A new analysis from the right-leaning Tax Foundation reaches this conclusion. Analyst Jared Walczak broke down U.S. Census Bureau data and reports that while the United States overall saw only minor population growth in 2021, there were very significant shifts in state populations as people relocated.

Washington, D.C., New York, Illinois, Hawaii, and California were the five states that lost the most residents on net (including Washington, D.C. for analytical reasons). Idaho, Utah, Montana, Arizona, South Carolina, Delaware, Texas, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina, on the other hand, recorded the largest net population growth.

Is there a trend here? States that have lost population tend to have higher taxes, whereas states that have gained additional citizens tend to have lower taxes.

This isn't simply a hunch; Walczak did the math. The research, which looked at data from April 2020 to July 2021 and included the district, found that the average combined state and local top tax rate in the poorest third of states (those with the largest population reductions) is 7.3 percent. In comparison, the aggregate tax rate in the top-third of states (those with the fastest population increase) is only 3.5 percent.

The pattern is unmistakable. When voters had to choose between lower-tax states and high-tax blue-state policies, they preferred lower-tax states.

“People move for many reasons,” Walczak said. “Sometimes taxes are expressly part of the calculation. Often they play an indirect role by contributing to a broadly favorable economic environment. And sometimes, of course, they play little or no role. The Census data and these industry studies cannot tell us exactly why each person moved, but there is no denying a very strong correlation between low-tax, low-cost states and population growth.”

Don't be shocked if certain progressive politicians who enjoy spending (and wasting) our money try to deny it and adhere to their lousy tax policy nonetheless. However, any objective observer may see the truth. However, there's more to this story than merely a tax policy lesson.

This trend toward lower taxes and freer markets serves as a reminder of why the United States' federalism — or decentralized governance — is so effective and deserving of preservation. More individuals get to live under policies that represent their ideals when Americans may select between alternative policies at the state and municipal levels. More importantly, the greatest ideas win out in the long run.

This option for customisation and experimentation is lost when the federal government imposes one-size-fits-all regulations throughout the country. Keep that in mind the next time you see politicians on the national stage attempting to overcome state sovereignty and impose their views on the entire country.

Some of the framing here is a bit unnecessarily woke, but what @AOC says here about civil asset forfeiture is absolutely correct. It's a vile, unamerican practice and Dems & Republicans should come together to end it. https://t.co/Go715oIUfc

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) December 9, 2021

“This is an issue that so many people in this country cannot believe is real,” Ocasio-Cortez said . “Civil forfeiture means that the government, law enforcement, etc., is allowed to take away your property — often your car or even your home — without an arrest, without criminal charges, and without ever going to court. And then the police can sell your property and use the proceeds as revenue.”

Ocasio-Cortez has discovered a significant issue. According to the Institute for Justice, the government has taken nearly $68.8 billion in property through this unjust procedure over the previous 20 years. As shown in the graph below, the federal government stole more property than robbers in 2019!

Today I learned that federal law enforcement steals more from Americans than burglars... pic.twitter.com/4NArVhQVjJ

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) December 9, 2021

And don't be fooled into thinking that the majority of this land has been taken from convicted criminals or recognized drug cartel leaders. As the congresswoman points out, it's frequently seized without charges or a trial, and the majority of it comes from minor offenders. Property seized is often not owned by the individual accused of committing the crime, but by someone linked with the suspect, such as the suspect's mother.

Here are some examples of everyday victims of civil asset forfeiture, as I reported for the Dispatch in 2020:

These are the kinds of victims Ocasio-Cortez was talking about. The congresswoman went on to say that under this forfeiture system, “it’s disproportionately poor people, low-income people, and people of color who are having their property seized.”

While the real issue is the inherent unfairness of this practice for anyone, Ocasio-Cortez still may be right about the existence of disparities. In South Carolina, for example, the Greenville News reports : “Seven out of 10 people who have property taken are black, and 65% of all money police seize is from black males.” On the national level, the racial diversity of an area positively correlates with the amount of property taken by law enforcement through forfeiture. (This doesn’t alone prove race is the cause of that increase.)

Republicans who believe in property rights and due process should work with Ocasio-Cortez on this subject if she is willing. Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee, both Republicans, have filed legislation to prevent this detrimental behavior. More members of both parties' legislatures should join these bipartisan efforts.

AOC is correct on this one, as unusual as it is. Our civil asset forfeiture system is inequitable, un-American, and in desperate need of change.

That’s one of the main takeaways from Ocasio-Cortez’s latest speech on the House floor.In her speech, the congresswoman made yet another factually deficient and ethically flawed argument for "student debt cancellation," a leftist euphemism for forcing taxpayers to pay off $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. (The loans aren't miraculously "canceled," but rather paid for by taxpayers.) Debts cannot simply be erased by Congress.)

Let’s stop advancing this narrative that student loan debt is for the privileged.

Do we really think a billionaire’s child is taking out student loans?

