Why We Need More Than a Holiday From Sales Tax Holidays

Although the summer equinox started a little over a month ago, the summer break is already winding down. Students are gearing up for the academic year. Part of that gearing up is having the parents buy school supplies and backpacks. In an attempt to boost consumer spending, state governments have implemented what are referred to as sales tax holidays (see below). We already see such states as Florida and Tennessee are implementing sales tax holidays this summer for school supplies. 

A sales tax holiday is a "limited-time period where a state allows sales tax to be waived or reduced on categories of items." State tax holidays typically last a few days, but can last longer. These temporary sales tax exemptions are not limited to school supplies. States have enacted sales tax holidays for such goods as computers, clothing, groceries, and sporting goods. This year, more states are looking to expand these tax-free periods due to inflation and large state budget surpluses. While sales tax holidays are a great political gimmick, they do not make for great tax policy. 

Much of what makes a sales tax holiday ineffective is the temporary nature of the exemption. The assumption made by proponents is that the tax holiday boosts additional sales. As a report from the Federal Reserve Bank suggests, what happens is that the sales tax holiday only shifts the timing of the purchases instead of increasing overall purchases (Aladangady et al., 2017). Since sales tax holidays primarily shift purchases, as opposed to increasing them, they do very little to increase economic growth. This makes sense since sales tax holidays are usually offered when demand is at its highest and most inelastic, thereby doing little to shift overall demand curves. 

The temporary nature also means time-based discrimination. Why should a purchase during one small window of time be time-exempt while the same product during the rest of the year is taxable? Also, what is a consumer to do if they cannot purchase that weekend? Some are working or on vacation. Others could be in between paychecks during the sales tax holiday, especially if the holiday is only a few days. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago shows that those who benefitted the most were those with incomes over $70,000 because they had the financial stability and resources to time their purchases (McGranahan and Marwell, 2010). 

Time is not the only form of discrimination. Sales tax holidays are generally arbitrary on the items that they produce. Aside from creating economic distortion and reducing market efficiency, these holidays also complicate inventory management and taxation. For the exemption to be successful, retailers need to comply with the tax code to if they are to be at all successful. The tax code should be as simple as possible. However, it takes a lot of paperwork and man-hours to wade through red tape for an exemption that typically lasts for a few days. 

This red tape and complication in the tax code creates more opportunity for tax evasion. Mentioning tax evasion is notable because one of the advantages of using a consumption tax is that a sales tax is easy to track, measure, and tax (Fritts, 2020). It ends up being complicated to make so many adjustments for such a short period that many businesses (small businesses in particular) do not want to deal with the compliance or adjusting cash registers. 

Finally, some retailers might exploit the tax holiday by increasing their prices. This would reduce the benefit of the sales tax holiday to the consumers (e.g., Hawkins et al., 2003), which is one of the main reasons for such a tax holiday. 

Sales tax holidays do not increase purchases, promote economic growth, or provide relief to consumers, especially those from low-income households. The fact that you need a tax holiday in the first place implies that the current sales tax structure is too burdensome. Sales tax holidays are first and foremost a distraction from the fact that sales tax holidays do nothing to provide long-term relief. It must be bad when tax policy think-tanks both on the Left and the Right cannot stand sales tax holidays. If politicians want to make a true difference, they should work on making a more competitive tax system that works for consumers and producers alike. 

Should Sweden and Finland Be Joining NATO? Here Are 9 Arguments Against the Proposal

Much like Switzerland, Sweden developed a reputation for neutrality that dated back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Sweden was able to maintain its neutrality through the gruesomeness of both World Wars and the Cold War. It looks like its tradition of neutrality is coming to an end. The war between Russia and Ukraine has Sweden rattled enough that Sweden, along with its neighbor Finland, has petitioned to join the military alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A couple weeks ago on June 28, Turkey lifted its veto to the Nordic nations' bids to NATO, which led to a memorandum being signed between Turkey and the Nordic nations of Sweden and Finland. 

Before filing its petition on May 18, Sweden and Finland have been security partners to NATO. In 1994, they joined NATO's Partnership for Peace. They also contributed personnel to the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans. In 2014, Sweden and Finland were designated as Enhanced Opportunity Partners. This is about as close as one can be to NATO without actually being in NATO. 

Bringing in Finland would expand NATO's border with Russia by an extra 800 miles. The ascension of these two countries would expand NATO's presence in the Baltic Sea and Arctic Circle. Sweden and Finland have military assets to contribute, as we see below. Given that Sweden and Finland are already part of the European Union, it seems to make sense to have these two nations make their security commitments align with the West, as well. Both countries ascending at the same time could lower risk in comparison to submitting bids separately. As intuitive as it might seem, is it really the right choice?   

1. In spite of the war in Ukraine, the geopolitical dynamic between Russia and the Nordic nations has not fundamentally changed. Russia has made no threat against Finland or Sweden. There are no major disputes between the countries. Ukraine notwithstanding, post-Soviet conflicts that Russia was involved in entailed at least some form of a casus belli. Neither Sweden nor Finland have had a major military dispute with Russia since the Continuation War of 1941-1944 (also known as the Second Soviet-Finnish War). Plus, Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine and has been losing forces without near-term replacements. Factor in Russia's military engagements with the economic sanctions and one can see that given current geopolitics, the likelihood of war between Russia and the Nordic states is quite low. 

2. Russia's invasion of Ukraine does not warrant NATO protection. You would think Russia would have been granted a swift victory, especially given its troop size and military might. As of July 3, Russia has only managed to invade the eastern portion of Ukraine (see below). If anything, Russia's lack of progress in the Russo-Ukrainian War signals that the Russian military has been dealing with its own deficiencies, ranging from intelligence, personnel, and training to corruption and low troop morale. Russia does not have the geopolitical clout, the land, or military might that it once had in the Soviet era. Russia's subpar performance combined with the economic sanctions that will most likely weaken Russia in the medium-term and the cost Russia is paying for the Russo-Ukrainian War should put Swedish and Finnish minds at ease. 

3. Sweden and Finland joining NATO could create more geopolitical problems in the medium-term. Right now, Moscow does not hold any grudges against Stockholm or Helsinki.  However, it is possible that the Russo-Ukrainian War does not go well. Russia could set its sight on Finland prior to Finland's ascension to NATO. Why? Not only to gain domestic support of the Putin regime, but also as a preventative measure to make sure it does not join NATO. 

Another factor to consider is that post-Soviet Russia has instigated wars over three instances of potential NATO expansion: Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), and Ukraine (2022). If Finland joins NATO, it would more than double the land border between Russia and NATO alliance members. Such a move would serve to give fodder to Putin's theory that the Western powers are closing in on him. Russia's ambassador to Finland, Pavel Kuznetsov, already said that Moscow would respond with retaliatory countermeasures in the event that Finland joins NATO. Deputy Chairman of Russia Security Council Dmitry Medvedev similarly said that Finland joining NATO would double the land border of the NATO alliance with Russia, which would mean refortifying Russia's borders. 

Why give Putin a pretext for escalation and reinforce Moscow's security fears when the status quo has brought stability in the Baltic region for more than half a century? If Moscow were to act similarly in Latin America, or Mexico more specifically, it would be reasonable to assume that the United States would respond in an escalatory fashion. Sweden and Finland should not be allowed entry to NATO for the same reason that Ukraine was not allowed: for fear of escalation with Russia, nuclear or otherwise.  

