ATLANTA, GA—CNN has retracted a recent report related to President Trump after realizing the article was 100% factual and as such did not reflect the editorial standards of the news organization.
CNN’s regular readership took to social media to demand a retraction after finding no obvious bias or slant to the piece.
“We just reported on what Trump did and things that were said,” Brian Stelter said in an on-air apology. “We realize now this was not consistent with what we’ve done in the past or who we are as a news organization. It was dangerous and irresponsible.”
All links to the piece were quickly pulled, and CNN assured its readers that it would never happen again.
Note from Daniel Alman: I originally made this blog post on May 5, 2020. At the time, there were 34 things on the list. Since them, on multiple occasions, I have added other things to the list. The last time that I updated this list was on May 22, 2020.
1) Sweden did not have a lockdown. Experts predicted that it would have 40,000 COVID-19 deaths by May 1. The actual number was 2,769.
4) Dr. Deborah Birx admitted that the lockdown was based on a false, gross overstatement of the true fatality rate.
These are her exact words:
“I think we underestimated, very early on, the number of asymptomatic cases. And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected — that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected”
“The COVID-19 death risk in people <65 years old during the period of fatalities from the epidemic was equivalent to the death risk from driving between 9 miles per day (Germany) and 415 miles per day (New York City)”
Note from Daniel Alman: The above may be a good reason for a lockdown in the New York City metro area (which includes parts of New Jersey and Connecticut), but certainly not for the rest of the U.S. And certainly not for Germany.
9) A report by the United Nations cites the predicted harm that will happen to tens of millions of children in low income countries as a result of the COVID-19 global wide shutdown.
Examples of this harm to children include increases in malnutrition, loss of education, increased rates of teen pregnancy, reduced access to health care, reduced rates of vaccination, increased rates of infectious disease, increased rates of water borne illness, and increased rates of death:
14) As of April 22, 2020, New York and New Jersey, combined, accounted for more than half of U.S. COVID-19 deaths. Both of these states require nursing homes to admit patients who have tested positive for COVID-19. In my opinion, this policy constitutes mass murder. Instead of shutting everything down, New York and New Jersey should stop committing mass murder.
As of the afternoon of April 22, 2020, the U.S. has had a total of 46,771 deaths from COVID-19.
20,167 were in New York.
5,063 were in New Jersey.
In other words, as of April 22, 2020, these two states, combined, accounted for more than half of all COVID-19 deaths in the entire country.
Here’s a link to my source, with a screenshot. The screenshot was taken on the afternoon of April 22, 2020:
New York and New Jersey both have ordered nursing homes to admit patients regardless of their COVID-19 status.
In my opinion, this policy constitutes mass murder.
Nursing home patients are elderly. And they have major health conditions. No one is more vulnerable to dying from COVID-19 than people in nursing homes.
Ordering nursing homes to admit patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 is an extremely mean, dumb, stupid, irrational, irresponsible, and insane thing to do.
This policy has already killed a huge numbers of people.
And who knows how many more will die as a result.
Instead of shutting everything down, New York and New Jersey should stop committing mass murder.
15) Cancer surgeries and organ transplants are being put off for coronavirus
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, 14th District) has called for nation-wide rent control. AOC’s plan is to not allow rent increases larger than 3% per year. This is somewhat surprising, given that she majored in economics at prestigious Boston University. I – along with virtually every other economics professor in the country — am always at great pains to present in my introductory to micro-economics courses the familiar supply and demand diagram. It demonstrates that rents below equilibrium levels create shortages. I suppose she missed that lecture. If so, she really should have obtained the class notes from someone else, and/or perused her introductory textbook.
Senator Bernie Sanders has, if anything, done her one better: he is calling for a national rent control policy. California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a policy along similar lines: rent increases shall be limited to 5% annually, in addition to any inflationary increases; this is coupled with making it more difficult to evict tenants.
Present New York City policy is very much in keeping with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan. It has recently worsened its previous rather Draconian rent control legislation. The presumed aim is to help tenants. But, there is something in economics called “unintended consequences.” Translation: “the plans of mice and men often go astray.”
