this is bbc news. the headlines... the heads of some of the world's biggest tech companies have appeared before washington lawmakers to defend their firms against claims they abuse their power in order to quash competitors. the tech giants argue their companies have spurred innovation. the appearance comes as congress considers tougher regulation. in an interview with bbc world news, dr anthony fauci, the man leading the us efforts to contain the coronavirus, has warned against politicising the pandemic. he also said he has been frustrated by people not sticking to the guidelines in order to halt the pandemic. the debate over quarantine measures for travellers to the uk has intensified, with the spanish government putting more pressure on britain to rethink its policy on journeys to and from spain.

now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. how do we judge the health of our economic systems? well, it is about far more than those headline numbers on joblessness and growth. my guest today is the nobel prize—winning economist sir angus deaton. he has focused on what he calls the deaths of despair, attributed to suicide and drug and alcohol abuse. indicators he says of a sickness in the american economic model. and now, of course, we have the coronavirus pandemic as well. so, has a fundamental weakness been exposed in capitalism?

sir angus deaton in princeton, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. i'm delighted to be back. let me ask you a question. you're one of the world's renowned economists and into your latest work, you have focus very much on death. and mortality rates. why have you done that? i have always believed that life is about much more than just money. and i've interested in throughout my career, in well—being, in what makes people tick and what matters, and having money is not worth a whole lot if you don't have a life to enjoy it with. so mortality is a key component of trying to assess a much more complete picture

of what it is that's happening to people. you talk of a complete picture. the big picture according to several political scientists/economists, the one big picture, notjust across the developing world as well, is a mortality story which is profoundly optimistic, that the longevity of the human race is rising and that we've frankly never had it so good and yet your work, which is very specific, seems to suggest in america in particular that is not right. well, you and i are obviously talking about pre—covid. so maybe we'll come back to that. but yes, and that was why what ann and i found when we started this work in 2013 or so, we discovered that death rates were going up for midlife people and middle—aged white

americans, that we were just astonished. we were doing something else, where pulling down this data, were pulling down this data, we looked at these numbers, and we just couldn't believe what we were seeing. it could possibly be true because what you just said, it couldn't possibly be true because what you just said, we had a century a mortality decline and what was happening. our first thought was it can't possibly be true because if it was happening, people would be shouting this from the rooftops. but it was true. and it was a major reversal from what we had seen for 100 years prior. as you say, we need to address what is happening with covid—19 as well. but before we get to covid—19, explain to me, as you dug into the data about mortality rates, particularly as you say amongst midlife americans, particularly poor, white midlife americans. you began to uncover what you called the phenomenon of deaths of despair.

and i want to know exactly what you mean by that phrase. well, you know, it is really just a convenient tab, butjust to go back to when we were first looking at this data, if we discovered that this mortality which had been declining for 100 years has suddenly stopped declining, the first thing we said was what in goodness name is it and we had already come of the reason we found is because we were working on suicide and so we knew that suicide rates are rising quite rapidly in midlife. and so we wanted to see what are the other things that are rising very rapidly and the other things that we found we drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease. that we found were drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease. and these all had a sort of element of suicide about them. i really don't want to say that drug addicts want to die. they often don't. but it is sort of drug addiction, abuse of alcohol, suicide, those are all things that you are doing by your own hands.

it was ann who came up in a press interview with the notion of deaths of despair as just a label to put the three things together. it really has caught off into the public discourse and has become one of these terms that it has a life of its own. let me stop you for a second. does that necessarily interest you as an economist? what if that is simply a phenomenon that is the result of the over prescription of a new kind of drug, at least new to many americans, that is the whole range of opioid drugs? wouldn't that make itjust a temporary blip rather than a structural phenomenon that you as an economist would be interested in? well, you have to ask the question as to why did this over prescription of opioids only happen here. and why is it not happening in britain to the same extent and why isn't it happening in germany or france at all? so there is a real question of what is it about american society and the american economy that really causes this to happen.

the other thing that is very important is when you said poor white americans. it is not really poor white americans. it is white americans without a bachelors degree. without this four—year degree. so we were immediately in this thing where the economy is just not treating these people who have not got a four—year college degree very well. not only that, but it has unleashed these pharmaceutical companies on them to make a huge amount of money and to propagate an enormous amount of misery and destruction amongst these people. what kind of scale of extra death, if i can put it that way, are you ascribing to this phenomena? the last years in which we have data are 2017 and 2018. and there were 158,000 deaths on despair in each of those two years for which we have data. that is more people than have died of covid—19 in the us so far.