Bringing Sweden and Finland into the fold of NATO adds two more triggers to Article 5 of NATO, which is the Article that stipulates the collective defense of the alliance. It is true that Sweden and Finland would receive protection under Article 5 if they become members of NATO. It is a double-edged sword because they could also become potential targets, provided that Russia and NATO perceive one another in adversarial terms. Swedish and Finnish military capabilities would become part of the calculus of Russian targeting and strike prioritization in the event of a conflict between Russia and NATO. Conversely, if Russia attacked Poland or another Baltic country, Sweden and Finland would be obligated by Article 5 to help out in a conflict that does not directly affect their national security.  

4. There is doubt as to whether Sweden and Finland could contribute to collective defense. This is not to say that Sweden or Finland do not have military capabilities because they do. The Swedish island of Gotland could help NATO secure the Baltic region. Finland's military has 23,000 active military personnel and an extra 238,000 reservists it could muster up within a month. Finland's main weakness in its military is its lack of missile defense. Sweden's major source of national defense is its navy. While these countries have capabilities to defend their own borders, I have to wonder whether these resources would be adequate to "contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area" (per Article 10 of NATO) and help NATO beyond the context of their own borders. 

Historically, the modern states of Sweden and Finland have been much more focused on defending their own borders than collective defense. What's more is that the two nations have not spent much of their respective GDPs on military expenditures (see World Bank data below). According to World Bank data, neither Sweden nor Finland meet the NATO criterion of spending at least 2 percent of GDP on military expenditures, although increased spending suggests they could reach that minimum. 

Also, Sweden had to reinstate its conscription in 2017, which could signal a weakness in its military readiness. Since Finland shares a border with Russia, its military has prepared its reservists have greater readiness. As another point to consider, Sweden and Finland are cozier with China than the U.S. government cares for, which would make it more difficult for Sweden or Finland to contribute anything significant to collective security policy as it pertains to eastern Asia. Overall, these factors suggest that Sweden and Finland would not provide much beyond territorial defense of their respective countries to the NATO alliance.  

5. Even if Russia were to attack, it would not mean that Finland or Sweden would be hung out to dry without NATO membership. As we have seen with Ukraine, the Western powers are willing to give arms and resources in the event of war, even without NATO membership. Also, Sweden and Finland are part of the European Union. The European Union provides mutual defense under the Treaty of Lisbon. Sweden and Finland can receive military aid without having to join NATO. Refusing entry to NATO would not be leaving Sweden and Finland in the lurch, but rather maintaining a status quo that has been working for decades. 

6. Defending Sweden and Finland would not be so easy. Neither Sweden nor Finland have a direct land route from continental Europe. Everything coming from NATO allies would need to be deployed by airlift. Russia's war with Ukraine has illustrated that Russia has the ability to neutralize air deployments. Sweden and Finland would be in range of Russia's ground missile, anti-ship, and surface-to-air systems. Furthermore, the Russo-Finnish border could be a challenge to defend given the terrain. While Finland could be a great launching site for attacks, the double-edged nature of this geographical relation means that it is vulnerable to Russian attacks. This is not to say that the task of defending the Nordic nations is impossible, but it would require considerable resources and coordination to make it work for NATO. The actual cost might be higher than the projected cost (see Point #8). 

7. The larger the alliance, the more territory that NATO would have to defend in the event of a war. If the member countries proportionately contributed, that would be one thing. The issue is that the United States does the heavy lifting. The United States is de facto the primary source for providing security guarantees for 29 nations. Given NATO's history, it is reasonable to assume that the United States will be on the hook for Sweden's and Finland's security commitments, much like it has with other NATO allies. It is dubious that the Nordic nations would share the burdens of the military costs. Sweden has not even been admitted to NATO and it has already asked the Pentagon for naval assistance. 

8. Much like with Ukraine, defending Sweden and Finland is not of vital geopolitical importance to the United States. I say this as someone who is almost half-Swedish and has an affinity for the Nordic region. Yes, there are multiple countries within the NATO alliance system. However, in practice, it would be the U.S. military that would disproportionately spend on Finnish and Swedish defense. Europe should bear more responsibility in preserving peace in Europe, but European powers have been content on letting the United States shoulder much of that burden. 

As such, it makes sense to ask how adding Sweden and Finland would benefit U.S. interests. What is the exact threat that Finland or Sweden face? We already know that a Russian attack on these two nations is unlikely (Point #1). We know that Sweden and Finland would not be left to fend for themselves in the unlikely event of war (Point #4). What is the measurable benefit of adding Sweden and Finland to NATO? The United States arguably has more vital security interests, especially in Indo-Pacific Asia. 

9. Since the United States would be paying for a large portion of the bill for the ascension of Finland and Sweden to NATO, we should ask what the cost of ascension would be. A 2021 analysis from Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) asks what NATO enlargement would look like and what it would cost. According to CSIS, it would cost as much as $11.6 billion upfront and $1.8 billion annually after that (CSIS, p. 93, 104). In 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spent $741.7 billion. If the United States were responsible for half of that $1.8 billion, it would mean a 0.1 percent increase of the DoD's budget. 

Conversely, the United States has a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 100 percent, something the country has not seen since World War II. National debt issues will continue to haunt the United States for years to come, especially since there is no sign of government spending slowing down. The United States should be shrinking its military obligations in light of the long-term insolvency that such an expanded role costs. We should not add the defense of Sweden and Finland to the list of unnecessary military expenditures, especially since it would not improve the geopolitical situation for anyone. 

[As a side note, the United States should examine how much they support Europe vis-à-vis NATO. A professor at MIT found that having European nations be more responsible for its regional security could save the United States up to $80 billion annually (Rosen, 2021).]

Conclusion

Yes, there is instability in Eastern Europe that we have not seen in decades. How Russia will act in the upcoming months is a wild card, especially with the Russo-Ukrainian War. I can understand how Finns and Swedes could feel a heightened sense of concern. At the same time, Russia's actions in Ukraine do not justify an expansion of NATO by allowing Sweden and Finland to enter. Forgetting the fiscal costs for a moment, allowing for these ascensions to pass has the real potential to exacerbate geopolitics in central and eastern Europe. 

NATO membership for the Swedish and Finnish nations is superfluous at best and injurious at worst. Perhaps ascension to NATO could result in a deterrent effect. I'm not going to hold my breath because history and international political theory (specifically that of balance of power theory) have me think that an escalatory effect is much more likely. In any case, I hope that events do not reach to such a level where we have to read about this in future history books.

Robert Reich Continues to Lie About the Negative Effects of the Minimum Wage

With abortion and gun control dominating the news cycle, I wanted to take some time to cover another controversial topic: minimum wage. This past July 1, we saw multiple jurisdictions increase their minimum wage, including the state of Minnesota and the City of Los Angeles, as well as the City of Chicago and the greater Cook County. It sounds like a great victory for the working class. The minimum wage argument goes something like this: "If you wage the minimum wage to a living wage, it helps out workers. The workers are more productive, which in turn helps out employers. It's a win-win." 

American author and political commentator Robert Reich made that argument about a week ago in his piece entitled "4 Myths About Raising The Minimum Wage." For Reich, we should raise the minimum wage to $15 because "it is insult to American workers and it's bad for the economy." Reich attempts to debunk four talking points in the minimum wage debate to make it seem as if you can raise the minimum wage without any consequences. The problem is that Reich is flat-out wrong. I have actually called him out before on his minimum wage information in 2015 and in 2014. I ended up spending my Fourth of July weekend writing this piece and calling him out once more. He addressed four points, and I will respond to his analysis in kind. 

1. If businesses have to raise wages, they'll have to cut employees' hours or jobs all together. Reich takes with this argument by saying that "treating workers is worth the price." He then argues that increases in the minimum wage do not reduce the overall number of jobs. Minimum wage increases are increase in labor costs. As we will see throughout this piece today, companies have to account for the increase in expenses. 

