“Sixty-two percent believe the government is making America’s recovery worse, including more than one in three (35%) who say the government is making things much worse,” the poll found. “When asked whether the federal government has gotten better or worse at handling the pandemic, compared to March or April, a plurality (46%) say worse.”

It’s hard to blame them for their pessimism. A review of the actions taken by federal, state, and local lawmakers over the past year illuminates a series of missteps that led to a higher death toll and resulted in unintended consequences that continue to plague our society.

Here is a review of the government’s eight biggest failures during the COVID-19 crisis.

Miscommunication and Dishonesty

Given that preventing the spread of a new disease is a virtually impossible task, it had to be accepted that some people were going to become ill. Mitigation was the only immediate solution and that required clear, direct communication and information.

This is not what the American people got.

Instead, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did not recommend wearing masks at first, advice that was backed up by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"There's no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview on 60 Minutes.

Fauci and CDC officials later said the guidelines were intended to prevent hoarding of supplies, and then insisted that masks should be used to mitigate the spread of the virus.

That wasn’t the only confusion. In the early days, Americans were hard pressed to obtain testing or ascertain information on symptoms and treatment protocols. At one point, President Trump indicated that using “disinfectants” or beaming ultraviolet rays of light at the body might be a cure. His comments were followed by a surge in accidental poisonings. It was pure mayhem.

Americans were also assured only 14 days were needed to “flatten the curve,” and those who could readily stayed home to give the medical community time to prepare for the oncoming wave of patients. But 14 days quickly turned to indefinite lockdowns—leaving many of our citizens without employment and unable to pay bills or purchase basic necessities.

It must be noted that our medical community would have been more prepared if the government hadn’t suppressed information on the virus in the first place. We now know national leaders were briefed on the pandemic as early as January. That means the country had two months to prepare overflow hospitals, ramp up production of protective wear and ventilators, and coordinate and develop testing methods. Instead, they spent those months downplaying the disease, which prevented industries from obtaining valuable market signals that would have spurred them into action.

This lack of transparency is one reason COVID became politicized early on, leading to distrust and a lack of cooperation among the states and our people.

New York City Regulations Block Usage of Overflow Hospitals

New York City, the original epicenter of the country’s outbreak, was losing nearly 800 citizens to COVID a day in March and April. People could not get hospital beds, many were sent to die without care in hotels, and bodies were placed in refrigerated trucks as people died too rapidly to be properly disposed of.

In response, the city spent $52 million on overflow hospitals....that ultimately saw only 79 patients. Yes, really.

One reason? The city granted ambulance providers exclusive contracts with public hospitals (cronyism!), so when a person called 911 the providers had to take them to their contracted facility—even if it was overrun and there were open beds elsewhere.

As a result, doctors and nurses (some paid up to $2,000 per day) were left playing on their phones at overflow spaces while people died in public hospitals across the street.

Free Market Testing is Blocked

Not only did the government fail to communicate a coming need for testing in January, it actively worked to block the development and processing of tests by private facilities.

Agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services enacted regulatory roadblocks that prevented non-government labs from assisting with testing, even as the CDC took weeks to release its own flawed test.

To participate in testing, a commercial or clinical lab had to complete a lengthy and arduous application process with the Food and Drug Administration to obtain “emergency use authorization.” Few did.

And so, the government squandered precious time where widespread testing and targeted resources could have limited the disease’s spread.

Vaccines Are Delayed

Just two days after Chinese scientists published the coronavirus’ genetic code, Moderna developed a vaccine against it—astonishingly completing its development over a single weekend.

That means we’ve had a vaccine for this thing since January of 2020, but Americans were blocked from accessing it.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prohibited accelerated challenge trials of the product (where volunteers who take the vaccine are exposed to it in a lab rather than waiting to see if they encounter it in the wild). This resulted in almost a full year delay and hundreds of thousands of deaths while we waited for approval.

The vaccine is now available and the FDA has called it “highly effective.”

