Many observers are treating China’s plan for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a strictly progressive, technical move that other nations should emulate. The United States, in particular, is concerned that China already has a large head start, which may threaten the dollar’s dominance as a reserve currency. Although the alleged purpose of supplying a digital yuan is to reduce transaction costs and make the payments system more efficient, the Chinese people themselves have good reasons for not sharing that sanguine opinion. The real intent of introducing a digital yuan is more likely to be to increase state control of the payments system and to closely monitor transactions and even personal behavior.
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Title 42 Caused a Spike in Mexican Illegal Immigration
In April 2020, the Trump administration ordered immigration enforcement agencies to expel those apprehended along the border under 42 U.S.C. § 265 to combat the pandemic. That statute allows the government, in whole or in part, to close the border to prevent the spread of communicable disease, with some theoretical legal ambiguity. Illegal immigrants apprehended under Title 42 are quickly expelled by Border Patrol, which is a big change from earlier policies to mostly punish unlawful border crossers with detention and criminal charges under immigration law, which is Title 8 of the U.S. Code.
The Biden administration has kept Title 42 in place and, relatedly, is struggling mightily with large numbers of border apprehensions of illegal immigrants. Many conservatives are blaming the Biden administration for border policies that have boosted the flow of illegal immigrants and many liberals, fearful of an escalation in border chaos, are supporting harsh enforcement measures like Title 42. The problem is that Title 42 can explain a large part of the surge of illegal immigrant apprehensions. If the Biden administration wanted to reduce the flow across the border, it would end or reduce the scope of Title 42.
There have been several surges of apprehensions along the border in recent years, but they have mostly been of immigrants from countries other than Mexico (OTM), mostly from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Figure 1). For instance, the big surge in 2019 was comprised of Central Americans while the number of Mexicans coming remained constant. That’s because Central Americans and Mexican face different incentives. In 2019, Mexicans faced so-called enforcement with consequences that punished them for crossing the border illegally. The U.S. government held them in detention for long periods of time, charged them with crimes, and eventually removed many of them into the interior of Mexico. Those policies increase the cost of immigrating illegally, especially the opportunity cost.
Title 42 reduced the opportunity cost for Mexicans to come illegally. Instead of being detained for long periods of time, deported deep into Mexico, or facing other consequences, Title 42 allowed Border Patrol agents to essentially push them back over the border into Mexico – sometimes within hours. Title 42 sounds tough, like Judge Dredd style street justice that immediately enforces the law, but it actually lowers the cost of breaking immigration law for the unlawful immigrants. That, in turn, incentivized a huge surge in illegal immigration from Mexico.
The increase in Mexican illegal immigration after the implementation of Title 42 was tremendous in historical perspective. Mexican went from 62 percent of all apprehensions in March 2020 to 82 percent in May 2020, the first full month of Title 42. The numbers of Mexicans apprehended climbed from 21,313 in February 2020 to a high of 70,845 in May 2021. The percentage of Mexicans declined over time as the number of Central American eventually climbed more quickly, but there was a large increase in Mexican apprehensions (Figure 1). One cannot look at Figure 1 and simply dismiss the plausible theory that it caused the recent surge in Mexican illegal border crossers.
If the pre-Title 42 trend of Mexican apprehensions (October 2017-February 2020) had continued in April 2020 then there would have been about 400,000 fewer apprehensions through the end of July 2021 – all Mexicans. In other words, keeping Title 42 off the books for Mexicans (at least) would have likely reduced the total number of border apprehensions by about 25 percent through the end of July 2021 and the number of Mexican apprehensions by 45 percent. Other factors control the number of Central Americans who are apprehended.
It’s important for the Biden administration to get control of the border. Reducing the number of Mexican apprehensions is the easiest way to reduce the border chaos. Here are a few small actions the Biden administration could take to increase border control:
- Ending Title 42, at least for Mexicans, in the short run.
- Increasing the number of H‑2A and H‑2B guest worker visas by as much as possible by reducing the cost and regulatory requirements. This will increase the number of Mexicans who will work in the program in the longer run, further reducing pressure on the border. This will eventually make harsh enforcement unnecessary.
- Reforming the guest worker visa system so that many more can be issued to Central Americans without reducing the number available for Mexicans. This will reduce the flow of Central Americans in the long run.
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FDA Finally Grants Full Approval to Pfizer Vaccine
After calls from members of the scientific, public health, and medical community—myself included—the Food and Drug Administration finally overcame bureaucratic inertia and granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine—ahead of its self-imposed deadline of January 2022. This is good news. Pfizer will now market the vaccine under the brand name Comirnaty.
Hundreds of millions of doses have been administered over the course of nearly a year and the safety profiles of these vaccines have been remarkably good. Now the FDA should move quickly on the other mRNA vaccine made by Moderna. The company submitted its application for full approval in June, a month after Pfizer’s application. Johnson and Johnson, makers of the one-dose adenovirus-based vaccine has not yet applied for full approval.
It is important to stress that, while the vaccine does not prevent 100 percent of infection, it is highly effective against severe disease—severe enough to require hospitalization and/or death. The health care news site MedPage Today reported that Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics and Research issued the following statement:
Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities.
Full approval of the Pfizer vaccine hopefully will reduce vaccine hesitancy. Claims, especially by those in the “anti-vax” community that the vaccine is “experimental” influence many of the vaccine-hesitant. Ironically, many who oppose the so-called “experimental” vaccine instead urge the off-label use of the anti-inflammatory/antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, used to treat parasites in animals, to prevent or treat COVID-19 infections. Yet the use of those drugs for COVID-19 is truly experimental.