Even if we were to forget standard microeconomic theory about price floors for a moment, Reich's fantasy does not play out in reality. When Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15, there was both a decline in hours worked and overall number of jobs. A 2019 review from the Cato Institute on the minimum wage similarly found that cutting employee hours is one way that employers compensate for the minimum wage hikes (Clemens, 2019). 

Not only is there a reduction in hours, but also an overall reduction in jobs. A report from the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at the impact of federal and state minimum wage hikes since 1992. This report also found that there has decidedly been a negative impact on employment (Neumark et al., 2021). 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is the gold standard for legislative analysis, has analyzed the effects of a federal minimum wage hike on more than one occasion. What does the CBO find? Among other negative effects, there would be a significant loss in jobs if the minimum wage were raised to $15. The last time the CBO looked into the possibility raising the minimum wage to $15, the CBO found that it would reduce employment by 1.4 million workers. While some workers would have a higher wage and be lifted out of poverty (900,000 according to the CBO), another 1.4 million would be unemployed. While a wage less than $15 can be an issue depending on where in the United States one lives, the last time I checked, $0 per hour is an even less livable wage.  

2. Small businesses won't be able to afford the higher wages and will be put out of business. Reich argues that a higher minimum wage attracts better workers, leads to better worker productivity, and improve retention of workers. I criticized Reich's turnover argument in 2015 by pointing out that the reason that turnout is lower is because the minimum wage hike disincentivizes hiring more workers. 

But let's get back to the main point. Small businesses have less resources to pay for higher wages, especially now after everything that came as a result of the pandemic. Given the wage structures, they do not have the same economies of scale that larger businesses have. It would explain why the average wage for those working for an employer with less than 100 employees is half of what it is for those working for an employee with over 1,000 employees. 

A paper from the National Bureau for Economic Research found that minimum wage increases created greater financial stress for smaller businesses, including "lower bank credit, higher loan defaults, lower employment, a lower entry and a higher exit rate for small businesses" (Chava et al., 2019). As another example, a paper from Harvard economists shows that raising the minimum wage by $1 resulted in a 14 percent increased likelihood that a mid-level restaurant would exit the market (Luca and Luca, 2018). Is it any wonder that such large companies as Walmart and Amazon support $15/hour minimum wages? They have the capacity to better pay for such wages while driving their competitors out of the respective market. 

3. If the wage is raised, prices for everything will skyrocket and lead to widespread inflation. With the inflation being the highest it has been in over forty years, it is understandable that inflation has become a topic of interest in U.S. politics. I would surmise that there are various contributing factors to this current bout of inflation, although some are more so than others. Even looking at other inflationary periods, I would not put minimum wage at the top of the list as a contributor to inflation, especially if the minimum wage increase is small. After all, minimum wage increases are more likely to be indexed to inflation projections, thereby minimizing impact on overall consumer prices (MacDonald and Nillson, 2017). At the same time, there are inflationary pressures, even if they are modest, as a result of artificially increasing wages for minimum wage workers. 

As previously mentioned, employers are trying to find ways to compensate for the increase in the price of labor that minimum wage laws cause. One of those possible ways is by increasing consumer prices. A Hungarian case study showed that the consumers bore the majority of the minimum wage increase through higher consumer prices (Harasztosi and Lindner, 2019). A research paper led by an economist from the Federal Reserve Bank found a similar response to the minimum wage increases, this time in the U.S. fast food industry. Essentially, fast food prices increased about twice as fast as the minimum wage (Aaronson et al., 2007). Two economists at the University of California at Berkeley who are minimum wage proponents even admitted that passing on the minimum wage increase to the customers is a phenomenon (Allegretto and Reich, 2017). 

While increasing consumer prices is shown to be an implemented strategy, there is a limit to how much increasing consumer prices can be used as a business strategy.  If the price increases are too high, demand and eventually overall revenue would drop. That is the law of demand for you! That explains why employers find other ways in addition to increasing consumer prices to deal with the minimum wage increases. While Reich is technically correct to say that prices will not skyrocket, he is still engaging in exaggerated language to deflect that there are still upward pressures on consumer prices as a result of minimum wage laws. 

4. Most minimum wage workers are teenagers making some extra money on the side; they don't need a wage increase. Reich starts off by talking about teenagers and then goes into the red herring commonly used by minimum wage proponents that minimum wage is not livable. As I pointed out in my criticism of Reich's arguments in 2015, if we strictly look at teenagers and look at the 15-19 age bracket, then yes, there is a small percentage of minimum wage workers in that age demographic. At the same time, this is misleading in terms of what a typical minimum wage worker looks like. 

If we use Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, we see a very different picture than the one that minimum wage proponents paint of a single mother working three full-time minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. I have done this with 2014 data, but I am going to use 2021 BLS data since they are the most recent data from BLS to show that the typical minimum wage worker is far from what minimum wage proponents purport. 

• Age: In terms of age, 44.3 percent of minimum wage workers are 25 or less, although they represent one-fifth of hourly wage workers (BLS, Table 1). 
• Education: 85 percent of minimum wage workers have a high school degree or less. Let's look at those with college degrees in contrast. College degree holders account for 37.2 percent of the overall population (Pew Research), but 14.7 percent of minimum wage workers (BLS, Table 6). Another demographic statistic to remind us that completing a college degree generally helps people with their professional development and earning power. 
• Full- and part-time status. 52.0 percent of minimum wage workers work part-time (BLS, Table 1). 8.9 percent of minimum wage workers work over 40 hours, whereas 5.1 percent work greater than 50 hours (BLS, Table 9).  
• Percent Working at Federal Minimum Wage. There are fewer hourly workers working for minimum wage or less than there used to be. In 1979, 13.4 percent of hourly workers, or 6.9 million workers, worked for minimum wage or less. The percentage and raw number have decreased to the point that in 2021, 1.4 percent of hourly workers, or 1.5 million workers, are making minimum wage or less (BLS, Table 10). 

Conclusion

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is what I think of when I read arguments such as those coming from Reich. Every policy enacted has a tradeoff. Reich would prefer to think that we can simply raise wages without there being any consequences whatsoever as long as one feels as if they can claim moral superiority. The world does not work that way. If laws increase the cost of hiring a worker, employers will find a way to work around that cost increase. We explored reducing work hours, cutting jobs, or increasing consumer prices. There are other ways as well, including automation, scaling back workers' benefits, reducing the quality of the work environment, or playing around with work schedules (e.g., Clemens, 2021; Lordan and Neumark, 2017). 

There is a reason why economics is referred to as the "dismal science"; it points out the reality that we have a limited supply of goods and services, also known as scarcity. Economics is supposed to help us figure out how to best allocate that limited supply. Unfortunately for Reich, a $15 federal minimum wage would harm many of the people that he would like to help.

"Think of the Children," COVID Edition: Lockdowns, School Closures, and Mask Mandates Negatively Impacted Children

Children have been used as political pawns on numerous occasions. Think of how much the argument "think of the children" has been used to push a political agenda. The Religious Right used it to incorrectly argue that same-sex couples are incapable of raising children. It has been used to advance universal preschool and bans on violent video games. It is an argument that does not die because of the emotions that children can invoke invoke in voters. Look at the recent news cycle. The mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas has revitalized the call for more gun control. Those who are upset of the overturning of Roe v. Wade criticize the other side for not caring about children once they are out of the womb. This argument, of course, erroneously assumes that the only way to care about people is if you are in favor of government largesse, but I digress. 

When it comes to public health policy related to the pandemic, it becomes more and more clear over time that there was little to no foresight, cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, or empirical evidence involved with the response to COVID in most countries. As much as COVID policy impacted adults, I really wish that politicians, especially those on the Left in the United States, thought of the children and the policy implications before proceeding because children got walloped as a result of poorly planned COVID health measures. 

