The rise in inflation does not fall from the sky. Inflation means general devaluation of money, not an increase in individual prices. It is the result of the money glut of the last several decades. Avoiding the dramatic consequences could make things uncomfortable.
According to one criticism, Moderna and Biontech, the two manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, have enriched themselves from government subsidies. This is wrong. Without the perseverance of individual researchers and billions in private money, the vaccines would not exist.
Individual freedom by itself is not a political good. Classical liberalism understood the state not only as a threat, but always as a guarantor of freedom. To this end, it can also restrict freedoms, as in the case of fighting a pandemic. Everything is a question of proportionality—and about this some people have justified doubts.
Economists and researchers in the U.S. agree: the Earned Income Tax Credit helps millions of households stand on their own two feet. Work is rewarded, and with the help of this program, one million children have escaped child poverty.
The Covid-19 crisis threw many out of work, many suffered accordingly, and labor markets were also damaged. Depending on the situation, some governments fared better than others. In any case, policymakers can learn a few things from the pandemic.
Capitalism and the market economy are the foundations of our prosperity, which, thanks to globalization, is also spreading to places in which poverty still prevailed decades ago. At the Austrian Academy 2021 experts explain to twenty-two young people why this is so.
It is not globalization, nor the market economy, nor capitalism that is a danger and should be reformed; it is the policies that might provide the wrong, anti-market response to the pandemic that are the real danger precisely to the growth of prosperity in the world’s poorest countries.
Under the guise of the COVID-19 crisis, attempts are being made to use the crisis for a political agenda that would not have found majority support before. The role of the state is expanding. A new policy approach is necessary to secure prosperity.
The Coronavirus pandemic is a golden age for critics of civilization, moralizers, miracle healers and intellectual crisis profiteers. At last, however, the economy and the market are being talked about in a positive light again—high time, because more than a few politicians are enjoying a permanent state of emergency.
Central banks have become prisoners of their own policies with their perpetual monetary glut. Everyone knows this, and everyone knows that everyone knows it. But proclaiming a different message, they shirk responsibility. The party must go on at all costs.