First-generation college students are twice as likely to report they are behind in making student loan payments. pic.twitter.com/KyGnrJCjNq

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) December 3, 2021

This isn't new, since "cancellation" of student debt has been one of Ocasio-pet Cortez's themes from the start of her political career. The fact that Ocasio-Cortez cites herself as an example and expressly asks taxpayers to pay off her debts is a fascinating twist in her speech.

“I’m 32 years old now,” the congresswoman said. “I have over $17,000 in student loan debt, and I didn’t go to graduate school because I knew that getting another degree would drown me in debt that I would never be able to surpass. This is unacceptable.”

I’m sorry, what part of that is unacceptable, exactly?

Ocasio-Cortez’s $17,000 in student loan debt sounds like a lot, but it probably only involves a monthly student loan payment of $100-$200. It’s hard to know exactly what her payment is without being familiar with the specifics of her loans, but $100-$200/month is a reasonable estimate given that the average graduate owes $28,400 total, which equates to a $297 monthly payment.

And, as previously stated, the congresswoman's annual salary is about $175,000! Despite this, she continues to believe that working-class people should be forced to pay her costs. Even more ironic and tone-deaf is Ocasio-subsequent Cortez's lamentation of the (allegedly) "false narrative" that "student loan debt is for the affluent" later in the address.

She called this “narrative” a “ridiculous assertion” and asked, “Do we really think a billionaire’s child is taking out student loans?”

“Come on!” she exclaimed. “If you are taking on student loan debt, it’s because you are likely a middle or working-class person. Let’s get real, let’s cancel it.”

This section of Ocasio-speech Cortez's is factually incorrect and disconnected from reality. Student loan debt is disproportionately held by a well-educated and thus higher-earning segment of the population, not by the children of billionaires, as some have claimed.

This is a reality that competent experts do not dispute.

One study found that “canceling” all student loan debt would give the top 20% of income earners six times more benefit than the bottom 20% of income earners. Even left-leaning think tanks such as the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution have reached similar conclusions.

“Debt forgiveness plans would be regressive — providing the largest monetary benefits to those with the highest incomes,” an Urban Institute analysis concluded .

So, whether Ocasio-Cortez cares to acknowledge it or not, the regressive nature of student debt “cancellation” is simply reality.

The congresswoman's personal narrative, however, shows the hollowness of her speech. From beginning as a bartender to serving in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez has risen through the ranks of America's wealthiest and most famous people. Nonetheless, Ocasio-promises Cortez's to erase student debt would compel workers across the country to pay off her comparatively modest student loan commitments, as well as the debts of many millions of rich, successful individuals like herself.

This isn't just a case of a conflict of interest. It's a woke bubble wrap and progressive platitudes-wrapped bailout for Democratic politicians' rich, well-educated constituents. Americans should look through AOC's promises of aid to the poor and recognize this scheme for what it is.

To begin with, the price is exorbitant. The Biden administration and its congressional supporters have made several misleading assertions regarding the price tag. They've repeated the lie that the bill "costs zero" since it doesn't add to the national debt and is "paid for" by new taxes. (It does, in fact, add to the debt, but that's beside the point.) However, this is a ridiculous argument. As I stated previously:

While it may be more fiscally responsible to pair spending increases with tax hikes, it doesn’t make them cost less. That’s like saying that buying groceries with cash instead of a credit card means the price tag is zero—it’s nonsensical.  Every dollar the government spends has to come from somewhere. Whether it’s financed through additional debt or new taxes means that the consequences are different, yes, but there are still costs involved. 

The true cost of the legislation, once one accounts for budget gimmicks and dishonest political rhetoric, is up to $4.9 trillion. That’s an astounding $32,000 per federal taxpayer. 

And the majority of this money would be spent on ineffective government initiatives and welfare state growth.

For example, the law pours billions into electric vehicle subsidies that have a little impact on carbon emissions while lining the wallets of the rich. It similarly wastes billions funding a “Civilian Climate Corps” that would pay people to do environmental activism that even proponents admit won’t reduce emissions. It puts hundreds of billions toward subsidies for healthcare, childcare, and housing that will ultimately push the cost of these sectors even higher and prove counterproductive. 

So, too, the Build Back Better agenda openly violates President Biden’s promises that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000. It raises billions in new taxes on nicotine products that millions of working-class Americans regularly consume and hikes corporate taxes that ultimately fall on workers’ shoulders via lower wages. It does all this while, rather hypocritically, giving the rich a net tax cut. 

In exchange for this jumble of wasted expenditure and punishing tax rises, what do we get? Worse economic consequences, rather than the revival promised by President Biden and his friends.

Because the law seizes trillions from the private, productive sector and directs them via the government's political programs, it will result in reduced salaries, employment, and long-term economic growth. That’s the finding of analyses by the Wharton School of Business, the Tax Foundation, and too many other experts to count. (And no, the spending bill won’t reduce inflation as President Biden oddly claims). 

