Editor’s Note

Published January 24, 2022

 

JG of Passadumkeag, Maine, correspondent who spends way too much time on Facebook, writes to ask whether this year’s flu vaccine is even more dangerous than the Covid-19 vaccines.


Michael Glenwood

A disclaimer, JG: unlike many talk-radio hosts and governors of Sunbelt states, I’m no expert on infectious diseases. But I am pretty sure that the flu vaccine won’t make your elbows magnetic, and I am certain that the injection needle is too narrow to allow Bill Gates to slip in some of his world-renowned tracking microchips. So while you continue your exhaustive research on who’s trying to brainwash you to move to New Zealand, do take a break. Check out this issue’s dazzling lineup of economic policy analysis.

Eswar Prasad, the former head of research at the IMF, offers a roadmap to the coming revolution in fintech and digital currencies. “The world of finance stands at the dawn of an era of disruptive change,” he writes. “While the advent of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin has grabbed the headlines, it is likely that a broader set of changes resulting from advances in technology will eventually have a more profound and lasting impact on financial markets and central banks.

“The overall impact could be beneficial in many ways. The new technologies could also, however, unleash major risks, including some that currently might not even be on the radar of regulators and that could end up hurting the economically underprivileged.”

Shuting Pomerleau, a policy analyst at the Niskanen Center in Washington, explains why carbon border adjustments may be critical to administering an efficient and equitable climate change policy — and why getting from here to there won’t be easy. “A border-adjusted carbon tax would incentivize a shift from carbon- intensive goods to cleaner ones, regardless of where the goods are produced,” she explains. “All that is easier said than done, however: border adjustments can be complex, and if designed poorly, won’t work as hoped or could violate international treaty obligations.”

Larry Fisher, a former New York Times reporter who writes about technology and business, offers a surprising glimpse of a future ocean shipping industry that adds no carbon to the atmosphere. “Several of the fuels and technologies needed to put international shipping on track are not yet commercially available — but sails already are,” he notes. “As the golden age of sail was nearing its end, a Finnish engineer named Sigurd Savonius invented a new sail technology based on the Magnus effect that exploits the difference in air pressure on opposite sides of a spinning object,” Fisher reports. And “believe it or not — and I do believe — the economics of sail power is looking pretty compelling.”

Kathryne Cleary, a senior research associate at Resources for the Future in Washington, explains why increasing the energy efficiency of buildings is critical to containing climate change and how we might get from here to there. “As of 2019, energy use in commercial and residential buildings in the U.S. contributed over 30 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions,” she writes. Mandating efficiency improvements is a tough row to hoe, she suggests. But setting “tradable performance standards” — that is, letting markets decide where the low-hanging fruit can be found — offers a promising way forward.

David Rapson and Erich Muehlegger at the University of California (Davis) turn a gimlet eye toward the economics of electric vehicles — and the rationale for subsidizing their breakneck adoption. “The quest for global decarbonization will be decades- (if not centuries-) long,” they remind, and “policies today should stimulate innovation of low-cost, lowcarbon transportation alternatives — and certainly should not foreclose them before they are tested in the marketplace.”

Mitchell Palmer and Erin Cher at the Milken Institute’s Asia Center in Singapore propose a novel way to give (relatively) small investors a chance to buy into private equity. “One possible way to permit retail investors to gain direct exposure to alternative investments is for institutional investors to welcome them as partners,” they write. “The retail investor would (for a management fee) gain access to the significant market knowledge and influence of the much-larger institution. And they would share in the benefits of the deep relationships that institutions build with their managers.”

Samuel Hammond and David Koggan of the Niskanen Center relay the unhappy tale of the IRS — the government agency Congress loves to hate, yet can’t do without. “Decades of budget cuts have left the IRS with roughly the same inflation-adjusted budget it had 30 years ago,” they lament.

“This is despite needing to process over 56 million more individual returns and twice the number of business tax returns annually, all while being saddled with growing responsibilities in social welfare and regulation it was never designed to handle.”

Frank Rose, a senior fellow at the Columbia University School of Arts who describes himself as a “digital anthropologist,” explains the power of narrative in influencing how we think — and work and consume. Here, he introduces the idea of the narrative platform, and then illustrates the outsized impact of the stories narrative platforms can tell with the blossoming of Warby Parker, the online eyeglass store that successfully challenged a multibillion- dollar global monopoly, and the rebirth of Burberry, the century-old inventor of the gabardine trench coat.

Enjoy! — Peter Passell