It was evident from the beginning that children were not at high risk for COVID. In June 2021, the New York Times posted death rates based on CDC data (see below). They show that children are less likely to die from COVID than they are other causes of death, including drowning, car accidents, and homicide. 

If that were not enough, we can compare COVID deaths to the deaths from a previous pandemic: the H1N1 flu. From April 2009 to April 2010, there were 19.5 million infections and 1,282 deaths for those aged 0-17 (Shrestha et al., 2011). This would make the H1N1 mortality rate for children to be 0.0066 percent. What about COVID? According to CDC data, there were an estimated 25.8 million infections and 645 deaths between February 2020 and September 2021. This would make the COVID infection fatality rate for children 0-17 (as opposed to case fatality rate) to be 0.0025 percent. This would mean that COVID is about 62 percent less lethal than H1N1 for children aged 0-17 years. In 2022, the Lancet published an article showing that COVID has been much less deadly for children than it has been for older demographics, especially those over 75 years of age. 

The fact that children were less likely to suffer and die from COVID makes the costs that children had to undergo more unconscionable. The benefit of COVID policy to children was therefore less than it was for adults. Let us examine how these policies affected children specifically. 

Lockdowns

I first expressed my concerns about lockdown in March 2020. I detailed in May 2020 a list of potential problems, ranging from economy to physical health to mental to not doing much to save lives. As the data come in, we have seen that lockdowns actually caused greater excess death while coming with social costs, which puts a dent into the argument that we needed lockdowns and school closures to protect the elderly or teachers. What were the costs of lockdown to children? 

The United Nation's International Children's Emergency Fund, better known as UNICEF, released a report in October 2021 answering this very question. The results were unflattering for lockdowns. Children experienced higher rates of anxiety and depression. Those who were exposed to pre-existing childhood abuse and neglect experienced higher levels of stress. There is also concern of higher risk of trauma, suicide, loss of family and friends, violence, loneliness, isolation, and sleep deprivation. A longitudinal study from Cambridge University confirms these adverse impacts by showing that children's mental health deteriorated substantially as a result of lockdown (Bignardi et al., 2020). A February 2022 analysis from the British Broadcasting Network (BBC) found a 77 percent increase in self-harm and suicidal ideation as a result of lockdowns. Harvard University has acknowledged the effects that the lockdowns had on the mental health of children. 

If that were not enough, a UNICEF technical note from September 2020 estimated that lockdowns attributed to the 150 million children that were pushed into poverty as a result of everything that has happened. Given how millions of families were teetering on the financial edge prior to the pandemic, it makes sense how shutting down large swathes of the economy and depriving people of their employment had effects for their children, including in health, education, and social development. One peer-reviewed study looked at how the lockdowns reduced the access to housing, nutrition, sanitation, and health services (Cardona et al., 2022). Their global estimate is that 253,500 to 1,157,000 children under five died as a result of the economic downturn in which lockdowns played a major role. 

School Closures

It was not only businesses that ended up shutting down during the pandemic, but also schools. In 2020, the CDC Director Robert Redfield pointed out that it was not their recommendation to close schools, but it happened throughout much of the United States. The Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom also said that it was worse for children to miss school than it is to get COVID. I covered the topic of school closures in July 2020 and illustrated how the costs of school closure exceeded the benefits, but I think the topic is worth revisiting. School closures were part of the overall lockdown policy, but school closures came with their own specific costs. 

One major cost was in terms of academic delay. As this 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on pandemic learning illustrates, 52 percent of teachers had more students start the 2020-21 school year behind compared to a pre-pandemic year. 45 percent of teachers had at least half of their students end the academic year behind. The impact of school closures disproportionately impacted vulnerable students, including those who were high-poverty, English learners, or in special education. To quote UNESCO, "School closures carry high social and economic costs for people across communities. Their impact however is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized boys and girls and their families." 

None of this gets into the challenges facing teachers (including burnout) or how school closures increased childcare obligations for millions of parents. The increased childcare obligations becomes increasingly apparent for parents who work in the healthcare sector and need to be attentive to help fight COVID and other ailments. With all the trauma from the lockdowns, it is no wonder that academic achievement fell behind. These academic and social-economic delays are not merely short-term. They are going to have a ripple effect years out into the future. Here are a few studies:

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the loss of three months is the equivalent of losing 2.5 to 4 percent of one's life income (Hanushek and Woessmann, 2020, p. 9). 
• A joint report from UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank put the estimate at $17 trillion in lifetime earning in present value, which 14 percent of today's GDP (2021, p. 5). 
• Consulting firm McKinsey calculated that by 2040, the economic impact of these learning delays could lead to annual losses of $1.6 trillion, or 0.9 percent of the global GDP. 
• One study from JAMA found that it is not about economic impact or a diminishment of wages, but a matter of diminished life expectancy for our current children (Christakis et al., 2020). Their decision analytical model calculated that missed instruction during 2020 caused an estimated 13.8 million years of life lost in the United States. 
• A report from the United Kingdom's Office for Standards in Education shows how the restrictions resulted in the delay of babies' physical development, babies struggling to crawl and communicate, infants having issues in facial recognition, and a regression in children's independence. No doubt that the impact will be more pronounced as these infants get older and develop.  
• A May 2022 World Bank report found that children experienced a learning loss the average of 0.17 of a standard deviation, or a half a year's worth (Patrinos et al., 2022). One of the authors in this paper also found that a half year's loss in education translates into future earnings being 4 to 5 percent lower (Patrinos and Psacharopoulos, 2018). 
• A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that 10.1 of the 14.2 percentage point decline in passing rates for mathematics courses was due to school closures (Halloran et al., 2021).

Face Masks

Face masks have been politically contentious since the beginning of the pandemic in no small part due to their symbolism. I have written on face masks a number of times, most recently in a two-part analysis (see here and here). The long and short is that face masks did very little to nothing to mitigate the spread of COVID. Maybe masking children was different, especially given all the hullabaloo with masking children at schools. Alas, it was not any different. Arguably, it is less effective given how COVID is much less likely to adversely affect children in the first place. 

The Left-of-Center The Atlantic called children wearing masks "an intervention that provides little discernible benefit" in which we do not have evidence that they work. A preprint report with The Lancet replicated the CDC's methodology using a more robust and longitudinal data set. Their multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that there is not a relationship between school masking and pediatric COVID cases (Chandra and Høeg, 2022). A study from the United Kingdom government similarly found that face coverings in education settings found no statistically significant impact on COVID transmission.

Not only do I want to hammer the point that face masks did nothing statistically significant to protect children, I have to wonder if there was any harm done by face masks in the process. 

• A German-wide study that used a database of over 25,000 German parents (Schwartz et al., 2021), a study that admittedly has methodological limits, pointed out a number of concerns for children wearing masks, including irritability, headaches, difficulty concentrating, less happiness, more reluctance to attend schools, malaise, impaired learning, and drowsiness. The "still face experiment" shows us that children need facial expressions. The lack thereof causes emotional distress (e.g., Weinberg et al., 2008).
• A case study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology examined the effects of prolonged mask usage on healthcare workers in New York City (Rosner, 2020). Some of the causes of concern include headaches, acne, skin breakdown, and impaired cognition. 
• A preprint study from Italy (Martellucci et al., 2022) expresses concern about what happens when people inhale their own carbon dioxide and have a reduction in blood oxygen saturation as a result.  
• It is not only the physical aspects of wearing face masks that bother me. In my previous piece on the topic of face masks, I cover the social and emotional costs of face masks. Since children are more impressionable and are in their formative stages of development, the social and emotional costs for face masks are more pronounced with children. I worry that face masks keep children trapped in fear and anxiety, adversely affect how they perceive themselves (e.g., "there must be something intrinsically wrong with me"), make it difficult to communicate, sullies or deprives human interactions that are vital for development, and dehumanizes others by making people more suspicious of others (e.g., "they are vectors of disease, not human beings"). Given what we know about child development, it is not exactly a stretch to find that face masks negatively impacted children of having a normal, emotionally healthy childhood. 

