The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. HEALTH
British medical journal The Lancet estimates that as many as 62 million people could die in a global flu pandemic.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on why we should be skeptical of such estimates:
“The 62 million-death sound-bite is the product of statistical modeling that uses worst-case death rate estimates from the 1918-1920 pandemic influenza – an epidemic that medical historians believe killed somewhere between 20 million to 100 million people. In addition to the obvious uncertainty surrounding the actual death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic, the researchers ignored several key (not to mention glaring) differences between 1918 and 2006.”
2. ECONOMICS
President Bush announces his support for a raise in the federal minimum wage.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on why increasing the minimum wage is often good politics but bad economics:
“Politicians love the minimum wage. It is a perfect issue on which to demagogue, since it promises benefits to the public while requiring no tax dollars to be spent, because the costs fall entirely on private businesses. And its costs on workers are hidden — there is no organized political pressure group of people who would have occupied jobs that an increased minimum wage kept from coming into being. But policies that create good political opportunities for populist grandstanding are often bad policy, and that’s true with the minimum wage. It is economic nonsense, premised on the idea that government can mandate a free lunch: It would be nicer for everyone to make more money, so there ought to be a law!”
3. TECHNOLOGY
Time magazine declares its Person of the Year to be “You,” a reference to the millions of people participating in interactive online media outlets like YouTube.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Journalism Fellow Jeremy Lott on what Time did with the thousands of initial nominations they received online:
“It’s worth noting that the selection was really the opposite of a democratically informed decision. A lot of people put in great efforts to vote for their choices, and what did the staff of Time do? Did they cede some of their coveted big media gatekeeper status and acknowledge the wisdom of the little guy? No. They decided to toss those results and do something completely different: a trend story about the social effects of better, cheaper technology.”