- Did the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) censor a meta study showing that lock downs had no effect on covid?
- A smart pill — the size of a blueberry! — can be used to automatically detect key biological molecules in the gut that suggest problems, and wirelessly transmit the information in real time.
- Robin Hansen: World population will peak in about thirty years, and then will likely fall by half every generation or two.
- How the government sets Medicare prices: it’s “a pattern of combining dated, imprecise cost reports with idiosyncratic and opaque adjustments that were not constructed to guarantee the best outcomes for the dollars spent.”
Author: John C. Goodman
Friday Links
- From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity: “Why is the U.S. government spending $1.7 billion purchasing 20 million covid vaccine doses for kids?” and “Gavin Newsom Admits He Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong on COVID Lockdowns.”
- A scholarly argument for e-cigs.
- CTUP Question: How can Washington spend $1.2 trillion ($9,000 per American household) on anti-poverty programs and yet still have nearly 40 million people in poverty?
- Opioid update: The 300 counties that received the most doses of prescription pain pills from 2006 to 2013 later had the highest death rate from illicit opioids.
- Peter Coy reviews the Cato book, “Superabundance.”
- US per capita income growth rate for the past 150 years: remarkably steady at 2%.
- Nearly half of adults under 30 do not have a primary care doctor.
Why Two Parents Matter
- Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families.
- Children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They are more likely to become single parents themselves, perpetuating the cycle.
- Almost 30 percent of American children now live with a single parent or with no parent at all. Single parenting is less common in white and Asian households, but only 38 percent of Black children live with married parents.
Bidenomics
Real incomes at every decile were lower and income inequality was greater than in 2019. Americans in the bottom 10% of earners were 6.3% poorer last year than in 2019 while those in the top 5% saw their incomes decline 4.1%.