If Michael Clemens’ estimates are correct, loosening up immigration restrictions would be the biggest thing we could do to help the world’s poor—and ourselves. In spite of Trump supporters’ worries about “socialism” under a Biden-Harris administration, immigration is one front on which a Biden-Harris victory might have been a victory for freer markets.

The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This article highlights the exceptions.

You need to make some truly heroic assumptions in order for discretionary monetary policy to outperform rule-bound policy. Rarely do any of those assumptions hold. Never do they all hold. If we want a well-functioning central bank, the best we can do is to have rules.

It’s sad that businesses must waste time, money and brain space on compliance, but businesses ultimately must be bloodless and ideology-blind in pursuit of profits. Thank goodness they must.

This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens. We trusted these people with our lives and liberties and here is what they did with that trust.

Asking Santa for full rationality this Christmas would be to request too much, like Eartha Kitt does in ‘Santa Baby’ when she begs the jolly old elf for a sable, a platinum mine, checks, and a bunch of other luxuries. I would be thrilled with just some sanity in humanity’s stockings.

There are other brave and intelligent people of integrity who have resisted Covid Derangement Syndrome and spoken out against the lunacy and oppression of lockdowns. To all of you I offer my apologies if you aren’t explicitly recognized here. But above all, I offer to you my heartfelt thanks, as well as my well-wishes for a more sane and much less tyranny-soaked 2021.

It is important for public health scientists and officials to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences. This pandemic has proved that many non-epidemiologists understand public health better than some epidemiologists.

Two thousand and twenty has…underperformed, to say the least. We were promised flying cars, and all we got were mask mandates. Has 2020 been the worst year ever, though? Not even close.

We are called upon again to exercise creativity and moral courage in defense of the ideals of freedom. The power of that courage is often underestimated. The road back to sanity and liberty is treacherous and twisted, with dangers and barriers at every step, but it is navigable. The battle can be won.