Hopefully, full approval of the Pfizer vaccine and, before much longer, the Moderna vaccine, will alleviate much of the vaccine hesitancy. While politicians and public health officials have employed various approaches to the pandemic—from lockdowns to stay-at-home orders to elective procedure moratoria to mask mandates—the evidence shows that immunization is clearly the most effective and least damaging form of COVID-19 harm reduction.
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Two Cheers for Full FDA Approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
The right to make one’s medical decisions is a fundamental human right. Taking health care rights seriously means recognizing that consumers have a right to choose which medical products they use and that government has no right to stand in their way.
From the moment Ugur Sahin and his colleagues developed the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in January 2020, they and consumers have had the right to sell and buy it, so long as both parties agreed to the transaction. When government interferes with that right to voluntary exchange, it interferes with the rights of patients to make their own medical decisions. This fundamental human right to voluntary exchange is all the more important when it involves life-or-death medical decisions.
From mid-January 2020 until December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration violated the rights of the manufacturers and consumers to buy and sell the life-saving Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA only stopped violating those rights when it granted the vaccine an emergency use authorization on December 11, 2020. Under the terms of that authorization, however, the FDA would again begin to violate those rights once the federal government declares this public-health emergency has ended.
Today’s announcement that the FDA has granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is welcome news—but not because government should be in the business of reviewing the safety and efficacy of drugs (it shouldn’t), nor because the FDA has any moral authority (it doesn’t), nor because patients need the FDA’s seal of approval (though some rightly value it). It is welcome news only because it means that once the federal government declares this public-health emergency has ended, the FDA will not automatically resume violating the right of consumers to use this vaccine.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated over and over again that the FDA is a threat to public health.
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Reifschneider and Wilcox’s Case for a Three Percent Inflation Target
In view of the Fed’s failure to achieve two percent inflation for much of the post-2007 period, the suggestion that it will find it easier to hit a higher target may well strike many as perverse—as if someone suggested that a pole vaulter unable to manage a six-meter vault should try for seven instead.
Yet in arguing that the Fed should raise its inflation target from two to three percent, former Federal Reserve Board economists David Reifschneider and David Wilcox aren’t just engaging in wishful thinking. On the contrary: as their recent Peterson Institute Policy Brief makes clear, bizarre as the plea for a higher inflation target may seem to some, “there is method in’t.” Indeed, were monetary policy reducible to committing once and for all to a permanent inflation rate target, the case for having the Fed adopt a three percent target would be strong, and might be getting stronger.
But monetary policy isn’t just a matter of choosing the right long-run inflation rate target and sticking with it, for the simple reason that a fixed long-run inflation rate isn’t generally ideal. For this and other reasons, I conclude that the Fed can do better than follow Reifschneider and Wilcox’s advice.
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Analyzing Vaccine Mandates from a Libertarian Perspective
At The Hill, I’ve written an op-ed that explores, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, what a libertarian position on vaccine mandates ought to be. Of course, there are many questions one needs to answer to draw a philosophically consistent conclusion.
As I explain:
Here’s the controversy: If the vaccine causes no appreciable injury, can you still refuse to be injected, notwithstanding that you might be visiting significant risks on others?
It’s a close call. Even those who resist government intervention in private matters will endorse rules that bar some persons from violating the rights of others.
Ordinarily, those rules ban or limit harm-inducing activities. Occasionally, however, advocates of limited government will condone directives to engage in benign activities (even when not cost-free) if failure to do so might cause injury to innocent bystanders.
And some pertinent questions:
How much increased risk do I have to endure before your potentially malign failure to act can be redressed? When rights theory doesn’t provide adequate guidance, defenders of liberty often look to utilitarian, cost-benefit tradeoffs. In the context of the vaccine, here are a few relevant factors …
… First, how safe is the mandated act? … Second, what’s the magnitude and frequency of an injury that could occur without a mandate? … Third, can we be sure that a vaccine mandate will remedy the problem? … Fourth, are there remedies available that are less intrusive than a vaccine mandate? … Finally, what peripheral concerns need to be addressed before implementing compulsory injections?
I address these questions in detail, ultimately concluding that:
“Those are crucial questions, which should be examined before embarking on a program that encroaches on personal autonomy. And yet, we are in the midst of a health emergency, which means that suitably modified, narrowly-tailored, time-limited rules may be justified.”
You can read the full piece over at The Hill here.
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The FTC’s Absurd Attempts At Defining Facebook’s Product Market
When it comes to Facebook, antitrust authorities are making it up as they go along. The company is extremely big, and so necessarily “bad” in the eyes of today’s neo-Brandeisian trustbusting movement, one member of whom, Lina Khan, now chairs the Federal Trade Commission. These people just know that Facebook is a monopolist using its market power anticompetitively, and so see the task of their agencies to define the market to first prove that Facebook meets the conditions necessary for antitrust action against them.
Back in late June, the U.S. District Court in DC threw out a complaint by the FTC against Facebook, saying that “The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims — namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services.” In an amended complaint yesterday, the FTC attempted to flesh out the contours of this supposed product market and, well, the results were remarkable.
According to the FTC’s revised complaint, Facebook dominates a market dubbed “Personal Social Networking (PSN) services in the United States,” which consists “of online services that enable and are used by people to maintain personal relationships and share experiences with friends, family, and other personal connections in a shared social space.”
Three features purportedly distinguish products in this market. They:
- “are built on a social graph that maps the connections between users and their friends, family, and other personal connections”;
- “include features that many users regularly employ to interact with personal connections and share their personal experiences in a shared social space, including in a one-to-many “broadcast” format” (i.e. a news feed);
- and “include features that allow users to find and connect with other users, to make it easier for each user to build and expand their set of personal connections.”
According to the FTC, making these three features necessary excludes a whole range of other social media companies from this relevant product market.
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