In sum, the Build Back Better agenda is a government spending bill that’s uniquely terrible even by the abysmally low standards we expect from Congress. The good news is that it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere once it gets to the Senate.

My film simply claimed that Rittenhouse's case revealed the hypocrisy of those on the Left who push for criminal justice reform on a regular basis but throw their support for fair criminal procedures out the window in this instance. The following is the text of my remarks:

“Hakeem Jeffries, a progressive congressman, literally tweeted while the trial was still going on: ‘Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key.’ And he’s the same guy that rails against mass incarceration — and I agree with him sometimes — but now, before the trial was even over, they were calling for this guy to be locked up and throw away the key … like they’ve already reached their conclusion. And they lied about it being a ‘white supremacy’ thing when it’s a white dude that shot other white people. 

You don’t have to either think that he’s a hero who did everything right and made amazing decisions or he’s an evil white supremacist who should go to jail. The truth is, I would never let my teenager go to a riot zone with a weapon — that was a bad decision to make — but in the moment, he defended himself. He wasn’t some mass shooter white supremacist, and he should be acquitted.”

What part of that constitutes “bullying” or “harassment” in any form? And this bizarre censorship decision by TikTok wasn’t an error or mistake. I appealed the removal of my video, and my appeal was denied.

⁦.@tiktok_us⁩ took down this video of me defending Kyle Rittenhouse, citing “harassment and bullying.”

WTF?

I will be appealing. pic.twitter.com/nbkvrJ43t8

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) November 22, 2021

To be clear, I believe TikTok should have the legal authority to delete content that it does not wish to host as a platform. However, criticizing the corporation when it makes poor judgments, incorrectly enforces its own stated terms of service, or shuts off genuine public discourse on current events is still fair game.

The Rittenhouse case is a major national story with far-reaching implications for American values including self-defense, criminal justice, and civil rights. Even if a neutral jury vindicates the pro-Rittenhouse stance, TikTok cannot claim to be an open and robust platform if it refuses to enable conservative perspectives on such an important issue. It's little more than a woke echo chamber and leftist misinformation bubble at that point.

This discrepancy is made particularly glaring by the extreme left-wing content routinely allowed on the platform. As I cover in my TikTok reaction series for Rightly on YouTube, viral TikToks are allowed to joke about violence against conservatives and even (satirically, I hope?) advocate for the cannibalization of rich people . I’m not even saying these videos should be censored — but to allow this content to circulate while taking down legitimate conservative arguments in the name of “harassment and bullying” is inconsistent and hypocritical.

At the end of the day, though, taking down one TikTok is hardly a catastrophe. However, this vexing situation is part of Big Tech's larger pattern of censoring and repressing right-of-center opinions on important political matters, which is alarming.

The treatments in question include a new pill to treat COVID-19 developed by Pfizer. In clinical studies, the tablet reduced the probability of an infected patient dying or being hospitalized by 89 percent, according to the business. According to the Washington Post, “The effect of the Pfizer drug was found to be so strong midway through the study that an independent committee monitoring the clinical trial recommended it be stopped early.” 

Another company, Merck, has developed a pill it says reduces the chances of serious illness and death by 50 percent and requested FDA approval last month. It is still waiting on approval, although it was approved on November 5 in the United Kingdom.   

As far as the Pfizer treatment is concerned, the request for FDA emergency approval has already been submitted. We’re literally just waiting on them to get their act together and meet (virtually!) to discuss it, and apparently the FDA won’t be doing so until after Thanksgiving. This means that the Pfizer treatments won’t start getting administered until December at the earliest. 

To be clear, I'm not a doctor, and I can't vouch for the efficacy of these therapies based on the firms' experiments. But I can state with clarity that, with 750,000 Americans dying from or infected with COVID-19, and hundreds more dying every week, sick individuals should be able to get these therapies legally if they choose to.

As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out, “In the past 30 days, more than 37,000 people died of COVID in the United States, according to the CDC. Over the next 35 days, [the Pfizer treatment] could prevent tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. But instead, the FDA won’t immediately let Pfizer sell a drug it knows to be lifesaving.”

The FDA is killing thousands of people by delaying Pfizer’s and Merck’s COVID treatments https://t.co/QPTZWXLfyu

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) November 10, 2021

“This isn’t the behavior of a government set on maximizing public health,” Carney concluded. “This is a bureaucracy religiously devoted to its own tedious rules to the point of defeating its own purpose for existence.” 

It certainly is. This latest FDA blunder serves as a sobering reminder of how entrenched, strong government agencies jeopardize development and hurt society. That's a lesson that will stick with you long after the epidemic is over.

“[This is] a framework that will create millions of jobs, grow the economy, invest in our nation and our people, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path not only to compete, but to win the economic competition for the 21st century against China and every other major country in the world,” Biden said in a recent speech. “It’s fiscally responsible. It’s fully paid for.”

“For much too long, the working people of this nation and the middle class of this country have been dealt out of the American deal, and it’s time to deal them back in,” he continued. “If we make these investments, there will be no stopping the American people or America. We will own the future.” 

