The Grumpy Economist |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 02:58 PM PDT
 The graph summarizes what I've read in lots of news stories: vaccination is slowing down. There is plenty of supply, but we are running in to people who do not go get the vaccine. This strikes me as a tragedy. (Disclaimer: this is an exploratory post, and I'm anxious to hear about it from more knowledgeable people). It means covid will remain with us as an endemic disease, occasionally breaking out as immunity fades and covid evolves. We're on the 20 yard line, folks, it's not time to punt. I'm pretty darn libertarian, but not about vaccinations. The US should be pushing for near universal vaccination. This is like finishing your dose of antibiotics. We do not have to jump to compulsion. Can we at least allow incentives? Vaccine passports sound like a no-brainer even to a libertarian. Allow me to disclose that I am vaccinated, and allow owners of private property like restaurants, bars, airlines, and so forth to demand proof of vaccination. That provides a nice incentive for people to get vaccinated. Our policy makers seem so completely deranged by the tiniest "equity" concerns that even this simple step is off the table. On NPR the fact that some disadvantaged groups refuse the vaccine means the rest of us can't have passports. Republicans are also refusing the vaccine, and nobody cares about that! Yes, some immunocompromised people can't get vaccines. Well, on that altar are we going to allow everyone else off the hook, or push to get others vaccinated so they don't infect immunocompromised people -- who shouldn't be going to bars anyway. This debate goes on and on, and time is wasting. Even the public messaging has faded away. Our nudgers in chief should be nudging like crazy -- go get vaccinated, people!  I think my best moment as a blogger last year may have been my SIR model with behavior that predicted the reproduction rate would settle down near one. When it's larger than one, people are more careful, including getting the vaccine. When it's less than one, people slack off. We are seeing a massive case of people, and politicians, slacking off of the one most important step, full vaccination.  |
| Posted: 12 Jun 2021 12:59 PM PDT
 All pre-covid. European GDP per capita fell in the decade following the financial crisis. US growth was nothing to write home about, but things could be worse. The we-should-be-more-like-Europe crowd has some explaining to do. (The Word Bank's software misplaced the UK label; it is the red line on the top of the European group.) From the World Bank, HT Marginal Revolution. The graph is in dollars, so part of the effect is that the dollar got more valuable relative to the euro. (Thanks to the commenters who noticed that I misread the graph caption. Blog post now fixed to reflect that.)  Update A correspondent sends along the following graph from IMF data. IMF data uses PPP adjustments, not straight conversion to dollars. So the exchange rate really is an issue in comparing US to EU growth.  Relative inflation has not been that different between the two countries.  At least by these measures, EU inflation has been only very slightly less than US inflation So indeed, the exchange rate is the major part of the difference between the two graphs. Whether PPP or actual exchange rates are "right" for this purpose I leave for another day. Certainly the average American's ability to buy European goods has risen relative to the average European's ability to buy American goods. Why exchange rates diverge so long from PPP measures remains, I think, a central puzzle. But thanks to blog readers for quickly pointing out that the Marginal Revolution graph isn't as immediately relevant as it seemed.  |
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