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Level of Education

Master's Graduate

Abstract

The panic surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic led politicians to implement lockdowns and issue “stay-at-home” orders that follow in a long line of government attempts over the past century at economic central planning. With only a few notable exceptions among the several states, elected officials and bureaucrats seized on emergency powers afforded them by the onset of the novel coronavirus. In mid-March 2020 the publishing of the now infamous epidemiological models gave governments the sensational information they needed to get the wheels of government planners turning. The present government-induced crisis once again demonstrates that the intellectuals of the ruling class responsible for these policies have been largely insulated from the effects of these policies. Government and intellectuals’ attempts to plan economic activity go back to early recorded history and calls for central planning in the United States were in evidence from the nation’s founding. The twentieth century was replete with illustrations of the repetitive failures of central planning and the stay-at-home orders and lockdowns of 2020 are only the latest adaptation. Government attempts to limit the spread of COVID-19 were carried out by regulating, or planning, economic activities. In a majority of the 50 states, when, where and what items or services an individual could purchase and what type of jobs were deemed “essential” on an arbitrary government list dictated whether an individual could work. These edicts were often carried out by force and the outcomes of these policies were predictable to any student of history or economics.

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