Veronique de Rugy is an economist who appeared as a guest on The Bob Zadek Show in episodes spanning 2011 to 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, and as a nationally syndicated columnist who has frequently testified before Congress. In a 2019 episode description she is identified as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. Across her appearances she discussed prison costs, the War on Drugs, the gender pay gap, and airline bailouts.
Prison costs and the War on Drugs
In a 2011 episode, Zadek introduced de Rugy by reference to her article “Prison Math,” saying he thought she would agree that money was being wasted on an ineffective and unneeded prison system. De Rugy agreed, stating that prison budgets are the second highest state budget after Medicaid, and that beyond the money, lives were being wasted. She corrected Zadek’s analogy comparing prison spending to prescription drugs curing a disease, arguing that research shows the dramatic reduction in crime rates since the 1980s can probably only be 25% attributed to increasing the time people spend in jail, leaving 75% to other factors. Zadek accepted the correction and described the remaining factors as a complex series of social factors including a general increase in the standard of living. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
On rehabilitation, Zadek raised a dilemma with what he called profound libertarian overtones: how society can justify spending on education and job training for prisoners unless it spends at least the same per capita on everyone not in prison. De Rugy agreed but called education for people in jail a band-aid, saying two wrongs don’t make a right and that these people should not be in jail in the first place. She distinguished crimes she considered serious—killing someone, raping someone, robbing a bank—from drug use, especially marijuana use, arguing that drug users are not victims and should not be in jail, and that people should be free to consume drugs as long as they do not hurt others or violate property rights. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
Zadek proposed that states be more aggressive in selling prison labor to private businesses for the highest bidder, noting that some of de Rugy’s colleagues at Reason had considered the issue. De Rugy said she had no issue with this as long as the people were not in jail for wrong reasons, but said 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 and mainly through the War on Drugs. Zadek said the economic benefits to cash-strapped states would be immediate upon decriminalization and amnesty, and noted California came close at about 48% to decriminalizing drug use and drug sales. He also said the Obama administration was going back on Obama’s ‘08 election promise not to enforce federal drug laws against those in compliance with state medical marijuana law. De Rugy said this made no sense and that she could not rationalize President Obama’s decision. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
Zadek cited figures from de Rugy’s article: nationwide $52 billion, and 7% of all general fund spending on criminal justice. De Rugy said the cost of the federal War on Drugs was a whole other level of cost, and predicted that in another 10 years there would be no more War on Drugs and no one would understand why there ever was one, except that millions of lives will have been ruined by it. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
On treatment versus punishment, Zadek said the way to handle drug use, if it is a problem, is as a medical problem rather than a criminal justice problem. De Rugy agreed, saying that even if one thinks consuming drugs is horrible and destroying lives, what is being done to cure it is absolutely not working: millions have been put in jail, there is as much drug consumption as there used to be, and because it is illegal it causes much criminal activity and police corruption. She said prevention is what works, not putting people in jail. She compared the War on Drugs to alcohol prohibition, which she said led to dramatic violence and corruption in America, and wondered why Democrats were not campaigning vigorously on the issue given that poor people and black people are the ones who end up in jail. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
Zadek argued that the phrase “War on Drugs” is itself flawed because one cannot declare war on a noun, and that prohibition in the ’20s created organized crime as it exists today. He said the War on Drugs is itself the problem, not the cure. De Rugy added that one can imagine how much better cops would be doing their jobs and how much more time they would have to solve real crimes if they were not always busy going after small drug dealers, drug users, and medical marijuana dispensaries in California, and how much better judges would be if they did not have to see—at which point the excerpt breaks off. Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011)
Gender pay gap
A 2019 episode featured de Rugy discussing the reality and myths surrounding the gender pay gap. According to the episode description, Zadek and de Rugy argued 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. The topics listed include Gender Pay Gap, Equal Pay for Equal Work, Labor Economics, Mandated Benefits, Paid Leave, Free Market, Kamala Harris, and Employment Law. The excerpt provides no further detail on the arguments made or the specific figures discussed. Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap (2019)
Airline bailouts
In a 2023 episode, Zadek introduced de Rugy as his returning guest and said they would discuss the underreported, almost stealth, massive bailout of the airline industry that was part of COVID relief legislation. He described a Faustian bargain in which the airlines sold to Congress voting control of their boards of directors. De Rugy corrected one point: the bailout was quite bipartisan, and when it comes to bailing out and cronyism, Republicans are as terrible as the Democrats. She said the bailouts were done mostly in the name of giving airlines an incentive not to furlough or fire workers, that the first was for six months, and that there were two others, another 25 billion and another of 15 billion. She said altogether it was close to 70 billion dollars going to airlines, and that it is now almost a tradition that at every emergency or crisis the airlines are among the first with their hands out asking for a bailout. Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023)
On the cost per job, de Rugy said the calculation is complicated because there were three different bailouts with different numbers and the airlines are not transparent about what they did. She said that in the second bailout the companies claimed they would furlough around 30,000 people, and that assuming an average salary of $100,000 a year—which she called a little high—and a six-month bailout, that is $50,000 per employee, which multiplied by 30,000 shows that $25 billion was at least 10 times more than what the airlines 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)
Zadek asked about the wealth transfer from the government to shareholders, noting that shareholders assume risks when investing and that an existential risk affecting an airline’s performance is built into the equation. He asked de Rugy to speak more about what that kind of bailout does, and said he suspected she would mention moral hazard. The excerpt breaks off before her answer. 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 of the airline industry and all the evils that befall us as a result. He said her paper, “The 2020 Bailouts Left Airlines, the Economy, and the Federal Budget in Worse Shape Than Before,” is available at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023)
Across episodes
The excerpts show de Rugy applying a consistent libertarian critique across three policy domains over twelve years, but they do not show the same question argued in more than one episode. The 2011 episode addresses prison costs and the War on Drugs, the 2019 episode addresses the gender pay gap, and the 2023 episode addresses airline bailouts. The excerpts show no development of a single argument across episodes; each episode treats a distinct topic.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state de Rugy’s educational background, the date or circumstances of her joining the Mercatus Center, or her earlier career. They do not provide the full arguments or figures from the 2019 gender pay gap episode beyond the episode description. They do not cover her answer to Zadek’s question about moral hazard in the airline bailout discussion, nor the remainder of the 2011 discussion after the excerpt breaks off mid-sentence.
Episodes
4 appearances, 2011–2023.
- Crime Down: Prison Costs Up (2011) — Costs of the American criminal justice system. Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow
- Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap (2019) — Reality and myths of the gender pay gap. Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center
- Shining a Spotlight on the Stealth Airline Bailouts (2023) — Bailouts and Cronyism in the Airline Industry. Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow
- The True Cost of Airline Bailouts (2023) — COVID-19 airline industry bailouts and crony capitalism. Mercatus Center