The lockdown left crushed the economies of blue states

 Washington Examiner:

The good news is our economic recovery from the pandemic is finally underway. The bad news is that it’s going a lot slower in blue states than red states — thanks to foolish big-government policies.

This is the inescapable conclusion revealed by the latest jobs and unemployment data.

“The unemployment rate in April nationwide was 6.1%, but this obscures giant variations in the states,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “With some exceptions, those run by Democrats such as California (8.3%) and New York (8.2%) continued to suffer significantly higher unemployment than those led by Republicans such as South Dakota (2.8%) and Montana (3.7%).”

The difference really is unusually glaring. Of the top 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates in April, nine have Republican governors. What’s behind this destructive discrepancy?

Economist Dan Mitchell looked at these figures and concluded that there’s “a clear relationship between joblessness and the degree to which states pursue big-government policies.”

In particular, the unemployment rates different states are experiencing are strongly correlated with the harshness and length of the pandemic lockdowns their state governments imposed. With a few exceptions, Republican governors rolled back restrictions on the economy much faster than their Democratic counterparts.

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Wisconsin is the only blue state to escape the lockdown trap and that is because its Supreme Court nullified the Democrat governor's orders.  What is remarkable is that even with the clear evidence of the mistake, New York and California as well as Washington state are still in various forms of lockdowns.  It should be noted that the pandemic is still ravaging in some of these states such as Washington.  So far, there is no indication that the Democrats in charge recognize the correlation between lockdowns and the spread of the virus.  Those who are allowed to breathe fresh air without a mask are doing much better.