covid—19 may well exceed that. these are very large numbers. they are not all excess, because after all, there is always some suicide, people will die from alcohol poisoning, and so on. and we reckon that normally runs at about 60,000 a year. so it is killing about 100,000 people a year. so one of the analogies we use is if you take a boeing 737 fully loaded and it falls out of the sky, killing everybody on board, three of those every day is what we are talking about. these are big numbers. very big numbers. but as you just indicated we're getting used to potentially even bigger numbers with the scale of the covid—19 crisis, not least in the united states. that is right. except for that covid—19 will stop, we hope. either the virus will go away as donald trump likes to say or we will get a vaccine, and medicine to deal with it. so, let's say in this year we lose 200,000 americans,

we can pray and reasonably hope that that will not go on into the future. but the 158,000 deaths of despair shows no sign of diminishing at all. is there any relationship at all between the way in which covid—19 is impacting america and the particular groups within america it is hitting hardest and the groups you have identified as being most vulnerable, most impacted by the so—called deaths of despair? yes. that is a really interesting question. we spent a lot of time thinking about that. one of the things that clearly happened with covid—19 is the division between people like me or you who can sit at home and work behind the screen and you continue to get paid and you run very little risk of catching the disease. very typically, they tend to be more educated people, people with deskjobs, and so on. where as the people

on the other end of the essential workers, the key workers, in many cases, they have to risk their lives, and they are more likely to be less educated people. it is not a perfect match because obviously there are doctors and health care workers who are highly skilled. but the people that are working retail stores, people working in meat—packing plants, food retail, all that stuff. those people are relatively poorly skilled. so the less than college—educated people who were hurt by deaths of despair are hurt again by covid—19, and the one group that is different are african—americans here. until about 2013, african—america ns were not subject to any of this, the deaths of despair. though after 2013, there was a sort of epidemic of fentanyl in the inner cities in the eastern united states which turned that fatality up,

but african—america ns have really been suffering disproportionately during covid—19 in america. as indeed has been the case in britain. i want to get to the african—american experience in greater detail later but i just want to be clear here, what you're actually saying. as i said at the very beginning, you're one of the world's renowned economist. that is what you do. you are not a health specialist. yet you seem to be making a very direct correlation here between the national health, that is the health of the american people, and economic conditions. and in essence, a lot of it seems to be about people and low—paid jobs, and poverty, lower education. no, it is not. that is not right. it is right until you said poverty. we have no evidence that these people are in poverty. so this is not about poverty? those people were doing pretty well until recently. so this is not a poverty thing. that is not part of the story.

it is a less—educated thing. we are not tying it in any very simple way to economic conditions. because if you look at what happened to the great recession in 2008, deaths of despair was rising rapidly before the great recession and rose at the same rate during the great recession, and they rose at the same rate after the great recession. nothing to do with the great recession. so the story we are telling is a much slower disintegration of the life of working class america, a life that was built at the end of the 19th century and thrived in the mid—20th century and has been coming apart ever sense and we tell a durkheimian story and you might say what are economists messing with durkheim for, but durkheim really got this right which is that if you're living in a world where meaning is of evaporating, that self—destruction is a real rest. my reading of the book ‘deaths of despair‘ and the ‘future of capitalism' is that if there is any one target

of your anger right now, it is the american health care system. and when you talk about the disintegration of the lives and culture of working—class white americans, it would seem to me that you put a lot of the blame for that at the door of america's private health care system. am i right? yes. you are dead right. what is to be done about it? there are a lot of things we can do about it. it is very difficult to do them because it is so well protected and fortified against criticism and change. but the nuts of the story is it cost far too much. it costs twice as much as any other health system in the world. it delivers lousy outcomes. and it's financed by what is essentially a poll tax on workers and so as we said somewhere else, it is taking a wrecking ball to the labour market for less educated people. is that another way

as an economist blaming capitalism because of course, capitalism underpins the american health care system. it is a private system. it is for profit. there are very big profits to be made — are you saying capitalism simply does not work in that context? in that context which is in the case of delivering health care. britain is a capitalist country. you don't have a private health care system. or you do but only it isa marginalthing. no other country in the world, no other rich country in the world tries to run its health care as a private market system. and it is a very important thing to realise that one of the greatest economists of the 20th century was ken arrow. he was the guy that proved the theorems that capitalism works and how capitalism was good for you and when it is not good for you. the important thing about proving that was the need to figure out the assumptions that are needed to make it work. the assumptions to make it work do not apply for health care.