Simply put, Biden argues that his plan to spend trillions will create jobs, grow the economy, and increase wages—all without adding to the $28.9 trillion (and counting) national debt. Yet a new Ivy League economic analysis undercuts every single one of these claims. 

Analysts at the Wharton School of Business reviewed President Biden’s latest $1.85 trillion framework proposal and ran the numbers to project its likely economic impacts, under two distinct scenarios. One is the rather unrealistic scenario where it actually only costs $1.85 trillion. Yet because the proposal is structured with many budget gimmicks and short-term spending authorizations that would likely be reauthorized if implemented, its real cost could be as much as $4.25 trillion. Wharton also modeled the likely impact of this scenario. 

In the first instance, assuming the president's initiatives are only as expensive as he claims, the analysis reveals that his pledges fall short on practically every front. The tax hikes mentioned would not cover the full program, and in the long run, they would result in a 2% rise in government debt. (It may seem insignificant, but it amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars in government funds!) While Wharton predicts a minor gain in earnings, it also predicts a contraction in the overall economy, as well as a decrease in company investment and hours worked.

How's it for reviving America? And those bleak findings are based on Biden's optimistic assumptions. The investment's return is much worse under the more realistic case, where expenditure allowances are correctly accounted for and the true cost is north of $4 trillion.

Over the next 30 years, the government's debt would rise by 25%, amounting to trillions of dollars in new spending that would not be paid for. In comparison to the baseline, the economy would decrease by roughly 3% throughout this time period, with earnings falling by 1.5 percent and hours worked falling by 1.3 percent.

It's simple to understand how government expenditures may result in such poor outcomes. Big government spending proponents, such as Joe Biden, focus primarily on the ostensible advantages of their policies.

Every dollar spent, however, must originate from someplace else in the economy, whether directly or indirectly. The resources that the government invests in one area are, by definition, resources that the private sector would have invested elsewhere.

Tax increases to partially pay the expenditure dissuade people from working and tax money that might otherwise be invested. The debt used to partially pay the spending "crowds out" resources that may be used for private investment. It's also not just a wash. Government redistribution often results in net economic losses because it takes resources that would have been distributed based on market signals and instead allocates them based on politics.

As Ludwig von Mises famously put it, “The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.” 

The Wharton approach is able to consistently anticipate the negative effects of Biden's ideas by keeping the realities of trade-offs in mind.

For the president's ambitions, this analysis is nothing short of disastrous. Biden wants to seize and spend trillions of dollars from the American people, promising us the world in exchange. However, both Ivy League experts and fundamental economic concepts reveal how hollow those assurances are.

Key to financing the spending plans is a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent. When factoring in state corporate taxes, the US’s average corporate tax rate would reach a whopping 30.9 percent. And according to a new Tax Foundation analysis, this punitive level of business taxation would be the third-highest corporate tax rate among developed countries, outstripped only by Colombia and Portugal.

Why is this a problem?

Well, the US would become a less attractive place for business investment, which is bad news for entrepreneurs, workers, and customers alike. Businesses would understandably be less likely to conduct business in the US when they could go to dozens of other developed countries with lower tax rates. As a result, our economic competitiveness would suffer. 

“Returning to near the top of the OECD in corporate tax rates would… disincentivize investment and encourage firms to shift profits and locate elsewhere, resulting in fewer job opportunities for Americans and less tax revenue for the U.S. government,” the analysis explains. 

Yikes.

Biden claims his tax-and-spend agenda is meant to reassert America’s dominance. But the costly tax hikes the president seeks would set our economic competitiveness back on the global stage. That’s not “Building Back Better”—it’s shooting ourselves in the foot.   

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“We’re rapidly approaching a milestone in our country, and it’s not a good one: $30 trillion in debt,” Paul noted in a fiery Senate speech on Thursday. He said that the federal government is accumulating “$2 million per minute” in new debt.  

Why is the fiscal situation so out of control? The senator blamed the “bait and switch” politics of big government spending and the welfare state.  

“People are saying we’re going to give you free college, free cars, free cell phones, free this, free that,” Paul said. “Everything in life will be free, you won’t have to work anymore. The problem is there are ramifications. Money doesn’t grow on trees… money’s got to come from somewhere.” 

“Either we borrow it… we tax people for it, or we simply print the money,” he continued. “When the Federal Reserve prints the money, as we increase the money supply, the money we already have becomes worth less and less. It loses its purchasing power. This is the insidious tax of inflation. Inflation is a regressive tax… it affects the working class, lower income people, and those on fixed incomes, much worse.” 

Paul’s arguments come amid data showing that consumer prices have risen at the highest annual rates in 30 years. The senator blamed, in part, policy decisions and reckless spending at all levels of government for this harmful trend. 

“Right now we’re facing 5 percent inflation, because of the massive borrowing that really both parties instituted in the last year,” he said. “They decided that the result of the pandemic would be to close everything down, destroy the economy, and give everyone free money. It’s primarily been Democrats this year… but both parties have a certain responsibility for this.”

