Editorials

As is well known, Zoom Video Communications has been one of the emergent. Owing to the need for people to connect personally or professionally while locked down, usage of Zoom has soared. This happy reality for the San Jose-based company has reflected in a stock price that has tripled in the past s…

With the announcement of the lockdown, President Cyril Ramaphosa also implemented a national state of disaster. Before the lockdown, the country’s economic growth hovered between one and two percent. More than ten million people were unemployed. Given the incredibly harsh lockdown that was imposed,…

So, more parents are teaching kids at home. That upsets the government school monopoly. Education “experts” say parents lack the expertise to teach their kids. Without state schooling, “learning losses…could well be catastrophic,” says The New York Times. Home schoolin…

States are belatedly (and far too tentatively) easing their coronavirus lockdowns, many without having met the absurd CDC benchmarks for doing so. Customers are joyfully returning to previously shuttered restaurants and parks, some even discarding that symbol of subjugation: the outdoor mask. The m…

As soon as a good thing becomes commonplace, we assume that its presence is just the ordinary state of affairs, and we forget to be grateful for it. On the other hand, the loss of a good thing often causes us to appreciate it anew. This may never be more true than when your air conditioner goes out…

If you say the lockdown has gone on too long, that you want to return to some possibility of ever having a livelihood again, you’re a science-denying troglodyte, an antisocial hedonist, who will crawl over the bodies of sick children and dying grandparents to get to that restaurant so you can fill …

There is no known treatment. Public opinion is split on how to tackle the outbreak. Those words could apply to the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, they also apply to the yellow fever outbreak that swept through America’s capital city not long after the American Revolution. The 1793 episode shows us tha…

Every way of organizing community life (and that’s what “the economy” is — one important part of community life) brings with it certain advantages, certain disadvantages, and certain risks, and the disruptions caused by the coronavirus epidemic have exposed some of the weaknesses in our way of doin…

Not in Sweden, which has chosen a rather laissez-faire approach. The borders have been kept open, and Swedes are free to travel within the country, visit bars and restaurants (with some restrictions), parks, hairdressers, gyms and most other places. The cornerstone of the Swedish response is its co…

The good news is that as states let businesses reopen, many of these folks should be able to get back to work. But most may have little incentive to, according to a new economic working paper that finds two-thirds are making more unemployed. The Cares Act increased normal state unemployment benefit…