Kerby Anderson

Yesterday I talked about the need for economists and political leaders to create an endgame to the current lockdown on our society. The obvious objection to this can be found in the numerous clichés that portray any discussion as an attempt to trade dollars for death.

The governor of New York, for example, scolds, “No one should be talking about social Darwinism for the sake of the stock market.” He argues that, “We will not put a dollar figure on human life.” But even the editors of The New York Times recently described this as a false choice. Shelter-in-place has been necessary, but there must be a time in the future when government leaders must consider the economic and humanitarian trade-offs.

Reopening American society isn’t as much about the stock market as it is about the everyday lives of millions of Americans. Frankly, the wealthy can probably weather the current lockdown, but that is not true of the poor and even middle-class who have no savings to rely upon.

As I mentioned yesterday, income is a strong predictor of health outcomes. People who are poor don’t live as long. Americans who have lost wages and lost jobs are less likely to prosper. They won’t eat as well. They won’t go to the doctor. They won’t buy medications because they are simply trying to buy food and pay the rent.

For the purist who argues that we should never talk about trade-offs, we can point to many current examples. Fewer people would die on highways if the speed limit was 25 mph. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that highway fatalities rose 8.5 percent for every 5 mph in a highway’s speed limit. Cigarette smoking is responsible for 480,000 deaths per year and 88,000 die each year from alcohol-related causes. But we don’t ban either of these. We make policy trade-offs every day.

We need a national conversation about the cost and benefit of our current lockdown.