The world became part of an unprecedented experiment in 2020 when governments began taking control of free economies and destroying them, said Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute in a lecture hosted by Praxis on Oct. 20.
Tucker spoke about the effects of the pandemic response in 2020, arguing that the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic distorted the economy and devastated many markets.
“We could write books listing all the economic calamities caused by the disastrous pandemic response,” Tucker said. “Even today, not many people have grasped the relationship between our current hardships and what happened back in 2020.”
Tucker said government responses in 2020 disrupted economic growth in American markets. The distinctions between essential and nonessential businesses created major distortions in the economy, Tucker said.
“Malls were empty, churches were abandoned. Vast numbers of people huddled in homes, fully convinced that a universally deadly virus was lurking outdoors and waiting to snatch life of anyone foolish enough to seek exercise, sunshine, or, heaven forbid, have fun or friends,” Tucker said. “Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was recommending that all ‘essential’ businesses install plexiglass and paste social distancing stickers everywhere, all in the name of science. America in those days was post-apocalyptic.”
Tucker said politicians used the COVID epidemic to expand their own power. On March 16, 2020, the White House released an order for bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate to close, according to Tucker.
“I’m not sure there’s a more totalitarian order ever issued in the history of humanity by any government,” Tucker said.
According to Tucker, this order distorted the economy and caused lasting impacts on inflation and major disruptions to several markets.
“The economy cannot be turned off using coercion,” Tucker said. “30 months later, we face an economic crisis without precedent in our lifetimes: the longest period of declining real income in the post-war period, health and educational prices exploding, pushing inflation to a high, continually seeing random shortages, dysfunctional labor markets that defy all models, breakdown of international trade, collapse in consumer confidence, and a dangerous wave of political division.”
Ivan Pongracic, professor of economics and faculty advisor of Praxis, said he agreed with Tucker’s assessment of the economic effects of the COVID response. According to Pongracic, the distortions caused by COVID response policies could be extremely destructive to free markets.
“When people talk about the economy, they’re talking about cooperation and coordination of hundreds of millions, if not billions of people across the globe,” Pongracic said. “When you mess with one aspect of it, you have no idea what the full repercussions are going to be. The government comes in like a bull in the china shop. It’s not even aware of what it’s doing. They say it’s for the greater good, but it destroys a bunch of these interconnecting chains in this incredibly complex order.”
Tucker said the worst consequence of COVID policies is inflation.
“We experienced the wild swings from shocking riches to rags in a very short period of time,” Tucker said. “Once the inflation came along, it ate up the value of the stimulus, and all that free money turned out not to be free at all but rather very expensive.”
According to Pongracic, most Americans do not understand the gravity of inflation because the U.S. has not experienced the same economic disasters in the past as other countries.
“Everybody says it’s going to be fine,” Pongracic said. “It’s akin to a person falling from the 20th floor, passing the second floor and saying, ‘So far so good!’ And then splat.”
Sophomore economics major Gwen Thompson said she agreed with Tucker’s explanation of the effects of COVID policy.
“I really appreciated the way that he gave the overview of a lot of different effects of the pandemic response rather than honing in too much on one thing,” Thompson said. “He gave us a really good broad picture of the overall effects on the economy.”
According to Tucker, public authorities create false distinctions between economic prosperity and public health.
“The separation between economics and public health does not hold in theory or practice,” Tucker said. “Economics is about people, their choices, and the institutions that make them thrive. Public health is about the same thing. Driving a wedge between the two surely ranks among the most catastrophic public policy decisions of our lifetimes.”
