Words & Numbers

Poverty is a big deal – it affects about 41 million people in the United States every year – yet the federal government spends a huge amount of money to end poverty. So much of the government’s welfare spending gets eaten up by bureaucracy, conflicting programs, and politicians presuming they know how people should spend their own money. Obviously, this isn’t working. This week on Words and Numbers, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan delve into how people can really become less poor and what that means for society and the government. Learn More: https://fee.org/articles/what-you-should-know-about-poverty-in-america/  

We tend to demonize people who make money – how dare they have more than us? But that negative reaction forgets the voluntary role we play in profit-making every day. This week in Words and Numbers, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan discuss just how good it is to earn a profit, and the vital difference between that and forcing money from people.

A lot of people assume that any degree increases your income over the course of your life, but it actually seriously depends on what major you choose and what career you go into. This week on Words & Numbers, Antony Davies​ and James R. Harrigan​ breakdown the numbers on what your college degree is actually worth.

Technology doesn’t just change things, it utterly destroys things. And that’s just fine. It happens so often that people barely even notice when it does. Think about all the new services that have come to market just over the past few years: Uber, Airbnb, Redbox … the list goes on and on. But that’s only half the story. In turn, the list of services replaced by these new ones is similarly long: taxis, hotels, Blockbuster, etc. And workers in these industries often lose their jobs in the line of creative destruction. We generally accept this as the price of innovation, but many people try to use the government to stop this by blocking the new services. Today we’re seeing this with more politically well-connected industries like taxis and hotels. Pressure is put on Uber and Airbnb, respectively, to “protect” the established industries they are upending.  This week, Ant and James talk about why this is always a mistake. Learn More: https://fee.org/articles/government-cant-stop-creative-destruction/  

There is no truly good way to measure unemployment, which makes it pretty easy for successive administrations to claim that unemployment is consistently improving. But when we do our level best to include all of the unemployed in the numbers, what we learn is that unemployment levels now are higher than they were at the beginning of the Great Recession. That’s the bad news. The good news is that things actually have been getting better over time. In this week’s episode, James and Antony take a look at the actual unemployment numbers to get to the bottom of what they really mean. Get the facts here: https://fee.org/articles/you-cant-trust-unemployment-statistics/  

This week, James & Antony tackle minimum wage laws and present some hard facts that might surprise a lot of people.  See below for links to all the data and ideas they're talking about in this episode. Raw Data: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/economy-finance/youth-employment-unemployment-rate-data-by-state.html https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage-chart.aspx https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.htm Research: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979399204600105 https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/Davies-minimum-wage-PIC.pdf http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XXXIX/2/425.short http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00197939140670S307 https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CC_FCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%22minimum+wage%22&ots=bMKtfq8dOr&sig=acUFMHlHCDLr2Jo5F6scbDXX4-A#v=onepage&q=%22minimum%20wage%22&f=false Op-Eds: http

This week on Words & Numbers James and Ant talk about the “safe spaces” movement on college campuses. Spoiler Alert: they don’t think campuses should be all that safe…at least not for ideas. College is the one time in a person’s life when just about every idea is on the table, and we do no one a service by declaring certain topics settled or off limits in the name of making people feel “safe.” Learn More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5905d8ade4b03b105b44b95c  https://fee.org/articles/the-campus-counter-revolution-against-liberty/

This week, James and Antony take a brief departure from talking about the growing national debt, and our absurd tax system to discuss the numerous ways in which more economic and personal freedom has made people wealthier, more equal, and better off all over the world. We're actually living in pretty amazing times.

This week, Antony and James are equal-opportunity offenders, discussing the way power not only changes hands from one party to another, but support for political ideas flips back and forth as well. Neither the right nor the left is immune to this kind of hypocrisy. Editor's note:  According to James, "All the other political philosophers will point at me and laugh, but I said Paine when I meant Madison." This heinous error is about 5 minutes in, and we apologize.

In honor of Tax Day, Antony Davies & James R. Harrigan talk about the absurdity of the US tax code. If your tax situation is more complicated or more uncomfortable than you like dealing with, you can pay another human being to do your taxes so you don’t have to. There are dependents, mortgages, deductions from energy-efficient household additions, charity, student loan interest ... even with a Ph.D. in economics, it’s hard to understand!

This week, Antony and James break down Bill Gates' recent suggestion that companies that use robots instead of human workers should pay employment taxes in order to fund new welfare programs.

This week, James & Antony experiment with a slightly longer format, and get into the issue of government funding for the arts.   

This week, Antony & James take on the idea of "victimless crimes" and discuss the odd and growing trend of governments regulating some private activities such as pornography, while others like smoking marijuana are increasingly allowed. People imposing their values on others seems to boil down to an inability to appreciate that others have different preferences, but it all results in Americans losing freedom and instead becoming a nation of pets.

This week, James & Antony discuss the case of Connecticut's budget shortfall. The state hopes to solve their financial problems by raiding the retirement accounts of previous Connecticut government employees who have moved out of the state, and take 30% of those savings. This plan would hurt retirees, break promises, and trap many people in the state based on a policy that may be illegal.

This week, in honor of International Women's Day, Antony & James discuss the strong correlation between economic freedom and gender equality found across the world. They argue that if you want to see a world of increasing equality and opportunity for women, you also want to free the economy from central planning and control.     

In this week's episode, Antony & James talk about alternative facts and how false, partisan data skews important discussions about public policy.

In this episode, Dr. Antony Davies, Professor of Economics of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and Dr. James R. Harrigan, Senior Research Fellow at Strata, in Logan, Utah discuss the way the Congressional Budget Office works, and outline its history of failure at accurately forecasting increases in the national debt.

We're really excited to present the first episode of what will be an on-going podcast featuring Dr. Antony Davies, Professor of Economics of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and Dr. James R. Harrigan, CEO of FreedomTrust Each Wednesday we'll be sharing a new podcast featuring Antony and James talking about the economics and political science of current events. We hope you enjoy the show and look forward to your input on what topics Antony and James should cover in the future. Today's episode is about everybody's favorite subject: Taxes!