The US is still blocking the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that is already being successfully used in other countries.

Lockdowns

An abundance of research shows lockdowns do not prevent deaths.

Social distancing and the ventilation of public spaces were appropriate measures to combat the spread of the disease (on top of testing and targeting resources for high-risk populations), and businesses would have implemented reasonable measures with proper communication. (Indeed, data show Americans were taking precautions well before their governors told them to.)

But in many states, public officials went forward with aggressive and unconstitutional measures that forced the economy to close, pushed kids out of school, separated families, and even prevented people from taking walks or playing outside. As predicted, the ramifications have been far worse than the disease.

Evidence suggests the suicide rate has spiked, coinciding with a loneliness epidemic that is sure to produce many more deaths of despair. Domestic violence has increased, as have the number of homes reporting food instability. American students, who already lagged in testing scores compared to other developed nations, are losing irreplaceable ground in their educational pursuits. And the economic downturn the lockdowns created is furthering income inequality and poverty (in both the US and globally).

The consequences of the lockdowns are only beginning to be seen and are certain to have an ongoing impact on our daily lives and our economy.

Nursing Home Deaths and Misreporting

New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, has been heralded by the media as the hero of the pandemic and even received an Emmy and a lucrative book deal for his performance as a politician who cared about his people.

While Governor Cuomo is admittedly smooth on camera, time has revealed he is an atrocious leader whose policies got people killed in more ways than one.

At the height of the pandemic, Cuomo’s administration forced nursing homes to accept sick patients— a response likely influenced by their overflowing public hospitals. As industry experts warned, nursing homes did not have the capacity to both house these patients and prevent the spread of the disease in their facilities, leading to an outbreak among vulnerable populations that killed seniors in droves.

To make matters worse, Cuomo’s office then worked to suppress the true number of nursing home deaths, and advocated legislation that prevents victims of its policies from suing facilities over the deaths of their loved ones.

Schools Held Hostage by Unions

Senator Rand Paul has been one of the few voices of reason in leadership throughout this ordeal. A doctor himself, Paul began pushing back against the nonsensical lockdowns and school closures as early as last summer—pointing to research that showed it was safe to open.

In a televised hearing, Dr. Fauci famously sparred with Senator Paul over this issue, which led to attacks against Paul from prominent voices on the left. But a mere six months later Fauci was singing Paul’s tune, and claiming to have always been in the choir.

It was too little too late. Teachers’ unions have seized control in many states and blocked re-opening, and many families have been left with a hodge-podge of educational options and no ability to take their tax dollars elsewhere.

In contrast, private schools have notably stayed open for the most part.

CARES Act Corruption

In the summer of 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act, a $2 trillion corporate welfare behemoth that lawmakers claimed would stimulate our economy, provide basic needs for people pushed out of work, and save small businesses. But it failed and mostly went to cronyism and special interests.

Ultimately, 25 percent went to big businesses—who were less impacted by lockdowns. Only $350 billion was even earmarked for small businesses, and $243 million of that “accidentally” went to corporations too.

Furthermore, a study of the Paycheck Protection Program under the bill found it preserved 2.3 million jobs, at a cost of $224,000 per job! On the other hand it incentivized many to stay home from work—making it even more difficult for businesses to reopen.

And then there was the fraud. The federal government sent $1.4 billion in checks to dead people under this legislation. And the Foundation for Government Accountability estimates $26 billion was spent on fraudulent claims—an amount equal to the total amount of unemployment benefits paid in 2019.

Vaccine Rollout Rolls Downhill

While the country now has three vaccines (the FDA green lighted Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine Wednesday), with more on the horizon, distributing them to the public has been a debacle.

Federal agencies gave hospitals syringes incapable of extracting the proper dosage, leading to many vaccines being thrown away. Others dumped vaccines because of strict state regulations on who could be vaccinated. When they were unable to find enough people that met the criteria they were forced to discard unused doses.

Yet again, we see government bureaucracy and regulations fail the people they are designed to protect.

