This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 24th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As COVID-19 spread across the United States,

governments ordered shutdowns of so-called non-essential

businesses and businesses in turn fur load, fired, or laid off workers. The

distinction among those matters when you're trying to count up unemployment.

Bruce Yandel is the former dean of Clemson University's College of Business and Behavioral

Science.

He also produces a quarterly economic report for the Mercatus Center. We talked about unemployment in the wake of

COVID-19 and other strange effects of the virus and the related government

interventions. Bruce you produce a quarterly economic report.

What have we learned from the coronavirus about our economy?

Wow, what a question.

I do turn out a quarterly report and the most recent one was posted on June the 1st.

But as you know, with the coronavirus, every day is another day full of news and data

But we have learned some things. I think the first thing that I would say we've learned is it's a whole lot easier to close down an economy than to start one up after it has been closed.

And so right now, anyone who is attempting to explain what the economy is doing, I would suggest,

has to first take into consideration that they are looking at a biological phenomenon.

And so then it's a guess as to what the virus is doing.

Is it accelerating? Is it mutating? Is it mutating? Will there be another spike? And so assumptions have to be made about the virus.

Then secondly, you have to make some assumptions about what state governors and mayors of

cities will do with respect to opening or

...