We already see soaring prices, empty store shelves, shortages of critical products, factories shut down, workers unemployed, and people freezing in their homes. Soon, progressives will be blaming capitalism itself and demanding more government controls if not the outright seizure of the means of production. But in fact, these disruptions to what had been a smoothly operating integrated global economy that had raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the last three decades are all due to progressive policies being enforced by those very governments that stand ready to seize even more power over our lives.
There are multiple sources of the troubles bedeviling the international division of labor, but they all have one thing in common: bad government policies pushed by progressives.
Start with COVID, a highly communicable virus that can be lethal if left untreated, especially in people with comorbidities including obesity and diabetes. Governments around the world for the first time in human history decided to quarantine the healthy, not the sick, and went into "lockdowns" for a disease that has a 99.5% recovery rate is most dangerous to an identifiable subset of their populations: the elderly, the obese, and the already ill.
Those lockdowns constricted production, and the resulting unemployment temporarily deferred demand for many goods, including durables like cars and home appliances. In the United States, tax-free payments were offered to unemployed people that were more lucrative than the taxable wages they might receive if they returned to work, resulting in a predictable artificial labor shortage, further crimping the manufacture and distribution of many goods.
Many of the same factors were at work internationally. Jack Phillips of the Epoch Times explains:.......... To Read More.....
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