The Failures Were Predictable

There is a reason proponents of a limited government continue to ring the alarm on the expansion of authority. We know that the government harms people, even when it's carried out with good intentions or by leaders whom we “like.” And the past year has certainly highlighted that.

It can be assumed that most in politics desired to prevent death and despair in the country over the past year, but arrogance in their own abilities and blind faith in central planning made the pandemic even worse than it otherwise would have been.

It’s important to remember that the same regulations and policies that created mass devastation over the past year also create smaller scale devastation on a daily basis - making healthcare more expensive and putting life-saving treatments out of reach.

By now, we should have learned that the government cannot protect us from the harsh realities of life, nor will it do a good job of providing for our needs or looking out for our best interests.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

It’s a pertinent quote for the moment as that is precisely what most have chosen to do over the past year—and it was all for nought. The government, no matter how big it gets, does not have the ability to protect us from the world’s numerous threats. It can at best guard our liberties and give us the freedom we need to innovate and shield ourselves.

The idea that people are best served and protected when decisions are independent and localized is a concept many struggle to grasp.

“To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order, the economist F.A. Hayek observed. “Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”

Yet Hayek’s vision was borne out during the pandemic’s response. As yet another example, take West Virginia, one of the poorest and most rural states in the country. They were expected to struggle with their vaccine distribution but instead lead the nation. Why? They decentralized the vaccination process—they let local, independent pharmacies handle distribution, and they crushed it.

America has tried the big government route, it didn’t go so well. Moving forward, we should learn from this catastrophe and push for deregulation, limited government authority, and local control.

Judging from the new Axios-Ipsos poll, Americans may finally be prepared to do just that.

Many have struggled to understand the difference between “democratic socialism” and regular socialism since then. When questioned, leaders in the movement have predominantly pointed to the Scandinavian countries as a model. 

Self-described “democratic socialist” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said, “What we have in mind and what my policies most closely resemble are what we see in the UK, Norway, in Finland, in Sweden.” Sanders sticks to this talking point as well, frequently saying that the US should look to Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.

But a closer look at the actual record of the Nordic countries reveals policies that look pretty different than those sought by Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and their ilk.

An Exorbitantly Expensive Welfare State

It is true that the Nordic governments offer government healthcare benefits, parental leave, childcare, and higher education for all citizens—but they pay dearly for it.

Democratic socialists in America propose trillions in public spending under the absurd notion that heavily taxing “the rich” alone can pay for their proposals. In reality, you could tax every “rich” person in America at 100 percent and still come up far short.

The 550 US billionaires together are worth $2.5 trillion. If we confiscated 100% of their wealth, we'd raise enough to run the federal government for less than 8 months.

Perhaps our problem isn't how much billionaires have but how much politicians spend.@SenSanders @AOC

— Antony Davies (@antonydavies) February 1, 2019

But Scandinavian countries are under no such delusion. They know that everyone pays for their welfare state.

According to US News and World Report, "the average Dane pays a total amount of 45 percent in income taxes." And per the Tax Foundation, "Sweden’s top marginal tax rate of 56.9 percent applies to all income over 1.5 times the average income in Sweden." (In the US, our top tax rate only applies at 9.3 times the average income).

These countries also impose extraordinarily high Value Added Taxes of 25 percent, with costs largely being passed onto consumers. 

Personally, having this much of my income seized for the aforementioned benefits sounds like a horrible trade-off.  

Furthermore, while tuition costs are covered for students in Scandinavia, the average student still carries $21,000 in debt when they graduate (only $10,000 less than the average American).

Remember, there are a lot of other expenses when it comes to college like room and board, textbooks, and other living expenses. In the US, students can at least choose cheaper options for themselves such as apprenticeships or community college, but in the Nordic model everyone is forced to pay for college via high taxes even if they don’t attend.

And while these countries were found to be the “happiest” in the world by one organization (whose evaluation standards are based on dubious measures), other reports have found this reputation actually masks a serious, growing epidemic of sadness and suffering, especially among the countries’ youth. 