“As government gets larger and larger, people think they’re getting free stuff,” he continued. “But it’s not really free. This is the allure of socialism… it’s a false allure… socialism doesn’t work. It is this alarming tendency to want to offer everybody everything and say it’s going to be free. Many of these things backfire.”

The senator briefly explained how the federal government wound up nearly $30 trillion in debt. For one, he cites rampant waste like the feds’ spending millions on a study into whether cocaine makes quail more sexually promiscuous. 

“Studies like that are littered throughout the federal budget,” he lamented. 

But bigger picture, the vast entitlement programs composing our welfare state are what’s driving us off a fiscal cliff. 

“Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, other welfare, military…  if you look at all that on an annual basis, before you get to the extraordinary binge of the last two years, we were already $1 trillion short every year,” Paul explained. “So last year we added a couple trillion more… and our deficit for one year was $3 trillion. We’ve never borrowed that much. There are going to be ramifications. You’re already seeing some of the ramifications; prices in the grocery store going up, prices at the pump go up, prices going up faster than wages.”

Despite all these warning signs, many of Paul’s colleagues in Congress are pushing $4.5 trillion more in spending on top of it all. 

“If we’re not careful, we’re going to spend this country into oblivion,” the senator concluded.   

He’s right. But it’s not too late to avert this path, if more of our elected officials wake up to our fiscal crisis and heed Rand Paul’s warning.

WATCH: Reacting to Communist & Socialist Tik Toks (Warning: CRINGE)

The Associated Press interviewed Dr. David Greenhorn on the subject, who works in the emergency department at England’s Bradford Royal Infirmary. The number of mental health crises he has seen, such as suicide attempts, has gone from a couple per week pre-pandemic to now several per day.

“This is an international epidemic, and we are not recognizing it,” Greenhorn said. “In an 8-year-old’s life, a year is a really, really, really long time. They are fed up. They can’t see an end to it.”

Dr. Richard Delorme heads the psychiatric department at one of the largest children’s hospitals in France, and he offered a similar warning to the AP.

Delorme pointed out that it is clearly COVID restrictions and lockdowns taking this toll on children that end up in his hospital: “What they tell you about is a chaotic world, of ‘Yes, I’m not doing my activities any more,’ ‘I’m no longer doing my music,’ ‘Going to school is hard in the mornings,’ ‘I am having difficulty waking up,’ ‘I am fed up with the mask.’”

Delorme’s hospital went from seeing roughly 20 suicide attempts per month involving patients 15 or younger, the AP reports, to more than double that—and, disturbingly, more determination than ever before in the attempts. 

“We are very surprised by the intensity of the desire to die among children who may be 12 or 13 years old,” Delorme said. “We sometimes have children of 9 who already want to die. And it’s not simply a provocation or a blackmail via suicide. It is a genuine wish to end their lives.”

This is one of the most painful paragraphs I’ve ever read, let alone had to write about. Merely typing out this story flooded my eyes with tears. But the life-threatening unintended consequences of drastic pandemic measures are too important to overlook.

Government restrictions that would’ve been unthinkable two years ago have been forced through amid the fear and uncertainty that the pandemic’s outbreak understandably wrought. Advocates undoubtedly hoped to save lives. Yet government restrictions have proven dubious in their effectiveness, with both studies and real-world examples demonstrating little clear relationship between lockdown stringency and COVID deaths. 

In the meantime, lockdowns and other restrictions have harshly curtailed social interaction and, tragically, catalyzing the aforementioned youth mental health crisis. Here in the US, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 25 percent of young adults considered suicide during the lockdowns, while overall mental health and suicide rates appear to have spiked as well. 

The child suicide is only the latest mortifying revelation showing just how big a toll these policies have taken on us. We must factor this human damage into our analysis when it comes to ending pandemic restrictions; not just COVID case counts.

Like any policy, public health orders must be evaluated on their outcomes. As Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” Pandemic lockdowns may have stemmed from an earnest desire to protect the public; but their consequences have done the opposite.

Why? Well, any government action, particularly sweeping mandates, has not just its intended effect, but its second- and third-order unintended consequences.

“Every human action has both intended and unintended consequences,” economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan explained for FEE.org. “Human beings react to every rule, regulation, and order governments impose, and their reactions result in outcomes that can be quite different than the outcomes lawmakers intended.”

When it comes to lockdowns, we’ve extensively documented the unintended consequences at FEE, including isolation, depression, suicidality, unemployment, drug abuse, domestic violence, and more. Such severe second-order effects offer a painful reminder of why policymakers should be humble in the scope of their actions. Sweeping lockdowns are anything but humble: They presume that bureaucrats in an office somewhere can save society with top-down orders and nothing will go wrong.

