When the pandemic was in its earliest days of raging through a frightened world, as big governments forced shutdowns and threw fake money at the resultant financial devastation, longtime conservative economic writer Stephen Moore began a daily memo, weekends excluded, offering better ideas.
His goal, as he says now, was “to systematically attack what turned out to be the most economically damaging, lethal, and unconstitutional government policy in at least 100 years.”
Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline reached its 1,000th edition on April 18, and it’s worth a hat tip for Moore’s trenchant analyses. (Moore, by the way, also is a frequent contributor to the pages of the Washington Examiner.) If lawmakers adopted his policies, the nation’s long-term economic outlook surely would be far more salutary. And if the media were as scrupulous about economic facts as Moore is, the public would be far less confused by the Left’s false narratives.
The 1,000th edition is well representative of Moore’s daily wisdom. For example, he notes, with a crystal-clear chart, that while former President Donald Trump is prone to counterproductive tariffs (and some diplomatically useful ones, too), President Joe Biden is far more of an import tax collector, to more significantly deleterious economic effects. This is even before Biden’s hugely misguided call this week to triple tariffs on aluminum and steel that already are causing billions of dollars of harm to the economy.
Another story cites a new report explaining “how three billionaires manufactured our bogus climate crisis.” Apparently, “former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson … each gave $500,000 to fund a project ‘making the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world.’”
Granted, there may be some human-caused global warming. But the overhyped scare tactics have caused incalculable harm to global economics and health, among other realms. Yet, amazingly, the billionaires’ “money went to publish and promulgate a report entitled ‘Risky Business’ that suggested temperature rises of up to 39 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 80 years, unless there was ‘concerted action to reduce future warming.’”
The 2014 report has been extremely influential, catalyzing a host of other flawed studies that skewed policymaking in myriad ways. But its conclusions were, as Moore writes, “preposterous.” The rate of measured warming in the 10 years since then has been only a fifth as bad as this “climate catastrophism” predicted.
Another of Moore’s entries on Thursday takes on bogus studies claiming to show that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies somehow help businesses economically. He notes that two new studies, one by a peer-reviewed academic journal and one co-authored by a Harvard business professor and the president of Morehouse College, refute the claims of what Moore calls “the race hustler industry.”
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All of this is good stuff. And Moore isn’t done. On Friday, he released Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue No. 1,001. Among other items in it are handy charts showing that California’s left-wing policies are causing the state to lose jobs even in its storied tech sector, with conservative Florida being among the biggest beneficiaries, and that whatever slight economic gains the Biden economy seemed to make in 2023 already are being negated in the first part of 2024.
The national discourse needs more fact-based voices of reason such as this. Thanks to Stephen Moore for his efforts.