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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Bans Private Businesses From Mandating Vaccines for Workers – Reason.com

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Texas governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Monday banning any entity in the state—including private businesses—from requiring that workers or customers show proof of having been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Republican Abbott stated in a statement, that safe and readily available vaccines are the best defense against the disease. But, Abbott also said that vaccines must “always remain voluntary” and “never be forced.” He asked for the codification of the vaccine ban by the state legislature.

As It Texas Tribune The new ban on vaccination mandates represents a notable (and disappointing) change for Abbott. He had previously prohibited government-run entities such as school districts from mandating vaccines. However, he had been very hands-off with businesses. A spokesperson for Abbott told The Associated Press that private businesses do not need the government to run their operations. Tribune August

Abbott thinks so. By sticking his nose into the affairs of private businesses, Abbott is setting up a potential conflict with some of his state’s biggest employers, including Southwest Airlines and American Airlines—both of which are based in Texas and recently told employees to get the shot if they want to keep their jobs. Carveouts should be included in mandatory vaccination policies to protect those with a COVID-19-related infection, or those who are religiously or medically unable to get jabbed. However, these issues can best be resolved between employees and employers.

Some businesses are forced to choose whether they will obey federal or state law by Abbott’s mandate. The President Joe Biden last month announced that businesses employing more than 100 people would have to require their employees to get vaccines or conduct weekly blood tests. This mandate will be enforced by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Biden’s mandate is a vast overreach of executive power. Abbott’s ban of private mandates is no different. While neither is likely to be very enforceable, every Texas business owner should fear being held accountable and penalized by the other side.

Vaccines continue to be the best option for providing protection and ending pandemics. Businesses would expect their workers to get vaccinated. The right to refuse the shot is up to them, but not to be denied any other job. None of these decisions should be subject to coercion by state or federal officials.

FREE MINDS

The new Hulu series DopesickThis is an excerpt from the 2018 book by the same name. It promotes a false narrative about America’s overdose epidemic. Doctors are blamed for prescribing too many pain medications. Jeffrey A. Singer, a physician and senior fellow at Cato Institute. The misguided understanding led to federal and state policy makers adopting policies that would reduce prescriptions of opioids.

This is what happened next:

Prescriptions of opioids per 100 persons have dropped nearly 50 percent since 2012. Almost simultaneously the overdose rate has surged from roughly 40,000 in 2012 to 93,000 in 2020. Meanwhile, pain patients suffer from pain and mental anguish—especially veterans—as doctors abruptly taper or deny opioids to treat their pain.

Purdue Pharma—the maker of OxyContin, and the villain in the book and Hulu series—may have been untruthful with doctors or overly aggressive in marketing, Singer says. However, this is not related to the immediate issue of opioid addiction and chronic pain. They know that prohibition does not work. (Disclosure: Singer supports Reason Foundation, the non-profit that published this site.

FREE MARKETS

Alex Tabarrok writes that the trio of economists who won the Nobel Prize on Monday—David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens—helped usher in a “credibility revolution” with their simple, empirical experiments.Card is most famously known for co-authoring a 1994 study comparing minimum wages in New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Angrist was the author of a study showing that children who are born within the first quarter each year receive marginally lower education.

The importance of Card and Krueger (1994) was not the result (which continue to be debated) but that Card and Krueger revealed to economists that there were natural experiments with plausible treatment and control groups all around us, if only we had the creativity to see them. The thirty-year history of empirical economics was the result economists waking up to natural experiments around them.

QUICK HITS

• The House of Representatives could vote Tuesday to raise the debt limit until December, preventing the Treasury from defaulting on America’s near-record pile of debt. That would clear the way for Congress to…borrow even more (sigh).

• Banks are up in arms about the Biden administration’s plans to track deposits and withdrawals of over $600.

• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has threatened to destroy New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, which will increase tolls for lower Manhattan and Midtown.

• This man was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his role in a robbery that never happened and the cops planned:

• Jon Gruden resigned as head coach of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders after emails containing homophobic and misogynistic language were made public by The New York Times

• A Maryland county where exactly one child has died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic will expand its mask mandate to cover children as young as two.

• “There is more than one way to burn a book…”