Governments the world over must consider more than mere COVID case counts when evaluating current and future lockdown policies. The damage we’re inflicting on children is too devastating to be waved away in the name of public health—it’s an emergency in its own right.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the city of Petaluma will ban the construction, expansion, rebuilding, and relocating of gas stations after a unanimous vote by the City Council. It does so in hopes of forcibly speeding up the transition to electric cars with the goal of reaching “carbon neutrality,” net-zero carbon emissions, by 2030.

Petaluma has become what officials said is the first city in the country to permanently ban the construction of new gas stations. https://t.co/tbdBBYhStQ

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) March 2, 2021

“We need to do our part to help mitigate and adapt to our changing weather patterns that exist because of all the carbon we put in the atmosphere,” Councilwoman D’lynda Fischer said. “I hope other cities will follow suit and if they have existing fossil fuel stations that satisfy the needs of their community, they too will decide that they don’t need any more.”

“Prohibiting new gas stations serves the public interest by preventing new sources of pollution that adversely impact environmental and human health," reads the legislation.

Why This Regulation Won’t Accomplish Its Goal—And Could Actually INCREASE Emissions

The goal of this policy is clear. By banning new gas stations, the City Council wants to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions from driving gas-powered vehicles.

However, the opposite could actually occur. Why?

Well, the only reason new gas stations would be built in Petaluma is if businesses can observe a strong demand for additional gas stations in the area. Banning them from constructing new stations does not eliminate this demand. So, what could end up happening, ironically, is that more emissions are released as Petaluma residents have to drive farther to existing gas stations than they would have had to otherwise, or if they eventually have to start leaving the area to get gas.

Similarly, this law will artificially restrict the supply of gas in Petaluma—meaning that, as basic economics teaches, the price of gas will likely rise significantly. Higher fuel prices disproportionately hurt poorer citizens and strain household budgets.

But from the City Council’s perspective, this might be exactly what they want; hoping higher gas prices will prompt more people to switch to electric cars. However, the higher prices could inadvertently just prompt many people to drive out of town to purchase gas, where prices will remain significantly lower. This seems like a much more realistic and financially feasible adaptation for most people than to purchase entirely new, expensive electric cars.

Moreover, even to the extent that such a ban would encourage people to switch to electric vehicles, it’s unclear this would necessarily mean lower carbon emissions. The extent to which electric vehicles reduce carbon emissions depends on what electricity source is used to power the car. If it’s fossil fuel based—nearly 70 percent of California’s power still comes from non-“renewable” sources—then electric vehicles must still significantly contribute to carbon emissions.

That’s right: All the costs and inconvenience imposed on city residents could be for nothing.

Unintended Consequences Always Plague Big Government Interventions

Unfortunately, this kind of policy dysfunction isn’t exclusive to environmental issues or Petaluma, California. Whenever government bureaucrats huddle together in a City Hall, State Capitol, or even Congress, and try to make sweeping rules for millions of people, drastic unintended consequences will inevitably follow.

“Every human action has both intended and unintended consequences,” economist Antony Davies and political scientist James Harrigan explained for FEE.org. “Human beings react to every rule, regulation, and order governments impose, and their reactions result in outcomes that can be quite different than the outcomes lawmakers intended.”

They dubbed this the “Cobra Effect.”

Davies and Harrigan told the comical yet revealing tale of how an Indian city placed a bounty on cobras to try and solve their infestation problem, yet achieved the opposite result. Why?

At first, more people hunted cobras to get the bounty, and the cobra population decreased. Yet then individuals started breeding and raising cobras at home in order to get the bounty again. When the government cancelled the bounty because the population had seemingly declined, citizens released all the cobras they had been raising in their homes into the wild.

The end result was a worse infestation of cobras than the city had to begin with. The farcical outcome brings to mind the words of economist Robert P. Murphy, who wrote for FEE that “It’s not enough... to endorse legislation that has a nice title and promises to do something good… people need to think through the full consequences of a policy, because often it will lead to a cure worse than the disease.”

This timeless principle remains true whether we’re talking about cobras in India or gas stations in California. It’s just a shame Petaluma’s City Council will have to learn this lesson the hard way—while residents pay the price.

But the state of the economy doesn’t support this spending bonanza—not even close. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting a “rapid” resurgence in economic growth and a slower but steady return to pre-pandemic employment levels without any further stimulus. (We’ve already spent an astounding $4 trillion). And top free-market economists interviewed exclusively by FEE all argued that Biden’s drive for more massive stimulus is driven by politics, not sound economics.

“We absolutely don't need another multi-trillion dollar stimulus,” Texas Tech economics professor Alex Salter said. “We've already spent $4 trillion fighting COVID since last year. Lack of spending isn't our problem. Government should spend more on producing and distributing the vaccine, and otherwise get out of the way.”

Meanwhile, economist Stephen Moore of FreedomWorks argued that government spending can actually be a negative for the economy, because the money has to come from somewhere else. 

“Helicopter money merely redistributes wealth—it does not create it,” he said. “We don't need this extra stimulus.”