All in all, I find the Nordic model less than desirable. But let’s say you are still impressed by their system and wish to recreate it. It is important to observe the underlying policies that allowed the countries to generate enough wealth in order to then tax it and fund these programs. 

For sake of space, I’ll hone in on Sweden’s approach.

Wealth Built, Then Squandered 

First, it’s important to know that the Nordic countries were rich before they passed most of their big government programs. Sweden’s parliament actually passed a resolution in 1776 committing to free speech and affirmed free market measures thanks to the advocacy of classical liberal Anders Chydenius. 

The next 100 years saw unprecedented wealth and growth as the country enjoyed laissez-faire reforms, deregulation of its financial markets, free trade, and competition. Then, during the next chapter of its history, Sweden sat out the two World Wars which bankrupted the economies of many other western countries. (An important reminder that if you want nice things, you need to adhere to a non-interventionist foreign policy.)

But as often happens when people become wealthy from capitalism, the country turned its back on the system that brought it so much prosperity and began dabbling in socialism in the 1960s and 1970s. A cradle-to-grave welfare state was created, tax rates increased, and regulation ran rampant. 

It didn’t take long for these naive big-government policies to undo a century’s worth of prosperity. 

By the 1990s the country was in freefall. Talent and businesses fled their tax burden, with IKEA leaving for the Netherlands and Tetra Pak (a major food packager) leaving for Switzerland. Sweden went from being the 4th richest member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1970, to 13th in 1993. A financial crisis swept the country—unemployment sky-rocketed, gross domestic product bottomed out. Ultimately the government raised interest rates to 500 percent to avoid a devaluation of their currency.

The country’s Minister of Finance, Olof Feldt, remarked, “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work. There was no other way to go than market reform.”

Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez need to get up to speed. 

Turning Back Toward Capitalism 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Sweden sold its state-owned companies, deregulated its financial markets (again), and replaced public monopolies with competition. Top tax rates were cut, welfare programs were reformed. And they went even further.

The truth is, if we wanted to study what Sweden has done and replicate it, our focus should be on freer trade, a deregulated product market, ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the abolition of occupational licensing and minimum wage laws, the elimination of property, gift, and inheritance taxes, a reduction in our corporate tax rate, privatization of Social Security, comprehensive school choice, and a rejection of lockdowns.

These sound more like the policies libertarians call for, and nothing like the ideas championed by the DSA, Sanders, or Ocasio-Cortez. All in all, the success of the Nordic countries is largely owed to free-market capitalism. It is only because of their laissez-faire approach that Sweden can afford their large welfare programs in the first place. 

Interestingly, the supposedly “socialist” Nordic countries consistently rank at the top of various economic freedom indexes. As one example, Denmark currently ranks 8th on the Heritage Foundations’ list and Iceland is at number 13, while the US falls to number 17. Finland comes in shortly behind us at position 20, and Sweden at 22. 

Is it possible the leaders of the democratic socialists are this uninformed? Doubtful. 

In reality, they are grasping at straws, because the true examples of where their policies are actually in place—like Venezuela, Cuba, or North Korea—are terrifying. People are going hungry, they can’t get basic medicines, and the ruling class enriches itself as its people suffer miserably. 

Fortunately, for now, the majority of Americans see through this ruse and continue to view socialism poorly. There’s no question that democratic socialism is really just a new(er) term for a very old idea that has never worked.

From Ocasio-Cortez to Sanders, supporters of “democratic socialism” argue it has never been truly implemented. But every time it has been tried it has led to destitution, despotism, and death. Free-market capitalism, to the imperfect extent it has ever been implemented, has led to prosperity, longer-life, and better living conditions.

It’s clear which one we should keep striving for.

The 2020 presidential campaign was no departure. Joe Biden, whose nomination as the Democratic Party’s torchbearer rested largely on the votes of the Black community, spoke frequently about racial disparities and laid out an “economic equity” plan meant to address injustices.

