, they want the freedom to do that,” Fauci added, “but there comes a time when you’re dealing with a public health crisis that could involve you, your family, and everybody else—that something supersedes that need to do exactly what you want to do.” 

More than 385,000 people attended this year’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, with “massive tightly packed crowds at the festival,” but Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, did not denounce it on television as a potential “super-spreader” event. In similar style, Dr. Fauci neglected the 60th birthday bash for former president Obama, with guests cavorting without masks in a crowded tent. 

“Do you want their deaths to mean nothing?!”

I’ve heard this argument a lot when discussing ending the perpetual war on terror. In fact, I was asked this precise question while on a recent panel discussing the merits of waging war on “radical Islam.” The idea behind this argument is easy enough to understand. If “we” (meaning the United States government) quits now, then the 7,000 U.S. troops who died in Iraq and Afghanistan will have died for nothing.

This argument is a prime example of what’s known as the “sunk cost fallacy.” A sunk cost is an outlay (monetary or otherwise) that cannot be recouped once made. In economics, we teach our students that sunk costs should not factor into our decision-making.

The Congressional Budget Office has updated its earlier budget and economic outlook for the next 10 years. There is one big takeaway from their revised outlook. The Biden-Harris administration’s planned spending is on an unsustainable path.

The following chart from the CBO’s report shows what that means in terms of expected spending and tax collections:

Prior to covid-19, it was the opioid epidemic that worried U.S. officials, with reports showing that the abuse of opioids nationwide was contributing to increased healthcare costs and overdose deaths. In 2020, however, things changed. With covid came lockdowns, and with the lockdowns came unemployment, isolation, and depression. 

By early 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had announced that officials estimate that over 81,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2020, a record-breaking number. To some experts like Brendan Saloner, a professor of Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, this record increase was directly associated with the pandemic and the isolation the ensuing lockdowns imposed on countless Americans. 

“The pandemic itself [created] a lot of stress in people’s lives, a lot of social isolation,” Saloner told the Commonwealth Fund’s Shanoor Seervai. “We know from the mental health data that depression went through the roof during the pandemic, that a lot of people were just feeling a lot of loneliness. And so, I think those conditions caused a lot of people to use drugs more frequently and to use them in more harmful ways.” 

As everyone is aware, governments have been mandating restrictions on people’s behavior in response to the COVID pandemic for more than a year. Cases are on the rise around the US, and in response, governments are retaining existing mandates and reimposing mandates that had previously been repealed. COVID is not going away, but the mandates in response to COVID should.

Los Angeles is reimposing its mask mandate, some New York legislators are proposing to follow Los Angeles by reimposing mask mandates, North Carolina is extending its COVID mandates, and talk of continuing or reimposing mandates is taking place nationwide. Meanwhile, in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, who has downplayed the increase in COVID cases, has been accused of killing people with his anti-mandate policies.

The U.S. Capitol Police will open a regional field office in San Francisco, the California Globe reports, “due to the high number of threats located in California and the western U.S. in general.” These are primarily threats against members of Congress, and violence against them is supposedly on the upswing. Californians have cause to wonder.

Last September, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a wash and blow-out at a San Francisco salon that had been closed since March, when Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency. Pelosi claimed it was all a “setup” and that the salon owed her an apology. Locals responded with a peaceful protest outside Pelosi’s San Francisco residence. This incident did not call for the Capitol Police, a force with a questionable record, to say the least.

Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, has said that the current uptick in inflation is temporary, and he expects inflation to subside in 2022. Despite rising inflation, the Fed is not in an inflation-fighting mood.

Powell’s view rests heavily on interruptions in the supply chain that have caused temporary shortages leading to price spikes. Powell recognizes that declines in demand in 2020 led to low inflation that year, and says that the 2021 inflation spike is only offsetting unusually low inflation from 2020.

There are arguments leaning in the other direction, however—most significantly, the effect of inflationary expectations. Sellers are reluctant to raise prices when inflation is low, so it takes a while for inflationary monetary policies to result in actual inflation. Once people expect inflation, they are quicker to raise prices to keep up with the general rise in prices. As the 1970s showed, inflation, once started, can be difficult to stop.

Stanley Druckenmiller is one of the most influential investors in America today. He became a billionaire himself by making billions more for his clients as a fund manager. At the time he chose to close his asset management firm Duquesne Capital in 2010, after more than 30 years of investing other people’s money, it was managing over $12 billion in assets. Over the course of his career, markets themselves grew from billions to trillions in size.

That background confirms Druckenmiller as someone who gained both understanding and experience in handling very large sums of money in the real world. As such, he has a clear understanding of the impact the proposed $3.5 trillion “infrastructure” spending bill will have on Americans if it passes.

He has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill to warn politicians about the astronomically large spending bill. He warns they will guarantee “dire consequences” that harms low and middle-class Americans if they pass it. On July 23, 2021, he spoke with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on that topic, telling her what he’s been telling lawmakers.

“If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States,” proclaims Department of Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas, directing his remarks to Haitians, whose president Jovenel Moïse was recently assassinated, and Cubans protesting the Communist regime. News reports on developments there have overlooked a few realities.

Cuban president and Communist Party chief Miguel Diaz-Canel was not elected by the Cuban people. He is a successor to Raul and Fidel Castro, the Sado-Stalinist who ruled the island since the 1950s without a single election. His Communist regime was so oppressive that many Cubans fled in anything that floats. Many perished at sea but those who made landfall in Florida were accepted as refugees.

Following the pandemic-led lockdowns, Americans struggled to pay the bills. As the government stepped in to provide extended unemployment benefits, states began reopening. But as American businesses started opening their doors, many realized that it had become nearly impossible to compete with federal aid.

With even fast-food chains offering more than minimum wage and a series of new perks to anyone who can fill in the vacancies, it is no wonder that gig economy firms like Uber and Lyft are also taking a beating.