Moore, who served as a top economic advisor for former President Trump, compared the Biden effort to similar stimulus bonanzas under the Obama administration, which resulted in the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.

“We learned from the Obama $830 billion "shovel ready" plan that Keynesian stimulus does not work,” Moore said. “Obama’s own numbers indicate that we ended up with fewer jobs than if we had done nothing at all to ‘stimulate’ the economy.” 

Another prominent free-market economist, Mises Institute Senior Fellow Robert P. Murphy, offered a similar assessment. He called the Biden proposal “economically unjustified” and suggested that “any of its good features could be achieved more directly through other policies.”

The economists interviewed by FEE took issue with not just the Biden plan’s massive spending levels and sticker price, but also several of its specific proposals such as more “stimulus” checks and the further expansion of ultra-generous unemployment benefits—originally sold as “temporary” last March—that would result in many Americans earning more money by not working, thereby disincentivizing employment.  

“More checks don't make sense,” Salter, the Texas Tech economist, said. “Household balance sheets are strong. Many households saved large portions of the previous checks. Yet another direct payment isn't about economic stability. It's about buying political support.”

For his part, Murphy sympathized with the plight of those crushed by COVID-19 lockdowns but still viewed the checks as a misguided proposal.

“It is understandable that citizens want relief checks to compensate for coercive measures preventing them from earning income, but we shouldn't continue this trend of everyone getting checks from the government,” he said. “Ultimately the public isn't made richer by paying taxes that are then partially handed back to them.”

The economists had particularly harsh words for Biden’s proposed expansion of unemployment benefits way above normal levels. Unemployment payouts have long been shown in economic research to prolong unemployment and increase its baseline level.

“Expanding unemployment benefits during a recession has a predictable result: slower employment recovery,” Salter argued. “We should be helping people get back to work—not making it more financially attractive to stay home.” 

“The $400 a week unemployment benefit bonus included in the proposed bill incentivizes unemployment because it pays people not to work,” Moore added. “Passing this bill means risking the loss of more than 5 million jobs if people opt to receive unemployment benefits rather than work.”

In sum, though, the economists all agreed that no amount of spending can “stimulate” an economy that is in some places still locked down, and in many places still at least partially restricted. If people cannot legally go to work or engage in commerce, no amount of money-printing or number of blank checks can bring about prosperity, they agreed.

“The best thing we can do for long-run economic health is get everything opened back up safely,” Salter said. 

Murphy reached a similar conclusion, arguing that “the best way to help the economy is to end political lockdowns, allowing businesses, workers, and  customers to find the optimal mix of protective measures to deal with the threat of COVID-19.”

Of course, Biden’s “stimulus” legislation is really a political wishlist, chock-full of partisan policies like a $15 minimum wage and subsidies for poorly-managed blue states. Yet this isn’t immediately obvious from Biden’s rhetoric or much of the media’s coverage. As a result, the proposal polls well with voters.

With the growing chorus of free-market economists calling out the president’s pretense, hopefully the public will soon realize that there’s little economic justification for Biden’s political spending push.

Millions of Americans have struggled financially since the March outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But new reporting reveals that rather than successfully helping those truly in need, the California government sent up to $31 billion in taxpayer money earmarked for “COVID relief” to fraudsters and crime rings.

The Golden State has paid out an astounding $114 billion in expanded unemployment benefits since the crisis began last spring. Of that sum, officials have confirmed 10 percent as fraudulent. That’s $11.4 billion definitely lost to fraud. The state has identified another 17 percent of the paid out funds as potentially fraudulent, meaning there’s roughly $20 billion more in suspected losses.

"There is no sugar coating the reality, California did not have sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud," California Labor and Workforce Development Agency Secretary Julie Su said.

“As millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft,” Su admitted.

In one particularly egregious example of just how easy the system was to game, the Golden State sent roughly $1 billion to criminals currently behind bars in jails and prisons who filed false claims. California’s fraud problem is particularly glaring, but it’s not an outlier. It’s part of a national trend.

The Context: Runaway COVID Fraud Has Been a National Problem

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the federal government rapidly expanded the unemployment benefits system in the March CARES Act. They opened unemployment benefits to vast categories of new workers and flushed the system with federal cash payouts on top of existing state-level benefits. 

This was done with the benign intention of helping people in need and getting relief money to the struggling. But it created a broken system where welfare paid more than work for 70 percent of the unemployed, disincentivizing economic recovery. And the cash-flush, hastily expanded welfare programs quickly became a scammer’s dream and an attractive target for criminals.

From Rapper ‘Nuke Bizzle’ allegedly stealing $1.2 million and writing a song bragging about it to a Nigerian fraud ring—yes, seriously—wreaking havoc on Washington State’s system, outrageous examples of COVID unemployment fraud quickly began to crop up. All in all, the government lost a whopping $36 billion to fraud in 2020. (And that’s just the fraud we know about!) This is more than the entire unemployment system paid out in benefits in 2019. 

