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WTH Are Deaths of Despair? Nobel Prize Winner Sir Angus Deaton on the Other Epidemic

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WTH Are Deaths of Despair? Nobel Prize Winner Sir Angus Deaton on the Other Epidemic WTH are deaths of despair? Nobel Prize winner Sir Angus Deaton on the other epidemic Episode #52 | May 21, 2020 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Sir Angus Deaton Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen. Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, What the Hell Is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on now? Marc Thiessen: We're talking about deaths of despair. Danielle Pletka: Oh, that's cheerful. Marc Thiessen: Well, you're right, it's not cheerful, Dany. I mean, look, we are now experiencing the worst economic devastation since the Great Depression. We have more than 33 damage is not being borne by the elites, who work in the information economy and who can telework and do everything by Zoom. It's being borne by those at the middle and the bottom of the economic ladder. For what Trump called the forgotten Americans. People, who were finally doing better under him for a while, and now, all of a sudden, that progress has been wiped out. Danielle Pletka: The phrase, deaths of despair, that we're using, comes from this new book out by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two economists from Princeton University. It was actually Dr. Case who coined this term, deaths of despair, in talking about people who've really lost all hope. I think that our image of the Depression is one where we see people walking across the dust bowl with all their family belongings on the back of a cart and their ragged children, the iconic photos of this. We tend not to think of the Modern Age that way because people aren't on their carts, they're not out walking the streets. Danielle Pletka: But, at the same time, even before COVID, even before the lockdown, there were these ghost towns where there once was a plant and now there isn't one. Where people once had jobs and communities, and there isn't one anymore. These people, as it's been, I think, very well documented, are dying younger and younger of disease, of drug addiction, of alcoholism, of all of these byproducts and, of course, of suicide. These are all these deaths of despair. Marc Thiessen: So, we have this preexisting epidemic because it really had reached epidemic proportions where the number of people... what economists call excess deaths, due 2 to these deaths of despair. People either committing suicide or slowly committing suicide through opioids, through drugs, through liver disease and other ailments that come from that. Now we've overlaid this new epidemic on top of it, and overlaid on top of that, a government mandated recession, where we have told these people, "You can't work, you can't support your family, you can't have the dignity of work anymore because, for the sake of everybody else, you have to stay home." This could fuel deaths of despair if it goes too long. Danielle Pletka: I think it's already gone on too long. You know, in a rare moment of beautiful harmony, you and I have talked about the fact that there's so much derision in the public square for people who are out protesting against this. I'm totally willing- Marc Thiessen: Yeah. "Look at those people. They're not social distancing. They're not wearing their masks." Danielle Pletka: ... "Those bumpkins." Marc Thiessen: "Those bumpkins," exactly. Danielle Pletka: I'm perfectly willing to believe that there are those among them who are conspiracy theorists and those among them who are wrong. On the other hand, there are plenty, I'm sure the majority among them, who need the work. Marc Thiessen: Exactly. Danielle Pletka: This is the thing. AEI has, I think, done amazing work in this space. Our own current president, Robert Doar, but our previous president also, Arthur Brooks, on the dignity of work and how poverty doesn't need to be a trap for people. People who don't work and who are getting that 600 bucks extra, guess what, that's not changing your life. Marc Thiessen: No. Danielle Pletka: That's not doing things, and they want to work. Marc Thiessen: No, that's exactly right, and this is something that Arthur wrote a lot about, is that just having more social welfare doesn't solve the problem because that $600 extra of unemployment, yeah, you need it in order to get through the lockdown. But it's not giving you the happiness and the satisfaction of serving your family, serving your community, doing meaningful work. What Arthur called earned success. Slowly, over a long period of time, we have been robbing a whole community of Americans of earned success, and now this pandemic and sort of the lockdown Nazis, who say we have to stay closed until there's a vaccine, practically. Danielle Pletka: Well, that's the California position. Marc Thiessen: It's like they are robbing people of earned success. I think this is going to have a political ramification because what you're seeing is... already before the last election, when Donald Trump was elected, there was a whole community of Americans who felt that political parties, on both sides, were not listening to them, and they elected Donald Trump. Now, you've got these lines drawn, where these Americans are basically being pushed by the elites out of their jobs and say, "You AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 3 can't work, and if you want to go back to work, and if you want to open the store where you worked in, and you want to start serving customers, you're actually endangering all of us." It's just- Danielle Pletka: All of us fancy people, who wish we were out being served by you. Marc Thiessen: ... All of us fancy people, who wish we... please... we'll just order in. Well, good for you, I'm glad you have money to order in. Lots of people don't have money to put food on their tables. Danielle Pletka: No, and I think that, again, not only do people, who are living by the sweat of their brow in whatever of these walks of life, deserve respect, not contempt, and deserve consideration. I'm really happy to see that there are governors who don't have the unbelievable self-regard of our friend in the Michigan governor seat- Marc Thiessen: You mean our next vice president? Danielle Pletka: ... Oh, god. And actually want to consider this, actually are thinking about it because it's not just Republican governors who are considering this. I think that there are plenty of Democratic governors who recognize that we've passed a tipping point, and that the moment has come when in fact we need to care about the damage that is being inflicted, not by the disease, but by the lockdown. We can be smart, but we don't have to be totalitarian in our treatment of this disease. Marc Thiessen: There are all sorts of costs, especially in these vulnerable communities, to the lockdown. You have people who are not getting cancer treatment. I think a 18% decrease in the number of people going in for chemotherapy. You have people who are not getting their high blood pressure treated. They're not getting their substance abuse treated. All these people are in medically vulnerable and economically vulnerable communities. Marc Thiessen: Here's the thing, Dany, we just had Avik Roy on the podcast, talking about how hard it is to develop a vaccine, how hard it is to even develop an effective treatment. What if we don't get a vaccine anytime soon? What if we don't get a really good treatment? Are these people supposed to stay out of work indefinitely? Danielle Pletka: Apparently. Apparently they are. I think there are people... look, the governor of California just shut down the University of California system for the fall. Marc Thiessen: That's insane. Danielle Pletka: That's how I feel. Now, again, that's affecting... but, you know there are tons of- Marc Thiessen: That's affecting the elites. Danielle Pletka: ... but, no, it's not just affecting... it's, I'm sorry, it's janitors, it's food workers- Marc Thiessen: Yep, you're right. Danielle Pletka: ... it's the people who maintain the buildings, it's this entire community of people, and I know because I see this at Georgetown where I teach. They're getting AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 4 furloughed. Not because the people at Georgetown are mean or cheap or rotten, but because they don't have the money coming in, so they can't spend it. All of this has ripple effects on people that I think that these absolutists can't appreciate. I have very little doubt that this concept of deaths of despair, that the despair-o-meter, if you want to call it that, is going to go up in the coming months. The question for me, and this is for you, is what's that going to mean for Donald Trump? Marc Thiessen: Oh, well, that's an interesting topic. I mean, I think that it's going to fuel populism. We're seeing, like never before, a division between the elites and the working class in this country. I think you're going to see a lot of working class Americans who said, "You didn't listen to me before Donald Trump was elected, when I said to you that my factory in my town is closed and you've been shipping my jobs to China, and I can't get a job, and I can't feed my family.
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