The challenge of determining harm of face masks is not simply because it is a more subtle public health measure than lockdowns or school closures. It is that the evidence base for "face masks and children" is quite limited and not strong, which is why I hesitate to say anything conclusive about actual harm caused by face masks to children. Even so, everything in life has tradeoffs and that at least some of the aforementioned issues are quite plausible given the nature of face masks and children. Furthermore, given the lack of evidence that masks do anything significant to help people generally or children specifically when it comes to COVID, we should be safe rather than sorry and not force face masks on children. 

Conclusion

The more evidence that we come across, the more evident it becomes that the toll COVID policy exacted on children was tremendous. Children had to deal with greater anxiety, depression, and overall stress, as well as lower quality of life, physical health, academic achievement, and life expectancy. This did not need to happen, especially since children are 99.999 percent likely to survive COVID if contracted. The moral failing for how children were treated as a result of subpar and poorly-executed COVID policy cannot be overstated. It is going to take years to reverse the damage COVID policies inflicted upon children. My hope is that we learn for the next time and actually follow the science instead of peddling fear and being needlessly strict to no avail.

Supreme Court Ruling in Bruen Case Reaffirms the Importance of Concealed Carry

As if the recent mass shootings did not do enough to bring gun control back to the news cycle, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) added fuel to the fire. Back in 2007, SCOTUS ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment established a right to bear arms in the name of self-defense within the home. 

However, state governments that wanted to find workarounds with the Heller case did so. This is where the state of New York comes in. New York state created a law in which those who wanted to carry a concealed handgun in public need to show a special need ("proper cause") to defend themselves. This past week, SCOTUS ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (see ruling here) that this New York state-level handgun law is unconstitutional. According to this ruling, the Second Amendment protects a broad right "to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense." This ruling is the first major case for gun rights that SCOTUS has heard in over a decade. 

This ruling might be limited in its scope. It may very well be restricted to concealed-carry licenses, as opposed to any and all public possession. Even so, it is a win for gun rights. The first point I would bring up is that this case affirms freedom. If the right to life is meant to be an inherent one, then the right to self-defense is part of that inherent right. Not only does my religion of Judaism allow for self-defense, but our modern-day, secular concept of self-defense was influenced by such political philosophers as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.  The Second Amendment was meant to protect the right to self-defense, and it is nice to see SCOTUS confirm the protection of that right more broadly. 

But let's look at this from a consequentialist point and see what the public policy implications are. The justification of defensive gun usage (DGU) is not something that is merely a concoction of the imagination of the Far Right. As I covered last November after the Kyle Rittenhouse case, DGU is quite common. The exact number of DGUs is in dispute. A 2013 study commissioned by the CDC put the range between 500,000 and 3 million. Another study from Georgetown University put the number at around 1.67 million instances of DGU (English, 2021). Even if you assume that 10 percent of DGU saved a life, that number would still exceed the 39,707 U.S. firearm deaths.   

There are those out there who would argue that concealed carry in the public sphere would have terrible public policy implications. For those who are against it, allowing for trigger-happy, impulsive individuals would make it akin to the lawlessness of the Wild West. Does that conception play out in reality based on the evidence? 

There are some empirical aspects of the gun control/gun rights debate that are more clear-cut. For example, I can tell you that we have tried assault weapon bans on the federal and state levels. Assault weapons bans do not work in lowering homicide rates. A similar argument can be made for high-capacity magazine bans and the bump stock ban. Waiting periods are shown to be effective for lowering gun suicides (not for gun homicides), which goes to show that I do not oppose actual common-sense gun laws. It is that I would be more inclined to some common-sense regulations if you can at least show they are effective in what they are meant to do without significant erosion to the right to self-defense. 

As for concealed carry laws, what makes the concealed carry debate interesting is that the evidence base is mixed. I am not going to go through the entire academic literature on this topic, but pick some representative studies to show you how mixed it is. One study from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that right-to-carry laws (RTC) increases violent crime (Donohue et al., 2017). A study from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that "there was no significant association between shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators" (Hamill et al., 2019). Although it is more dated of a study, the National Academies of Science could not find a causal link between RTC laws and crime rates (Wellford et al., 2004). 

To get through the ambiguity, I would go with an organization such as Rand Corporation both because of its reputation and because it is one of the few think-tanks that does not have an explicit ideological leaning. What did Rand come up with? Rand Corporation found that the evidence is limited in terms of proving that concealed-carry laws might increase violent crime. This is more telling because, as Rand Corporation points out, we have more evidence on RTC laws than we do on any other gun policy. If we have a large enough evidence base but it is still inconclusive about whether RTC laws lower crime, it would suggest that RTC does not have a major impact on violent crime.  

There is some intuition as to why those who are carrying would not be a major driver of crime. Those carrying concealed carry licenses are less likely to commit crimes since these licenses in most states require a background check and fingerprinting. This intuition bolsters what I brought up in 2018, which is that there is a lack of correlation between gun ownership and homicide. It very well could be that this lack of correlation is due to the deaths caused by the trigger-happy are neutralized by the ones using guns for legitimate DGU, thereby creating a more net neutral effect on homicide rates.  

I have a couple of additional points to make on the previously mentioned intuition. One, the number of concealed-carry licensees has increased 304 percent between 2007 and 2019 (Lott, 2019) while violent crime has decreased from 1993 to 2019 (Pew Research). If RTC were that terrible, you would see a rise in gun homicides or violent crime as a result of more people carrying handguns vis-à-vis RTC laws. Two, as the Heritage Foundation illustrated in 2019, concealed-carry licensees accounted for 0.7 percent of firearm homicides while accounting for 5.5 percent of the overall population, thereby indicating that they are not a major contributor to gun homicides. 

As the Supreme Court reaffirmed in the Bruen case, we are talking about a right as inalienable as the right to self-defense. To quote Justice Clarence Thomas from the Bruen ruling, "We know of no other constitutional rights that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need." At the same time, I do not believe that the Second Amendment should be a free-for-all in owning whatever sort of weapons you want. After the Charlottesville attack, I made the point that a violation of the "fighting words doctrine" to incite violence with one's speech is an exception and curtailing of freedom of speech. Yes, I very much believe in freedom of speech, but there are some notable and exigent exceptions. 

I believe the same goes for the Second Amendment. The right of self-defense to be paramount to the ideals of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I also think there are some limits on what one should own. For example, I think most people would think that we do not need nuclear weapons for self-defense. As for fully automatic weapons, it is more debatable than nuclear weapons, but most people would agree that fully automatic weapons are not necessary. 

My point is that there can be some actual common-sense gun regulations that could help minimize violent crime while still preserving the right to self-defense. Calling a policy "common-sense" while it is not shown to keep the public safer is not common sense at all. Given the evidence we have for RTC laws, that would seem to be the case here. If the government is going to pass a gun law that is actually common sense, the burden of proof goes to the government to show that RTC increases crime, not to a subset of gun owners that are shown to overall be law-abiding.

Why I Cannot Stand the Practice of Asking for Preferred Gender Pronouns

The older I get, the more I realize that anything has the potential to be politicized. This was increasingly apparent during the pandemic. Look at face masks, lockdowns, and vaccines. We should have looked at the efficacy of those measures, determined if the tradeoffs were worth the measure, and do our best to have the science inform policy decisions. As we saw throughout the pandemic, this was far from being the case. This is 2022. Things are so polarized that we have politicized grammar, specifically the politicization of pronouns. 