Fraud Isn’t Specific to COVID or California—It’s Systemic

Some might look at this dysfunctional situation and blame it on the chaos caused by COVID-19 or the unique incompetence of California officials. While both factors undoubtedly played a part, they can’t fully explain what happened here. Runaway fraud is a feature, not a bug, of all big government programs.

Why?

In private enterprise, the profit motive drives employers to limit waste and inefficiencies of all kinds. They exert downward pressure on employees, who are often fired if they allow enormous waste to occur. In all such private enterprises, those spending money, directly or indirectly, have skin in the game. The opposite is true in government.

There’s no profit motive driving efficiency. This key aspect of private enterprise is replaced by bureaucracy, which is kryptonite to efficiency and accountability. Indeed, the aforementioned California official who oversaw this scandal, Julie Su, is actually receiving a promotion. President Biden has nominated her to serve in his administration in the Department of Labor.

Let alone a promotion, this kind of waste and dysfunction could simply never occur in free-market enterprise over the long-run. Any business that engaged in it would lose out to competition and go bust. Of course, there’s no such check on government bureaucrats.

Big Government Always Means Spending Money Inefficiently

At its core, the administration of big government programs inevitably involves detached bureaucrats spending other peoples’ money. As Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously explained, this by its very nature incentivizes inefficiency.

Think about it like this.

When you shop for yourself with your own money, you have every incentive to avoid waste, look for bargains, and ensure you’re getting a quality product. Similarly, when you spend other peoples’ money on yourself, a gift card for example, you still have an incentive to shop frugally and seek quality. 

But consider the opposite scenario.

“If I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get,” Friedman famously wrote in Free to Choose. “And that’s government.”

In California, we’ve just witnessed a particularly egregious example of how wasteful big government can be. Yet rest assured, similar fraud and incompetence is happening in your state too.

New reporting reveals that Chief Financial Officers at top American companies are “considering raising prices, cutting workers’ hours and investing in automation to offset a potential rise in labor costs.”

CFOs are gearing up to raise prices, reduce workers’ hours and ramp up technology investments as they face the possibility of higher labor costs under a Biden administration, @markgmaurer reports for @CFOJournal @WSJ. https://t.co/t6Kscf5lu6

— CFO Journal (@CFOJournal) November 12, 2020

“Companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Potbelly Corp. and Texas Roadhouse Inc. are already doing the math to assess what a higher federal minimum wage could mean for their operations and cost base,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Some executives fear that increases to the federal pay floor would drive up wages across income classes, hurting profits and forcing businesses to find savings to offset higher spending on labor,” the paper continues.

First and foremost, we can expect businesses to respond to artificially-high wage mandates by cutting jobs and reducing employee hours.

Why?

Well, labor is a product like any other. If the cost of soda was artificially mandated at $10 per can by the government, the simple fact is that consumers would buy less of it. When employers are legally forced to pay more for labor than it is worth in the market, they naturally and inevitably do the same.

“By the simplest and most basic economics, a price artificially raised tends to cause more to be supplied and less to be demanded than when prices are left to be determined by supply and demand in a free market,” famed economist Thomas Sowell wrote in Basic Economics. “The result is a surplus, whether the price that is set artificially high is that of farm produce or labor.” 

“Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero,” Sowell concluded. “And that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage."

The government may determine and decree a “living wage” under a minimum wage law, but unless the worker actually finds an employer willing to pay him that much, he will remain unemployed with a hypothetical right.

— Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) July 12, 2019

Ample evidence confirms these theoretical predictions.

For example, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that enacting a $15 minimum wage nationwide would destroy from 1.3 to 3.7 million jobs. Similarly, analysis from the Employment Policies Institute concludes that a federal $15 minimum wage would kill 2 million jobs.

These studies aren’t outliers. A research review by the Cato Institute concluded, “The main finding of economic theory and empirical research over the past 70 years is that minimum wage increases tend to reduce employment.”

So, it’s fair to assume that the warnings CFOs are offering about potential slashes in employment can be extrapolated beyond their specific companies. Proponents of a $15 minimum wage might intend to help workers, but they will inevitably and invariably put millions of them out of work altogether if their efforts are successful.

Meanwhile, other companies told the Journal they would pass the costs onto consumers by hiking prices. (Is that a win for the working class?)

And in an another twist, some companies said they would seek additional opportunities to invest in automation and eliminate their demand for labor altogether in lieu of paying mandated wages that far exceed a worker’s value.

“Pool Corp., a distributor of swimming pool supplies, plans to ramp up investments in technology to offset the potential rise in labor costs,” the Journal reports. “The company would look to reduce manual processes such as product orders and certain warehouse operations.”

“[Automation is] the most significant investment that we can make...when it comes to lowering the impact of potentially higher labor costs down the road,” Pool Corp CFO Mark Joslin said. 

All of this is bad, bad news for workers. You know, the group that a $15 minimum wage is supposed to help.

So, let’s hope that Joe Biden’s minimum wage fantasies never become law—or workers will pay the price for his naiveté.

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