Keeping up with the FITs, 7/10

Patrick Collison on vaccines to beat COVID; Lee Bressler on cultural degradation; The Zvi on a failed cash-grant experiment; Bressler and Tyler Cowen on Germany's Greens;

On Matt Yglesias’ substack, Patrick Collison writes,

it is probably true that, with competent execution, we could roll out pan-variant COVID vaccines before the end of 2022. Actually making that happen would require significant and coordinated logistical, regulatory, and administrative action. However, it would by no means be impossible. Not having pan-variant vaccines in 2022 is best thought of as a choice.

Lee Bressler writes,

I have noticed that we seem to be normalizing the things that used to be considered a sin.

He lists gambling and drugs. One could add sexual deviancy.

I think that the result is that many individual lives become chaotic. For every person who can handle occasional gambling or occasional use of marijuana, I suspect that there are many whose lives become completely disordered. For every person who benefits from a society that is more permissive toward sexual deviancy, I suspect that there are many who are hurt, especially children who do not grow up in stable families.

Zvi Mowshowitz writes,

It seems that small cash transfers to those in need here in America made them feel worse and maybe even actually makes them worse off somehow? (paper)

He gives his own expectations.

My model would have said that obviously cash is good and cash is helpful, in the short term getting some of it will be helpful. In the long term I’d expect some positive impact from the wealth effect. And in some cases, that money will have a particular jam that it solves or opportunity it enables (e.g. fix your car, security deposit on a new apartment, maybe even give opportunity to start a small business). In those cases it would have a permanent impact, so I would predict some overall positive impact. But in my experience there are enough implicit taxes and poverty traps for such people, and such a cultural lack of the idea of hanging onto money, that it is tough to hang onto funds, so mostly they’d be back where they started.

But the study to which he refers finds even worse results than that. It turns out that getting a windfall and ending up back where you started makes you feel worse than you did before getting the windfall.

I think that we do well to think of two types of low-income people: working poor, who have decent mental health but only modest skills; and dysfunctional poor, who are burdened with mental illness.

Compare: a regime of means-tested entitlement programs, like Medicaid and food stamps, where earning money makes you lose benefits; with a small universal basic income—say, $10,000 for a family of four.

The working poor are better off with the universal basic income. They can more easily escape poverty by working, and they aren’t penalized for marrying.

In theory, the dysfunctional poor might do better with means-tested entitlements. But we really don’t know how to help the dysfunctional poor with income supplements, either cash or in kind. If anyone can help them, it is probably local charity, not national programs of any kind.

Lee Bressler writes,

Germany derived a large amount of its power from nuclear plants.  Russia sold Germany most of the rest of its power.  Germany is one of the most powerful and economically important countries in Europe.  Russia is also large and powerful and likes to cause problems and invade its neighbors.

Russia took a multi-pronged approach to manipulate the German market:

1. Russia backed the “green” protesters as they advocated against nuclear energy.

2. Russia bribed German politicians who were tasked with deciding whether to shut down nuclear plants.  This went all the way to the top, including the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schoder.  Russia had an open offer to German politicians – don’t do anything bad for Russia while you are in office, and we will pay you €1 million per year in consulting fees when you retire from government.

3. The German politicians (on Russia’s payroll) hemmed and hawed about the agonizing decision and decided (unsurprisingly) to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants.

4. These same politicians also decided that it would be a good idea to shift to buying almost 100% of its energy needs from Russia.  To this end, Russia built a massive pipeline directly to Germany, called Nord Stream 2

Tyler Cowen presents a tweet from Mark Lynas:

The SDP-Green coalition has won a vote in the Bundestag backing more coal burning so that the three remaining nuclear plants can be switched off as planned this year. Climate targets may have to be abandoned as a result.