Lockdowns have obviously done the opposite, which is why the govt has been forced to introduce another one today. A shame that an MP comes out with a clear untruth here.
Steve contradicts himself later, demanding a plan for how vaccines allow a return to normal life. On its own terms, this is a fair ask. But if you thought lockdowns did not work, why would you need a plan that related to vaccine roll outs? You just relax lockdowns right away
If you are going to tell porkies about lockdowns for ideological reasons, then you should at least stick to your story.
As evidence, obvs we have cross country evidence that compares those that did and did not lockdown to varying degrees. This is circumtancial because of everything that is going on at the same time.
We also have the time series evidence in each country, as lockdowns come in and are relaxed. This is also to some extent circumstancial, as there are many moving parts in a country over time.
But we also have some quasi experimental evidence; lockdowns varying by adjacent administrative boundaries, or due to policy mistakes, or disinformation.
One can have a debate at least about the optimal lockdown, about how much investment they require up front to reap the long term gain of a virus free economy and health system. But you can't seriously argue they have failed to stop transmission.
@SteveBakerHW lacing his thread with references to discussions of 'expert failure' is extremely rich, given his positions on Brexit and its economic costs, a matter of overwhelming consensus in economics.
...And also noting his courting of 'expert' Gigi Foster, whom he was no doubt behind inviting to @CommonsTreasury, and who attempted to dissemble about the covid19 fatality rate being as low as 0.1%.
If Steve wants a real example of 'expert failure', ask yourself why Johnson and Sunak invited two turnips who have been spouting rubbish throughout the entire pandemic to private meeting, so that they could postpone a lockdown from Sep to Nov:
At each and every point in the pandemic, the policy mistake seems to have been very similar.
Step 1: watch case numbers rise, fail to lockdown because of the perception, or concern about others' perception, of this being a 'cost', of needing to weigh that cost against deaths and disability.
Step 2: watch case numbers rise further. Finally lockdown, by more and for longer than would have otherwise been necessary, because what they knew woud come to pass has come to pass.
140k vaccinated in a week sounds good but that's roughly 7.3m a year. Prob need 30% or more of the pop, ie 20m to make a serious dent in the R with no restrictions. So obvs the vaccination program has to step up dramatically to make a difference sooner.
Looking at the Our World in Data case fatality rate by age, data for South Korea shows you have to get down to the 30-39 age group until the rate is similar to that for flu.
About 50 per cent of the UK population is 40 or over. So you need to vaccinate 33 million to get the case fatality rate of covid19 down to that for flu. I think that's right.
Amateur economist MMT-converts are very like the religious people I have occasionally met who confidently recite creationism.
Creationism mostly stems from ignorance and insulation from good scientific education. Amateur economist MMT-ism, prevalent in journalism, finance, retired finance, stems from the same ignorance.
Economics rightly does not have the same status as science. But this is more true of the answers. The questions and controversies are rich and interesting. You sound silly barking MMT and revealing your lack of curiosity about all those questions.
Nope. Tax does fund spending. The inflation or money creation tax funds a fraction of a per cent of GDP. Power to issue money and its understanding, to a first approximation, is irrelevant to the task of funding and rebuilding state capacity.
Richard I think is typical of the MMT genre. Very clever, probably for that reason deems reading and working through mainstream public finance maths and macro tedious and unnecessary, and prefers to try to reinvent it from scratch in his head. And goes wrong.
I don't think it's a coincidence that MMT advocates are not emerging from mainstream graduate programs. Obvs MMT people will cite brainwashing as the explanation for that.
The quick answer to this post is 1) there are ethics too. 2) if you don't have free markets to start with, don't presume that dropping some regulation will make them free-er.
Actual economies - like the US - are infested with rents. So if you allocate vaccines to the highest bidder, you might just be rewarding rent extraction.
Who is supposed to be 'totally unconcerned about the root causes of other people's unhappiness'? What is the evidence for 'low skill immigration' having broken 'the social contract'?