we do not have a competitive health care system. it is riddled with all sorts of rent seeking, with government interference. it is not there to protect patients. the government interference is there to protect profit. and if i may say so, when americans are consulted about whether they want a truly socialised health care system, where the government in essence organises and runs the system and the profit motive is taken out of it, americans by in large say no. that is right. there are two things there. one is the word "socialise", which has become demonised in america. and, secondly, you don't have to have a socialised system. britain has one. france doesn't. germany doesn't. switzerland doesn't. holland doesn't. canada doesn't. there are a lot of options for it to choose from without the government delivering health care. that is a perfectly soluble problem. we do not have to have a system

in which the government employs the doctors and nurses and runs the hospitals. britain is pretty unique in doing that. let me come at this from a different angle. you for a long time, you're writing about for an equality writing about for inequality in health care outcomes and all sorts of other things, you have made it plain that you are an opponent of the way america currently does things. but there is a whole raft of thinkers about the way america currently does things. but there is a whole raft of other thinkers in america, political scientist and economists who say you are barking up the wrong tree and ultimately, this isn't so much about economic systems, it is about moral values. and that the modern day 21st century america is unfortunately as they would put it full of people who lack the moralfibre to make the right kinds of decisions and that is the fundamental failing of today's america. i don't think that is true. there certainly are deep sociological moral issues that are really important, like especially ones associated

with family formation, especially the consequences of the availability of abortion and of the contraceptive pill, where there really have been changes in social views of child—bearing and marriage and living together. if i may say so... and the idea that people are out of the labour force because they become lazy is totally violated by the data. right. but i'm looking at a quote from philip coen here. he's done a lot of research on this. he says that you referred to is the phenomenon of deaths of despair is directly linked to the fact that marriage and he is talking about amongst white people particularly, marriage is not the institution it used to be. and that women in particular have changed their behaviour and attitude in ways that many women would welcome and say are very important,

but they have fundamentally changed the way society works and the way the economy works. well, i agree with a lot of that. and we say that in the book. but i don't like this idea that somehow, they have decided they got up one morning and decided we will not behave ourselves any more. there were external things that made that very important. so the availability of contraceptive pills and the availability of abortion changed the responsibility for child—bearing, for conception, from men, who had it before towards women, and for some women, that worked really well. it drove a wedge so that for people and women who were really well—educated or could be well—educated, it opened up an enormous avenue of opportunity that they could really now go to college and choose when to

have their child—bearing and did not have to choose between education and having the married life but for less—educated and less—talented women, that has been a disaster. but isn't that the problem in a way? i don't want to put words into your mouth but i would guess you characterize yourself as a liberal and a progressive. but it seems in a way, the message that you are delivering that the white communities of america are experiencing forms of despair because of the decline of family, community and religion, that is a message that could be taken by some of your perhaps ideological opponents as a defence of their conservative values. well, you're characterising me. i'm not characterising me and i don't accept that characterisation. one of the things that i have tried to do very hard it is not to label myself and to take the best from all particular things and all particular lines of thought.

you know, i don't think it is all that change and taste, in the loss of industry and virtue. you have to keep in mind that this is very important. these bad things are only happening to people who do not have a four—year college degree. and the third of whites who have a four—year college degree are doing great, thank you very much. so if it is a general decline in virtue, why does the decline in virtue only happen to the people who are less educated ? it is because the world is collapsed around them. they have lost meaning. i don't care where you attribute it to. a lot of what we blame and the capitalist system is the degree of rent—seeking in america. that is very much a right—wing buzzword and i'm all for it. i want to come back quickly to the issue of what is happening to black americans. you pointed out they are disproportionately impacted by covid—19. we of course are in this particular time when there was much focus on the whole

black lives matter movement. and, yet, of course your work is very much focused on what has happened to the white ordinary working man and woman. given recent events, do you think perhaps the big picture we should be focused much more still on the systematic description faced by black people in america then by black people in america than this death of the despair phenomenon hitting white people? absolutely. i agree with that. in the book, what we explain is that these phenomena that we are concerned with which is the deaths of despair amongst white americans have already happened to black americans a0 or 50 years before. so, this is like the other shoe dropping and this is not an exclusively white phenomenon, if you were real anti—capitalist on the left, which perhaps you think i am, but i am not, you would say that's what capitalism does is it is discarding the workers, unnecessary

