Don Boudreaux on the Pandemic

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

Economist Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talks about the pandemic with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Boudreaux argues that a perfect storm of factors created a huge overreaction, including unnecessary lockdowns that accomplished little at a very high cost in physical and emotional health. Instead, Boudreaux argues, we should have focused attention on the population most at risk of dying from COVID--the elderly and especially the elderly with co-morbidities. The conversation includes a discussion of externalities and the insights of Ronald Coase applied to the policies during the pandemic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you could subscribe, comment on this episode and find links and
0:18.6	other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives, with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.2	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.2	Today's June 29, 2021, and I guess is economist Don Boudreau of George Mason University.
0:43.6	Don Blogs of Cafe High Act, this is his 15th appearance on econ talk.
0:48.1	He was last year in January of 2021, talking about the work of James Buchanan.
0:54.4	Don, welcome back to econ talk.
0:56.3	Always good to be here, Russ.
0:58.7	Our topic for today is the pandemic.
1:01.3	And your take is, I think, quite a bit different from any of the guests we've had before on
1:05.4	the program to discuss the pandemic and Corona.
1:09.0	I hope we'll be able to explore some new issues of policy compared to previous conversations
1:13.7	that I've had on the topic.
1:16.1	So I want to start with our, taking a long view of how the world, the United States, other
1:25.4	countries have reacted in terms of policy to the pandemic.
1:30.6	You argue that we've overreacted and overreacted badly.
	...

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