“There's just that sense the deck is stacked,” Biden said in July. “The common theme was how do we break the cycle – in good times, communities of color still lag, in bad times, they get hit first and the hardest and in recovery, take the longest to bounce back."

Certainly, evidence backs up Biden’s statement. Studies have shown that Black Americans were infected with COVID-19 at numbers three times the rate of white Americans, and they were twice as likely to die from the virus. Other data show that people of color were almost twice as likely to lose their jobs as white people during the government-mandated pandemic shutdowns. 

And statistical racial discrepancies persist outside of the pandemic as well. 

One study found that Black Americans were up to six times more likely to be killed by police. We also know that Black people are far more likely to be arrested for selling drugs, even though white people are more likely to be dealers. And decades after Brown v. Board of Education, our public school system is still highly segregated and funded disproportionately—leading to a persisting achievement gap between students of color and white students that creates unequal opportunity.

Libertarians and conservatives have long touted the merits of limited government, rightly arguing that public systems are prone to error, mismanagement, waste, fraud, and abuse. Few could claim that our justice system, public education system, or healthcare system are free of the aforementioned flaws. When our systems fail it harms all Americans, but it is clear that some racial groups are indeed hurt more than others. 

Yet a quick perusal of Biden’s plan to address these systemic inequalities leaves much to be desired. As might be expected of someone who has spent more than 40  years in government, Biden’s “solution” for problems created or exacerbated by the government in the first place usually seems to be... more government. Many of these “solutions” are either surface-level sloganeering or otherwise fail to address the actual underlying issue.

If Biden really means business and wants to eliminate the racially biased outcomes that persist in American life, here are the top four policy positions he could embrace that would actually effect change and eradicate injustice. 

1. School Choice

Our public schools are failing. Our scores consistently rank beneath other first-world countries, and it is estimated that 1 in 5 Americans are functionally illiterate. Furthermore, 22 percent of our schools are overcrowded, meaning attendees do not get the time and attention they need in the classroom.

And per usual, those failures are hurting children of color the most.

It is abundantly apparent that simply throwing money at the problem, as we have for decades, will not fix it. Instead, we need to inject our education system with choice and competition. 

No kid should be stuck in a failing school because of where they live. This is especially true when we consider that many people of color live in the neighborhoods that they do because of policies like redlining, a government regulation that denied insurance in or near Black neighborhoods for decades and contributed to segregation.

Racism was legal and codified in this country for almost 200 years. This system fueled wealth inequality and trapped Black people in poor neighborhoods, which then led to impoverished and underperforming schools. It isn’t hard to see the impacts of racism on our modern school system.

To address this problem, Biden should embrace simple school choice solutions. 

Under these policies, families are given the tax dollars allotted for their child’s schooling in an education savings account (ESA). Similar to an HSA, families can then put those dollars toward a range of educational services, such as private school tuition, homeschooling, online courses, or tutors—or they can reinvest them in their local public school if they feel it is their best option.

This policy not only has the power to break kids out of failing schools, it encourages fiscal responsibility, as families can roll over unspent dollars and funnel them toward higher education. In this model, every family could choose the educational path that is best for their unique, individual child. Nothing would eradicate segregation, disproportionate funding, or the injustice that permeates our school system faster. 

While it’s important to note that Biden would not have the constitutional authority to enact these policies in one fell swoop via the federal government, he could encourage states to adopt this model—and take down any roadblocks. 

Unfortunately, so far, Biden has caved to the pressure of the teachers' unions and indicated he is opposed to school choice measures. If he really wants to heal the racial divide, Biden will have to rethink this flawed position.

2. Occupational Licensing

Occupational licenses are governmental regulations where workers must get permits or licenses in order to work legally in certain fields. Politicians and industry insiders claim these licensing schemes keep consumers safe, but in reality, they are nothing more than a crony protectionist scam to block new competitors in an occupation to keep prices artificially high.

