ZadekpediaVeronique de Rugy is an economist who appeared as a guest on The Bob Zadek Show in 2011, 2019, and 2023. Bob Zadek introduced her in 2023 as the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a nationally syndicated columnist who has frequently testified before Congress Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023). A 2019 episode summary identifies her as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap (2019).
On the show
3 appearances, 2011–2023.
- 2011-07-09 · Crime Down: Prison Costs Up · 53:25 — Costs of the American criminal justice system.
- 2019-06-17 · Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap · 52:03 — Reality and myths of the gender pay gap.
- 2023-01-01 · Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts · 52:44 — Bailouts and Cronyism in the Airline Industry.
Prisons, crime and the War on Drugs
In a 2011 episode on prison costs, Zadek cited de Rugy’s article “Prison Math” and proposed that the prison system was ineffective and unneeded. De Rugy agreed that money and lives were being wasted, noting that prison budgets are the second highest state budget after Medicaid. She corrected Zadek’s analogy to prescription drugs, saying research shows only about 25% of the dramatic reduction in crime rates since the 1980s can be attributed to increasing the time people spend in jail, leaving 75% to other factors Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
De Rugy argued that drug users, especially marijuana users, “are no victims” and should not be in jail in the first place, while allowing that she does not glamorize drug use and thinks people probably should not use drugs. She said people should be free to consume drugs as long as they do not violate other people’s property rights. She called education for people in jail a band-aid, saying “Two wrongs don’t make a right” Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
On prison labor, Zadek proposed that states sell prison labor to private businesses for the highest bidder. De Rugy said she had no issue with this as long as the prisoners were not in jail for wrong reasons, and added that she did not understand why states were not dramatically opposed to the War on Drugs, since 60% of people in jail are non-violent offenders, mainly through the War on Drugs Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
Zadek raised the Obama administration’s decision to go back on Obama’s 2008 campaign promise not to enforce federal drug laws against people in compliance with state medical marijuana law. De Rugy said it made no sense because the audience being courted was uber social conservatives, and when Zadek asked why Obama would do it, she replied that she could not rationalize the decision Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
Zadek cited figures from her article: nationwide $52 billion, and 7% of all general fund spending on criminal justice. De Rugy added that the cost of the federal War on Drugs is a whole other level of cost, and predicted that in another ten years there would be no more War on Drugs, though millions of lives would have been ruined by it Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
De Rugy said the way the drug problem is handled is not working even if one thinks drug consumption is horrible, that there is as much drug consumption as there used to be, and that because it is illegal it causes much criminal activity and police corruption. She said prevention is what works, not putting people in jail, and compared the War on Drugs to alcohol prohibition, which she said led to dramatic violence and corruption. She wondered why Democrats were not fighting vigorously on the issue, since poor people and black people are the ones who end up in jail Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011).
Gender pay gap
A 2019 episode summary states that Zadek and de Rugy discussed the reality and myths surrounding the gender pay gap, arguing that while a raw statistical gap exists, it largely disappears when controlling for job choice, hours worked, and temporal flexibility, and that government mandates for fringe benefits often inadvertently lower women’s cash wages Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap (2019).
Airline bailouts
In a 2023 episode, Zadek introduced de Rugy as a returning guest and said they would discuss the underreported bailout of the airline industry embedded in COVID relief legislation, which he described as a Faustian bargain in which the airlines sold Congress voting control of their boards of directors Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023).
De Rugy corrected Zadek’s suggestion that the bailout was a Democrats-only affair, saying it was quite bipartisan and that when it comes to bailing out and cronyism, Republicans are as terrible as the Democrats. She described bailouts done in the name of giving airlines an incentive not to furlough workers, initially for six months, followed by another 25 billion and another 15 billion, with the total close to 70 billion dollars going to airlines. She said it is now almost a tradition that at every emergency the airlines are among the first with their hands out Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023).
Asked to calculate cost per job preserved, de Rugy said the airlines are not transparent about what they did. For the second bailout she assumed a salary of a hundred thousand dollars a year, which she called a little high, over six months, giving fifty thousand dollars per employee, and multiplied by the 30,000 employees the airlines said they would furlough. On that basis 25 billion dollars was at least ten times more than needed. She said that in the study she wrote with her colleague Gary Leff, the bailout actually needed to keep those people employed would have been something like $2.5 billion, but they got $25 billion. She concluded that bailouts are mostly a bailout of shareholders and have nothing to do with employees Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023).
At the close of the episode, Zadek thanked de Rugy for sharing the results of her research on the 2020 bailout and named her paper, “The 2020 Bailouts Left Airlines, the Economy, and the Federal Budget in Worse Shape Than Before,” available at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023).
Across episodes
The 2011 prison episode and the 2023 airline episode both turn on the same question — whether a program justified by its stated goal survives contact with its cost figures — but the episodes show no development between them: the earlier treatment concerns incarceration and the War on Drugs, the later one airline bailouts, and the 2019 gender pay gap episode stands apart from both.