workers, starting from the least skilled who were in the 70s were african—americans in the inner cities. it has not reached the least skilled whites which are whites it has now reached the least skilled whites which are whites without a ba and it will come for all of us in the end. i don't think that is true but you can tell a story. so we don't think of this as an only white story. it issue that african—american mortality rates are consistently been higher than white american mortality rates and so if you're asking where is the injustice in mortality, certainly in the african—americans. -- it is —— it is certainly true that african—american mortality rates one of the things interesting about britain is you have this excess mortality from covid—19 among what you call bames, but prior to that, the mortality rates for black english people were lower than for a white english people. that was not true here. donald trump, from the very beginning of the covid—19 crisis, made a point of saying that he feared that if america led in a prolonged lockdown,

health impact and the death and the mortality as a result will be far greater than that caused by the virus itself. in a funny sort of way, given your work, do you have a little bit of sympathy with that view? not at all. it is wrong. what i said earlier, during the great recession, deaths of the despair were going up before, during and after and there is no sign of the great recession. we have been watching the data very carefully to see if there are signs of a big increase in drug overdoses through suicides. we only have partial data but it just doesn't seem to be happening. it might be happening, we don't know yet. it will be a while until we know. donald trump is pushing that in order to try and get people to go back to work even when they were scared. i have very little sympathy with that. there is no basis for the argument. a final thought. you, in the book, talk about the future of capitalism. you don't talk about

the failure of capitalism. but is that really what you feel you are addressing today? particularly in this health care sector but perhaps more widely because you do talk a great deal about the ways in which inequality is problematic and that some people in america are making vast amounts of money while the majority are suffering, stagnant or declining living standards? is this about the failure of capitalism? no. in the book, we say we consider that as a title and we rejected it. we think for the most part, capitalism has been a huge success. and failure in capitalism means we're a desperate runner to replace capitalism by something else. i don't know what, but future capitalism means we have a future in which it gets fixed and these terrible things that are destroying people's lives are put right. sir angus deaton, it has been a pleasure to have you on hardtalk. thank you, too. i enjoyed it.

hello there. so far this month, we have seen temperatures around or below the seasonal average. quite a lot of cloud and rain at times too. but by the end of this month, friday, a hot spell is likely for much of the uk and we could see the hottest day of the year so far. we could see temperatures reached 3a celsius. pressure chart shows for thursday we have low pressure to the north and west. that will bring more cloud and outbreaks of rain for northern ireland and northern england and perhaps north wales. that rain will be pushing into scotland as we move through the day.

some of the rain will be quite heavy as it exits northern ireland. but brightening up for northern ireland and southern scotland, for england and wales, though, a fine dry day from the word go. with sunshine turning increasingly warm and humid with the mid upper 20 celsius, and a bit coolerfor the north. through thursday night, that rain will continue to move northwards across scotland and become confined to the north but for much of the country, there will be a warmer and a clear night and those temperatures generally between 11 and 15 or 16 degrees across the south. that takes us into friday. we really tap in into some very hot air across northern spain and france on this southerly breeze that will push this warmth northwards right across the country, but low—pressure out towards the west means the weather fronts will encroach into western areas, destabilising the atmosphere so we can see showers or thunderstorms through the day. many of us starting off dry sunny and warm and it will be hot day for much of the uk. with this band of cloud with rain on it and maybe

some thunderstorms, northern ireland, then western parts of scotland and west of england and wales later in the day. those temperatures, widely the mid to upper 20 celsius. and for east wales, midlands, south of england, we could see 31 to 3a degrees in the southeast. i can imagine that could be the hottest day of the year so far. a chance of some showers and thunderstorms developing in response to that heat through friday evening and friday night. that front continues to work its way in from the west. introducing cooler airjust in time for the weekend. it will be noticeably different, the feel of the weather this weekend. cool and fresher, temperatures fall lower into sunday and we will see a mixture of sunshine and showers in those brisk west winds. most of the showers in the north and the west.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. my name's mike embley. tech titans in tiny boxes. four of the biggest names in technology get a grilling at a congressional hearing over claims they're stifling competition. talking to the bbc, the expert leading american efforts to contain the coronavirus warns against politicising the pandemic. there is a considerable degree of political divisiveness to a level that everyone admits, you don't need me to make that declaration. the world health organization urges young europeans to act responsibly, amid fears they could be behind spikes in coronavirus cases.

and researchers finally solve