Examples of occupational licensing requirements include high fees paid to the government or expensive and time-consuming educational programs. By forcing those who want to open a business or practice a trade to jump through expensive hoops, occupational licenses block many people from good jobs. 

After the Civil War and through the Civil Rights Act, many of these occupational licenses were put in place specifically to block people of color from working in certain fields. Today, we see that legacy continue as occupational licenses often focus on fields that disproportionately affect Black workers. For example, licenses for hair-braiding force Black women to attend cosmetology school - which costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes months - before they can braid hair even though cosmetology schools do not focus on this skillset. It’s a way to block competition from the market and force those who do want to enter it to first pay the schools and the state.

It is estimated that occupational licensing eliminates 2.8 million jobs a year and, as a whole, is a $203 billion drag on our economy. Licensing has been found to disproportionately affect people of color as well. Some of the licenses require English proficiency, others say a resident must have lived in a state a number of years before they are eligible for the license, and many states block people with a criminal record from obtaining the right to work. (How is that supposed to promote rehabilitation?) 

All in all, these laws have a history of systemic racism and continue to hurt people of color at an infuriating rate. Getting rid of them should be an easy call.

3. Run Away From Lockdowns 

Unfortunately, a coronavirus advisor to President-Elect Biden has hinted at a nation-wide lockdown in response to the recent upticks in the coronavirus pandemic.

This would be disastrous for all Americans, but as discussed, data indicate it would be worse for people of color who have already seen their employment put at greater risk than others. African American businesses have been the most hurt by the economic shutdowns experienced thus far, with a 41 percent decline in Black business owners between February and April.

If these shutdowns were to be amplified and prolonged, it can be expected they would significantly increase racial inequality and stagnate economic development in many communities.

The lockdowns have never proven capable of actually preventing spread of the coronavirus, and by many metrics have made it worse. It’s horrific to imagine that a Biden administration might not only wreak such havoc in communities of color through further lockdowns, but worse, would do so for an approach that would fail to make society healthier in the first place.

4. Drug Decriminalization  

The War on Drugs has negatively affected every person in the United States.

The amount of waste in enforcing these failed policies has created a vacuum in society that has led to the rise of drug cartels, violence, and an untreated addiction epidemic that has torn families apart, taken countless lives, and decimated whole communities. It’s impossible to adequately summarize the devastating impact of these ideas.

It’s now common knowledge that the real target of the War on Drugs, implemented by the Nixon administration, was always the anti-war left and the Black community. The policies were an opportunity to arrest the leaders of these communities, raid their homes, bust up their meetings, and vilify them on the evening news.

And boy did it work. 

Black and white people use drugs at similar rates, but Black people are 3.6 times more likely to be in jail for them. They also receive much harsher sentences for these drug crimes with Black men serving sentences 13.1 percent longer than white men for the same offense. 

Meanwhile, mandatory minimum sentences have been applied to drugs used more often in the Black community (crack vs. cocaine), leading to excessive sentences for those caught with these products. And SWAT team raids looking for drugs are wildly more likely to be carried out in Black neighborhoods than in white ones.

There are endless reasons to end the War on Drugs by decriminalizing these substances and allowing society to focus on treatment, but the racial disparities within these policies are likely the most compelling. 

Frustratingly, Biden currently does not even support vanilla positions such as legalizing marijuana. So, it is unlikely he will be the reformer the country, and especially communities of color, need on this issue. His continued support for the War on Drugs reinforces racial inequality.

The Takeaway 

While Democrats continue to be dominant among voters of color, it does appear their position is slipping among these constituents. President Trump did better with voters of color than any GOP candidate in decades. In fact, 26 percent of his voting share came from non-white voters. This perhaps indicates that voters have become somewhat disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s empty promises over the years.

If Biden were to enact these four agenda items, he would make good on his promises to address racial disparities in our government—and he’d likely find many willing conservatives and libertarians eager to fight these evils alongside him.