A pronoun is a word or word phrase that is used to replace a noun. This subclass of noun comes in multiple forms (e.g., subject, possessive, reflexive). Not only do pronouns shorten sentences and make them less repetitive. They have the potential to convey certain information. It can show how many people there are (e.g., "I" versus "we"). There are languages where a pronoun can convey the formality or informality of a relationship. For example, in Spanish, the word "tú" is the singular, informal; whereas "Usted" is the singular formal for the word "you." In Hebrew, pronouns do not only indicate number. Hebrew pronouns are gendered (e.g., את/אתה), meaning that the pronoun has to agree with the verb in gender. 

In recent years, we have seen people relate to their pronouns differently through what is called "preferred gender pronouns." You might have heard someone ask "what are your preferred pronouns" or simply "what are your pronouns?" You might have seen in an email signature or LinkedIn profile someone identifies as "He/Him/His," "She/Her/Hers," or the gender-neutral "They/Them/Theirs." 

The increased emphasis on gender identity has spurred such social practices around preferred gender pronouns (PGPs). The premise of PGPs is based in equity, as well as inclusion of transgender and individuals that identify as gender non-binary. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which is the largest LGBT organization in the United States, believes that "using a person's chosen name and pronouns is essential to affirming their identity and showing basic respect."

You can identify however you want as a form of human agency or as a part of your pursuit of happiness. If the use of PGPs were only an issue of respect or self-identity, I would say, "it's your life; more power to you." Upon further examination, the usage of PGPs in social interactions is far from it. 

My biggest issue about the practice of requesting one's PGPs is the coercive nature of it. I mostly air my grievances about government coercion. However, I have the same reaction when someone attempts this form of coercion in a social setting, such as when someone asks me what my pronouns are. University of Illinois Professor of Gender Studies M.J. Murphy labels such a practice as "a form of social coercion that only masquerades as inclusion" because "such requests 'position' the recipient of the request against their will and without their permission." Professor Murphy goes on to detail how the only responses to such a "request" are either compliance, lying, or refusal. Professor Murphy concludes by saying that "a public request for 'your pronouns' isn't a request at all. It's a subtle but powerful demand that effectively disables the recipient of the request and threatens negative consequences for any questioning, resistance, or refusal." 

This rings even more true considering that this practice most commonly occurs when meeting someone for the first time. There are some contrarian individuals, people who lack social tact, or those who will stick up for their beliefs regardless of the social situation. But for most people, they are going to want to make a good first impression instead of starting a relationship in an antagonistic fashion. While it is subtle, it is nevertheless a power play used to prompt a certain behavior. 

There is another coercive element of the PGP practice I want to elucidate upon further. When someone decides to introduce themselves with their PGPs, they use third-person pronouns, the most common being "he," "she", and "they." I cannot emphasize this grammatical point enough. When I talk to someone directly (in the second-person), regardless of their biological sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, which pronoun do I use in the English language? I use the gender-neutral pronoun of "you." 

When do we use third-person pronouns? Sometimes, if someone is present but are not being addressed directly. If someone is in the room and I refer to the individual in the third-person, odds are that I would simply use their name. But most of the time, third-person pronouns are used when said individual is not present. People who impose the practice of PGPs want to control how you behave and think of a certain individual even when said individual is not in the room. 

As long as we are in a free society, I want to be able to exercise my freedom of speech and express my opinions, including what I think of others. If you think someone is an asshole, you should be able to call them an asshole and complain about why you think they are an asshole. If you think someone is a saint, you should be able to laud their praises. If you think something is a bad idea, you should be free to call out a bad idea. To hammer this point home, I will point out a relevant court case. Last year, the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that forcing someone to use a transgender student's PGP is a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights (see Meriwether v. Hartop et al.). This hearkens back to the idea of "I support your First Amendment right to use pronouns if you want, but I take issue when you compel someone else to do so."    

The court case above reminds us that speech is a fundamental form of expression. Yet the HRC recently tweeted that we should begin a conversation with "Hi, these are my pronouns. What are yours?" I disagree vehemently with the HRC. I should be free to express myself in a way I see fit. Why is it that gender identity should be one of the first things to learn about me or another individual you just met? Why do we pick gender identity specifically? I understand that pronouns are a commonly used part of speech, but why confine people to that single attribute? There are so many facets to identity, which can include race, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, level of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, profession, or pastimes. A better way to go about this while still allowing for authentic self-expression would be with an open-ended request of "Give us your name and one interesting fact about yourself." The practice of "requesting" PGPs limits the way one chooses to express their identity and can reduce the complexity of an individual to biological sex or gender. 

We don't go around the room and ask people what their sexual orientation is because then we would be outing LGB individuals, which would be in poor taste. But by "requesting" PGPs, you're forcing someone who is questioning their gender or who has not come out as transgender to either lie or come out sooner than they would like. Another example of "hurting some of the people that were intended to be helped." If we forced people to disclose their level of educational attainment, it very well could shame or embarrass someone. Could you imagine applying such a practice to race or religion? We do not expect this level of coercion on other aspects of expressing one's identity and individuality. An individual should be allowed to express their identity and various aspects of their identity in whatever way feels comfortable to them. To reiterate, such a "request" is an imposition on freedom of speech and expression. 

There are other reasons that people might not care for being asked a question apart from having their freedom of speech limited. Some individuals, especially those of older generations, are not going to understand the question. For example, Pew Research found that 39 percent of Americans do not know what gender-neutral pronouns are. Pew Research also found that 58 percent of Americans do not know a transgender individual. Asking most Americans what their PGPs are is going to be an awkward interaction. 

There are some individuals that consider themselves to be "gender critical." These individuals are opposed on ideological grounds (more in the next paragraph) because they believe that the idea of sex is "real, important, and immutable," and should not be conflated with gender identity. For those who are gender critical, male-to-female transgender individuals are not really women, and vice versa. The Heritage Foundation encapsulates this view as one for those "who refuse to bend the knee to leftist groupthink, the kind that forces a subjective and manipulable view of one person's self to become a defining reality for everyone else." If you want my nuance on this particular controversy behind "sex versus gender," you can read the analysis I wrote in January 2020. 

This segues into another point. Aside from it being an issue of freedom of speech, the forcing of divulging PGPs is also an issue for freedom of conscience. The ideas of sex being immutable; whether or not there is a major difference between "sex versus gender;" whether identifying with the social roles or stereotypes of masculinity or femininity makes you a man or woman; the prevalence of non-binary genders; if gender is a societal construct that needs to be deconstructed; whether personal pronouns should be based on biological sex or some other factor; and whether gender identity is important are all ideological debates that are embedded in the asking of PGPs. 

In 2022 America, when you state your pronouns and/or ask someone for their pronouns, that is a political statement. It is a statement that you are on the political Left (most probably the Far Left/woke Left) and that you accept certain premises on topics related to sex and gender that I mentioned above. As we will see in the next paragraph, asking about one's PGPs is all but superfluous given certain demographic data. Language exists in part to express and convey information. For almost everyone, stating one's pronouns clarifies nothing. As such, asking for one's PGPs is primarily an act of virtue signaling to let people know that you are part of a certain in-group.

There are others who do not see the point of asking such a question in light of demographic reality. The vast majority of the population is cisgender, i.e., one's gender identity matches their biological sex. Let's take a look at statistics to confirm that notion.

