Opinion | On the Economics of Not Dying - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-economy-death.html
economics death GDP goals decision-making policy politics
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What, after all, is the economy’s purpose? If your answer is something like, “To generate incomes that let people buy things,” you’re getting it wrong — money isn’t the ultimate goal; it’s just a means to an end, namely, improving the quality of life.
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A Columbia University study estimated that locking down just a week earlier would have saved 36,000 lives by early May, and a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the benefits of that earlier lockdown would have been at least five times the cost in lost G.D.P.
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why isn’t the Trump administration even trying to justify its push for reopening in terms of a rational analysis of costs and benefits? The answer, of course, is that rationality has a well-known liberal bias.
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After all, if they really cared about the economy, even ardent reopeners would want people to keep wearing face masks, which are a cheap way to limit viral spread. Instead, they’ve chosen to wage a culture war against this most reasonable of precautions.
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And the White House has dealt with expert warnings about the risks of reopening by — surprise! — accusing the experts of conspiring against the president
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The point is that the push to reopen doesn’t reflect any kind of considered judgment about risks versus rewards. It’s best seen, instead, as an exercise in magical thinking.
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Trump and conservatives in general seem to believe that if they pretend that Covid-19 isn’t a continuing threat, it will somehow go away, or at least people will forget about it. Hence the war on face masks, which help limit the pandemic but remind people that the virus is still out there.