Having no expertise in epidemiology nor politics…

…I still feel qualified to express opinions regarding COVID-19

Here’s a chart from the excellent 91-divoc site:

(The country you can’t see, overwritten by Switzerland, is Canada.)  What I make of this is that maybe the Swedish approach, relatively unrestricted, works about as well as the Illinois approach, pretty locked down except for big demonstrations. Otoh, if the Danes are similar to Swedes, then the former nation’s lockdown might have been quite helpful in reducing deaths.  To a level almost as low as Texas, tho we’ll see how that works out in the coming month or so.

Go play with the site, recently enhanced to allow comparisons between U S states and nations.  It’s great fun.

Texas schools get funding from natural resources

The Texas General Land Office is that state’s oldest agency, and originally responsible for giving out land titles.  But today it continues to manage 20.3 million acres of land and mineral rights.  (That’s 466 square miles, just a tiny piece of the state.)  Revenue, about $800 million annually, goes into the School Fund, supplementing the $22 billion already there, the income from which goes to public schools.

While this demonstrates that land rent can be used to fund schools statewide, the GLO is hardly a pure implementation of Georgist theory.  It continues to sell (and buy) land, and gets involved in developments which might not make economic sense but benefit insiders.