• The Washington Post points out last year how there are over one million individuals that are nonbinary (or about 0.3 percent of the U.S. population). 
• The Left-leaning Center for American Progress found that 0.5 percent of Americans have clinically identifiable variations that would deem them to be intersex. 
• The most recent estimate of transgender individuals is from the pro-LGBT Williams Institute in 2017 when they estimated that 0.6 percent of the population is transgender.

When you add up the percentages for transgender (0.6%), intersex (0.5%), and nonbinary (0.3%)? You get a total of 1.4 percent of the population. That would mean that about 1 in 71 individuals either do not anatomically fit the male/female biological sex binary or their gender identity does not conform with their biological sex. That also excludes that most transgender individuals identify with the gender to which they transitioned, which would probably bring the figure closer to 1 in 125 individuals. While the entire world does not exist in a strict male/female binary, running through these demographic data reminds us that over 98 percent of people exist on one end of the spectrum or the other. 

Take India as another example. Yes, India has historically had hijras, who are individuals that do not fit the male/female binary (e.g., eunuch, intersex, transgender). But India's two main languages, Hindi and Urdu, have a gender binary. There was an acknowledgment of exceptions to the norm while still running society on the norm of a male/female binary. I can recognize that a small subset of individuals do not fit a certain norm while recognizing that almost everyone does. Another way to phrase this point is the following. If you use someone's name, picture of said individual on social media, listen to their voice on the phone, or use other visual cues, odds are that you will have enough information that you would be correct in guessing what their pronouns are without having to ask. 

Up until a few years ago, that is the way the world worked. I could listen to or see someone and guess with a high level of accuracy as to whether they are a man or woman. What happens in the off chance that I am incorrect? I remember growing up and seeing other families' babies. There were times when I thought it was a baby boy and it turned out to be a baby girl, or vice versa. When I made the mistake, I was not scolded or accosted. I was politely corrected by the parents and we moved on. Those seemed like simpler times. 

In 2022, if you refer to someone with a pronoun that is not to their liking, it is treated with indignation as if it were a capital offense, especially if you are dealing with someone who is on the Far Left. Whether someone uses a different pronoun on purpose or simply did not know one's gender identity, there is not an assumption of goodwill. It goes well beyond being a faux pas for these individuals. It is perceived as a microaggression or a form of harassment. Last year, a human rights tribunal in the Canadian province of British Columbia went as far as ruling that intentionally misgendering someone is a human rights violation. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee states that "It is privilege to not [to] have to worry about which pronoun is going to use for you based on how they perceive gender." That is not privilege. 

There are millions on this planet dealing with abject poverty and are figuring where their next meal is coming from. Some do not have access to clean water. Such countries as Ukraine and Venezuela are in such dire shape that the geopolitical events in these countries are creating refugees. Others are dealing with homelessness or living paycheck-to-paycheck. You want to know what privilege is? Privilege is when you have so few hardships that one of your biggest complaints in life is whether or not someone uses certain pronouns in reference to you. Not only is disproportionately complaining about microaggressions privilege, it provides a skewed perspective on the world because it puts minuscule gripes on par with legitimate problems. 

In a free society, there is no right to not be offended. Why? It is not only because being offended is such a subjective, arbitrary, and nebulous concept. I'm sure those on the Left that use PGPs don't care about whether those who are compelled to use PGPs feel offended or not. An essential component to a free society is freedom of speech. As I explained after the controversial Dave Chapelle special aired last year, freedom of speech has an implicit right to offend. You have to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to view the world the same as you. Not everyone views sex and/or gender the same as you. Not everyone is going to understand if you insist on asking for other people's pronouns. Part of being in a pluralistic, democratic society is learning to interact with those who do not think, speak, or act in the same way as you do.

There is no need to command specific language in a free society. Policing word choice by telling me how to speak is as bad as telling me to be silent. Much like it is with political correctness more generally, asking for PGPs is not about convincing others or being understanding. It is an attempt at conformity and groupthink. As author and University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson put it, asking for PGPs is about gaining linguistic supremacy in public discourse using compassion as a guise, a similar phenomenon we see with the woke attempt to make a linguistic shift with the word "Latinx." But if I get you to accept anyone's identity or perception of reality, regardless of whether it is based in reality or not, how powerful is that? What do you call it when you force someone to agree with your conception of life, how things should work, and subsequently act on it by joining in the validation of it? That is a trademark of a totalitarian way of life.

As a side note, you should not be seeking external validation or forcing others to provide that validation to you. If you are comfortable and confident where you are at with how you interact with or perceive your biological sex and/or gender, it should not matter what someone else thinks. Use your pronouns and forget whatever anyone else thinks. If you feel the need to compel instead of convince, it signals a weakness in your argument and your character. It you ask for someone's PGPs and you are offended by a response that does not comport with your worldview, it says more about your woke fragility than it does about the person who objects to being asked what their PGPs are. If someone does not agree, we should peacefully discuss those points while still respecting other' differences in the interim. The coercive nature of asking for PGPs seeks to further divide and cause resentment. 

I will end today's thoughts with a quote from Frederick Douglass: "Liberty is meaningless when the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the first right which they first of all strike down." 

8 Reasons Why a Menthol Cigarette Ban Should Go In the Ash Heap of History

A little over a month ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. Why go after menthol cigarettes specifically? As Harvard University points out, menthol is an agent added to cigarettes to create a cooling sensation that masks the harshness of cigarette smoke. There are bronchodilatory properties that allow for deeper penetration of cigarette smoke into the lungs. Because these cigarettes are smoother and easier to smoke, Harvard University points out that there is greater potential for addiction. By removing a more addictive version of cigarettes off of store shelves, the FDA hopes to reduce tobacco deaths, which are a leading cause of death in the United States. The CDC found that about one in five deaths (or 480,000 deaths) are caused from tobacco smoking. If a menthol cigarette ban could make a major dent in tobacco-related deaths, perhaps a ban could be justified, or so goes the argument. However, as we shall see shortly, the argument for a menthol cigarette ban is nowhere as credible as it seems at first glance. 

1. Past menthol cigarette bans do not have a great track record of reducing smoking. The Canadian banned menthol cigarettes in October 2017. This is significant because Canada is the country with the longest enacted menthol cigarette ban. Prior to 2017, menthol cigarettes were enacted on a province-by-province bases. How did their ban turn out? According to a study from BMJ Journals, 21.5 percent quit smoking. 59.1 percent switched to non-menthol cigarettes and 19.5 percent still smoked menthols (Chung-Hall et al., 2021). Keep in mind that a social desirability bias (i.e., a response bias in which the respondent wants to give an "acceptable" answer) is in play and could very well be over inflating the quit rates. Plus, there is nothing to be said about the possibility of relapse. 

A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) diminishes the BMJ Journals' findings (Carpenter and Nguyen, 2020). Although menthol cigarette sales dropped, non-menthol cigarette sales were unaffected. There was no net effect on youth smoking rates because of substitution, which is noteworthy since the FDA made particular mention of youth in its proposal. For adults, there was more evasion than substitution. Instead of going for non-menthol cigarettes, adults purchased menthol cigarettes from areas in Canada that did not have the menthol cigarette ban. In either case, the ban did not have "any significant effects on population rates of cigarette smoking or quit behaviors for either youths or adults." 

Massachusetts is another example of these phenomena. Massachusetts is the only U.S. state to have banned menthol cigarettes, which has been part of a greater ban on flavored cigarettes. Yes, it is true that menthol sales in Massachusetts plummeted. What is also true, which the Tax Foundation illustrates, is that Massachusetts-based menthol cigarette smokers travelled to other states to get their menthol cigarettes. This form of evasion all but completely negated the effects of Massachusetts' flavored cigarettes ban.