Suppose, instead of exacerbating its rent control regulations, that the city council of this great city had tried this sort of thing with a different consumer good. Suppose the Big Apple had passed a law placing a ceiling of $1 on a fast food meal.The obvious result would be that McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s and their ilk would pretty much vacate the entire city. Posit that the city council mandated that gas stations charge no more than $1 per gallon. A similar result would ensue. Denizens of the New York City would be greatly inconvenienced.
Mr. DeBlasio would never institute any such ridiculous initiative. He would be laughed out of office if he did. Why, then, does the mayor think he can get away with inculcating analogous rules for residential real estate? This is because while burger and gas emporiums can easily locate elsewhere, the same is not true for buildings. If the owners had their ‘druthers, and this were economically and legally possible, they would hoist their real estate holdings upon onto giant wheeled vehicles, and roll them out of the city as soon as possible. New York City would then have no more accommodation for tenants than it would have fast food outlets or gas stations, under our hypothetical contrary to fact scenarios.
Of course, landlords can do no such thing, much as they would like to; heck, they would give their eye teeth to be able to cock a snook at the politicians in this manner.
But this inability of landlords does not mean that rent controls have no adverse effects upon local residents. They can certainly build less new capacity than would otherwise be the case. They may be legally compelled to upkeep and maintain presently existing apartments, but they will do so only reluctantly. “The customer is always right” which prevails in most industries, and will continue to do so for commercial and industrial real estate, which lack such unwise price controls, but will not apply to residential units. They will fight like the dickens to convert their holdings to condominiums and cooperatives. They will have incentives to – how can I put this delicately – not to be too unhappy if their buildings accidentally catch fire. Do we really want to promote such incentives, whether or not they actually become implemented?
Vacancy rates will plummet even further, with these new dispensations. This will have negative repercussions on labor mobility, when occupants fear to give up their rent controlled units. There will be a tendency to convert apartments to stores, to industrial and commercial uses. New laws will have to be enacted to prevent this, and will not be totally successful. Landlord – tenant relations will plummet even further (not of course for non-controlled, non-residential units.) New York City already has special courts charged with solving these confrontations. This is something not at all needed in any other industry. These costs are substantial, and the money misallocated in this direction could have been far more wisely spent.
The economics profession is not unified on too many issues, but this one is an exception. Opposition to rent control stretches all the way from Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek on one stretch of the political spectrum, to several scholars on the very opposite side. For example, in the view of Nobel Prize winner in economics Gunner Myrdal, “Rent control has in certain western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.” And according to Assar Lindbeck, a Swedish economist, “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing.” Almost as a follow up, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach averred: “The Americans couldn’t destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by the very low rents.”
It is urged in favor of this policy that tenants are poorer than property owners, and, often, are compelled to spend an inordinate percentage of their salaries on rent. But, with fewer buildings being constructed, and more of them falling into disarray due to reduced maintenance, upward pressure on rent levels, paradoxically, will tend to be the result. It is an economic truism that the less supply, other things equal, the higher the price. There are no exceptions for housing, or based on the fact that this expenditure plays a large role in the budgets of poor and middle class householders.
In any case, we do not single out textile manufacturers and insist they alone help clothe the impoverished, that only grocers and restaurants feed them, that automobile, air conditioner and television purveyors all on their own make these products available to those who cannot afford them. All of these income transfers come out of general funds. I do not at all favor any of these policies, but fair is fair. Why should housing be any different? Why should landlords, alone, have to bear the entire burden of housing the poor?
Not only should these latest violations of private property rights be rescinded, but the entire notion that rent control can alleviate housing shortages and high fees should be confined to the dust bin not only of history, but of economics too. From a legal point of view, this is a taking. Landlords should be compensated for this seizure of the (value of) their property.
Throughout the Second Temple period, they had many chances to restore the Ark and never felt the need to do so. Hashkafically, there is very good reason why they did not: The testimony was for a covenant that had been renewed, and had been replaced by different items.
