Start with the state’s economy, which had a relatively low jobless rate of 7.6% in July. Construction was never shut down, and schools in much of the state are opening for classroom instruction. The state expected a budget shortfall of $1 billion for the year but the actual deficit was $210 million. Mr. Kemp says sales tax revenue is rebounding and the state hasn’t exhausted its $700 million reserve fund.
This is from a Wall Street Journal editorial titled “Georgia’s Pandemic Progress,” August 24, 2020 (electronic) and August 25 (print).
Recall all the flak that Governor Brian Kemp got for opening too soon. Well, it paid off.
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Aug 27 2020 at 2:37am
He didn’t get flak because his plan would hurt the economy. He got flak because reopening was going to kill people. How many died?
robc
Aug 27 2020 at 7:20am
The seen and the unseen. At the value of life, how many die unseen from a cratered economy?
And the answer to the seen is “way less than NY, whose governor is being praised”.
robc
Aug 27 2020 at 8:05am
More exactish numbers: GA is at 500 deaths/million, which is below the US average of 545 and not in the top 10 states. GA is gaining on the US average, as its current rate is above the US rate, so it might be an above average state before things are through. Although it looks like its “second” (actually first) wave is over with and in decline, so it might be leveling out soon and may not catch the US.
Phil H
Aug 28 2020 at 12:32pm
Thanks! My question was meant as a rhetorical point, because I think DH was dodging the issue, but of course you’re right that the numbers are what should decide the issue. If the decision to reopen didn’t in fact result in a lot of extra deaths, then I agree it was right.
robc
Aug 28 2020 at 3:07pm
I think that is backwards. The decision to close in the first place was the bad decision. It killed more people (the unseen) than would have died from the virus (the seen).
robc
Aug 28 2020 at 3:09pm
And even I am wrong, because it is so easy to fall ino the utilitarian trap.
The correct answer is allowing people to do as they choose. They may be liable if they infect someone else, but that is for civil courts to decide.
Phil H
Aug 29 2020 at 1:10am
There’s a sense in which you’re right about this. If a state is not in fact capable of executing a lockdown effectively, then yes, all it will do is damage the economy.
Because I live in a country that used lockdowns effectively (China), I know they can work. But it’s possible that that perspective is wrong for the USA.
The idea of using the courts to hold people responsible for covid infections is kinda silly, though. We just don’t know where infections come from, most of the time. Contact tracking doesn’t work anything like well enough. And covid spreads so fast that post hoc civil action cannot be an effective preventive measure.
Michael
Aug 29 2020 at 7:53am
There’s no real evidence, only rhetoric, in support of the claim that shutdowns have caused more deaths than the virus has.
In the spring, many states imposed restrictions within a rough span of a couple of weeks. If the restrictions, rather than Covid-19, were causing excess deaths, then one would expect to see those deaths occurring throughout all of the states that imposed restrictions, regardless of their level of exposure to the coronavirus. But the data tend to show the opposite. Maine locked down and did not see excess deaths, for one example. States with a lot of Covid-19 realted deaths saw the deaths.
There have been about 170,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19, and analyses of excess deaths suggest that 170,000 an underestimate of the true number of deaths due to Covid-19. IMHO, the real ‘unseen’ here is the number of deaths prevented by modifications of behavior (whether voluntary or mandated).
https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1299517661798453248?s=20
https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1289290343108599808?s=20
robc
Aug 29 2020 at 12:14pm
Sure there is. We know (roughly) the value of life and the number of life-years lost to covid. We would have needed to have saved an astronical number of deaths to justify the damage to the economy.
It is tiny factions of lives lost that add up.
It is a statistical argument more than an accounting of lives argument. There arent a lot of whole numbers involved.
Michael
Aug 30 2020 at 7:23am
Would you support government action to force people back into normal, pre-Covid patterns of behavior because that would (in your theory) be better for the economy? If not, I think you are vastly underestimating the impact (on both the spread of the virus and on the economy) of voluntary actions taken in response to the virus.
robc
Aug 30 2020 at 4:14pm
No, because I am not a utilitarian.
And I dont think I have underestimated voluntary action. I think at least 40%, maybe as high as 60%, of the economic downturn is voluntary.
I also think a lot of the voluntary actions wouldnt have happened without the mandatory actions, however. A state of fear led to them. Compare with 1968-69. Why so much more voluntary distancing this time?
Mark Z
Aug 29 2020 at 6:00am
In terms of deaths per capita, Georgia had done slightly better than the US average, and from eyeballing the time plots the NYT has, has a current ‘doubling time’ that seems to be about average as well, so they’re not on track to do a lot worse than other states. Georgia has a higher population density that is higher than the US in general. Obviously this isn’t a rigorous analysis of whether a counterfactual lockdown would’ve made a big difference, but at first glance it doesn’t seem Georgia has suffered a peculiarly bad coronavirus outcome because of its policies.
Phil H
Aug 30 2020 at 12:04pm
Yes – that looks as though it might be right, and if it is, then it’s the beginning of an argument that ending the lockdown was the right decision.
David Seltzer
Aug 27 2020 at 6:02pm
I live at the foot of the North Georgia Mountains. According to SmartAsset, the average homeowner in Georgia pays around 0.957 percent of his or her home value on property tax. That works out to about $2,393 per year, assuming an assessed property value of $250,000. The average homeowner nationwide, by comparison, pays 1.211 percent or $3,028. Reasonable zoning rules have resulted in a robust housing market. Property taxes are spread across a broader housing market. I’ve lived in NYC, Chicago and SF. I wouldn’t trade this verdant existence for any of the former.
Robert EV
Aug 29 2020 at 2:35pm
Yep. Major cities suck regardless of where you are, though the coasts (which includes Chicago) are especially bad in that the city is limited in which directions it can spread out.
Comments are closed.