In 2020, the European Union banned menthol cigarettes. According to a post-ban survey conducted by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, only eight percent of menthol smokers in eight European countries quit menthol smoking. As a side note, the University of Waterloo estimates that 1.3 million people would quit with such a ban (Fong et al., 2022). With an estimated 30.8 million smokers in the U.S. (CDC), that would mean a quit rate of 4.2 percent, which is an even lower quit rate than the EU post-ban survey suggests.

I do want to caveat that the data and findings from past menthol bans have their limits. The ban in the European Union is too recent to draw anything too definitive. The data we have on the Canadian menthol ban was prior to 2018 when menthol cigarette bans were on a provincial level in Canada. What the FDA proposes is on the federal level. At the same time, the experiences of Canada and Massachusetts show that demand for menthol cigarettes is high enough where people are willing to find workarounds, whether that is in the form of substitution or evasion.

2. A ban would drive menthol cigarette smokers into underground markets. Since we do not have data from national-level menthol cigarette bans, the best proxy we have is what happens when the government bans a widely-used product in the name of public health. Look at the War on Drugs or the prohibition of alcohol. Those bans did not reduce demand. They gave criminal dealers greater power while driving consumers into underground markets with riskier products. For more on the economic, health, and enforcement costs of the War on Drugs, you can read this Cato Institute policy brief here. 

This country already has an illicit tobacco market that accounts for 8.5 to 21 percent of the U.S. tobacco market, according to the National Academies of Science. Given that a) menthol cigarettes accounted for 37 percent of cigarettes smoked in the U.S. from 2019 to 2020 (CDC), b) the menthol cigarette market has a large customer base, and c) menthol cigarettes are a profitable product, international cartels and U.S.-based gangs are going to want to seize that opportunity to make more money. As such, it is reasonable to assume that such a ban would likely create a larger market for illicit cigarettes while driving cigarette smokers towards an even unhealthier cigarettes, as well as possibly towards harder drugs. 

3. Menthol cigarettes are not more dangerous than non-menthol cigarettes. The Journal of National Cancer Institute found that a menthol smoker's risk of cancer is lower than that of a non-menthol cigarette smoker (Rostron, 2012), which is an interesting finding considering this is the report that the FDA cited in its recent proposal. The risk of lung cancer could be up to 30 percent lower for menthol cigarette smokers versus non-menthol cigarette smokers (Blot et al., 2011). This might have to do with the fact that menthol smokers smoke fewer cigarettes a day (ibid.). In 2020, the U.S. Surgeon General admitted that there is not adequate evidence to infer that menthol cigarettes are more dangerous than non-menthol cigarettes (p. 12). 

4. Menthol cigarettes are not more addictive than non-menthol counterparts. Advocates for a ban stipulate that one of the issues with menthol cigarettes is that they are more addictive. However, that seems to not be the case. A 2022 study from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which was released a couple of months ago, entailed a large-scale study of 16,425 smokers. This study revealed similar quit rates between menthol and non-menthol smokers (Munro et al., 2022). Furthermore, there is not even a positive relationship between the distribution of menthol cigarettes and youth smoking rates (Bentley and Rich, 2020), which further undermines the argument that menthol cigarettes are more addictive.

5. A menthol ban would exacerbate disparities in criminal justice. According to the FDA, 85 percent of African-American smokers use menthol cigarettes, as opposed to 47.7 percent of Hispanic smokers, 41.1 percent of Asian smokers, or 30.3 percent of Caucasian smokers. Yes, smoking menthol cigarettes is an unhealthy habit, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the smoker. But it has also been a perfectly legal habit disproportionately enjoyed by African-Americans. Proponents of a ban argue for health benefits (especially for the African-American community), although that argument has been refuted above (See Points #3 and #4). 

What becomes an issue is that for a ban to take into full effect, it needs to be enforced. Who is going to enforce this ban? Local police officers, amongst other actors. A menthol cigarette ban would give law enforcement a reason to interact with individuals committing a victimless crime. Since menthol cigarettes are disproportionately smoked by black smokers, the brunt of the police enforcement of that ban will be in black neighborhoods. As the ACLU illustrates, a menthol cigarette ban will "disproportionately impact people of color, as well as prioritize criminalization over public health and harm reduction." Not only will there be more police enforcement, but criminal activity and violence will increase, especially in black neighborhoods (See Point #2). As we will see below (Point #6), there are better ways to lower smoking rates than a menthol cigarette ban. 

6. Menthol cigarette bans are not necessary when we have alternatives. As previously pointed out (Point #2), prohibition is a drastic, draconian response with multiple unintended consequences. The response makes even less sense when there are other viable options. There are patches, nicotine gum, or heat-not-burn devices that are alternatives. More to the point, e-cigarettes are shown to be a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes. Cochrane, which is a revered global group of health researchers, also found that e-cigarettes are more effective in helping with smoking cessation than traditional means (Hartmann-Boyce et al., 2020). Our focus should not be on criminalization, but incentivizing smokers to either find other methods to quit or at least use less damaging alternatives such as e-cigarettes (i.e., harm reduction).

7. Menthol cigarette bans come with costs. In public policy, there are no silver bullets. Public policy is about tradeoffs and whether or not the benefits have an acceptable cost. Calling for a menthol cigarette ban is not as simple as "saving lives." Even something as noble as saving lives or improving quality of life for current smokers has a cost. As already alluded to, there are going to be increased costs to enforcing the ban and the other costs related to the criminal justice system (Point #2). There will be the cost of increased criminalization and violence as a result. There is the matter of lost tax revenue. The Tax Foundation calculates that this will cost $6.9 billion of federal and state tax revenue during the first year of implementation (Boesen, 2022). There are also the costs of economic output and the jobs of manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers of menthol cigarettes (see NYC-specific study here).

The costs as it relates to healthcare are not as straightforward. I brought up this point a decade ago when analyzing a cigarette sin tax in California. The Attorney General's Office (AGO) of California realized that disincentivizing smokers has a cost. If a smoker ceases being a smoker and lives longer, that means incurring future costs for healthcare and social services that would not otherwise be incurred. As such, the net fiscal cost is unknown (AGO, p. 17). As we will see below (Point #8), the decision as to whether one risks dying sooner from smoking or lives longer is not up to the FDA, but up to said individual.

8. Adults should smoke whatever cigarette they would like. This isn't the 1950s when smoking was commonplace and society was unaware of the unhealthy effects. We have education on the effects of smoking, public health campaigns, excise taxes, and indoor smoking bans, all of which exist to deter smoking. If people decide to smoke in spite of all of these deterrents, that is their choice. As the Reason Foundation brings up, "Adults in a free society should be allowed to make their own calculations of costs and benefits when it comes to what they put in their bodies, so as long as they are not harming others." 

Menthol cigarettes do not provide an additional threat in comparison to their non-menthol counterparts, so why should the government ban them? If the government is going to be this paternalistic, what's next? Should the CDC go around mandating that we all exercise three times a week or that we eat daily five servings of fruits and vegetables because obesity rates in this country are so high? Most Americans do not get enough sleep. Maybe the government should monitor our sleeping behaviors and mandate how much sleep we should get. There is no overriding, substantiated public health rationale that can justify such paternalistic intervention, and that includes a menthol cigarette ban.  

Postscript

To recap, menthol cigarettes are not shown to be more dangerous or addictive than non-menthol cigarettes. The evidence we have on menthol bans do not show they are particularly effective in lowering smoking rates. Instead, we see a large amount of substitution and evasion. It does not make sense to ban menthol cigarettes when we have other methods to lower smoking rates that do not involve the heavy costs and unintended consequences of prohibition. If the FDA does indeed end up criminalizing menthol cigarettes, it would be a step backwards both for public health and criminal justice.