Happy Hour Econ

Ah, college. A time for late-night study sessions, questionable roommates, and, of course, finding yourself. But what happens when the bill for all that soul-searching comes due? With new rules set to limit federal loans for degrees that don’t earn enough, Lou and Phil take a hard look at the economics of higher ed: who’s paying the bill, who’s cashing in, and whether a diploma is worth the price....

Last week, Lou and Phil looked at the claim that American capitalism was built on slavery. This week, they turn to what slavery actually cost, both to the enslaved people who were denied any choice in their own work and to a Southern economy that fell far behind the North. Along the way, they look at why the American founding set much of the country on a path to abolition, and why forced labor sti...

A recent CNN debate put a pointed question before a national audience. Is capitalism bound up with racism and slavery? Slavery predates writing, and it predates capitalism by thousands of years, yet a growing body of scholarship argues that the modern American economy rests on the forced labor of enslaved people. In this week's Happy Hour Econ , Lou and Phil test those claims against the historica...

Nothing says we're doing something quite like a fresh round of economic sanctions. They're cheap, they're popular, and they let politicians look tough without adding much pain at home for Americans. But do they actually work? From Iran to Cuba, with oil tankers quietly dodging the rules in between, Lou and Phil look at who really ends up picking up the tab when a nation gets cut off. Pour somethin...

Somewhere between tariffs, resurrected 1930s legislation, and a rebranded Great Lake, the United States decided to start a trade war with its most polite neighbor. Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act—yes,  that  Smoot-Hawley—has been dusted off from the legislative graveyard to justify slapping Canada with tariffs nobody can quite explain the reasoning behind. Lou and Phil sort through the...

Dolly Parton was so beloved that her passing briefly brought the nation together. She was a country music icon and savvy entrepreneur who built a genuine business empire from a childhood spent in a one-room Appalachian cabin. Lou and Phil look at how she held onto her publishing rights when so many artists signed them away, turned a struggling stretch of Tennessee into a tourism powerhouse with Do...

Is it "dā-ta center" or "dăt-a center"? Lou and Phil can't agree, but they're united on one thing: these giant server farms have become the most contested real estate in America. Between grid strain, water bills, and surveillance worries, there's plenty to be suspicious of, and just as many overblown claims borrowed straight from old fights over Bitcoin and net neutrality. Settle into your favorit...

More money, more administrators, worse outcomes—that's the trend line in American education, and Lou and Phil want to know how everyone keeps missing it. They talk about school choice as an actual accountability mechanism, why a college diploma isn't automatically worth its debt, and why the guy in charge of the budget has zero incentive to leave any of it unspent. Lou and Phil deliver the full le...

Free speech and free markets run on the same fuel: information. When the government steps in to control what can and can't be said, it's not just a free speech problem—it's an economic one, stifling the open exchange that lets markets and democracy both function. Lou and Phil explore the long, messy history of speech suppression in America, from Alexander Hamilton's grudge against newspaper editor...

The Jones Act has been quietly taxing Americans for over a century, and it's finally getting some attention now that it's been suspended since March. Lou and Phil trace this WWI-era shipping law from its origins as a favor to a handful of politically connected shipbuilders to its very costly present-day legacy in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and beyond. From there they turn to tariffs, where Phil makes hi...

"You will own nothing and be happy." That was one politician's prediction for 2030, floated in an essay for the World Economic Forum in 2016. Between Amazon Prime deciding which movies you get to keep and every song, show, and subscription living somewhere in a cloud you don't control, we might already be there. Lou and Phil trace it all back to Thomas Jefferson's edit of John Locke's theory of li...

Something's rotten in the produce aisle. Or at least, something is sending half the country's stomachs into open revolt. As a cyclosporiasis outbreak takes down Taco Bell's lettuce supply (and a lot of taco fans along with it), it's turning into more than just a recall story. Lou and Phil trace the whole thing back to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle , the FDA's surprisingly cynical origin story, and w...

It's the peak of summer, and while half the country is cranking the AC, the mayor of New York is asking his constituents to embrace the heat for the good of the grid. Meanwhile, across the pond, entire cities are stuck sweating it out... in restaurants, hotels, even hospitals... because installing an air conditioner has become a bureaucratic nightmare. Is staying cool really the enemy of climate p...

The World Cup has landed on American soil (with a little help from Canada and Mexico), and suddenly the whole world is discovering what U.S. locals take for granted—free refills, blasting AC, and the sheer, unbottled majesty of a Buc-ee's. But amid all the cultural exchange and ranch dressing diplomacy, there's a bigger question lurking behind the confetti: is hosting the world's biggest sporting...

Elon Musk is officially the world's first trillionaire. Cue the outrage. But Lou and Phil aren't exactly reaching for the pitchforks. That’s because when you actually look at where that wealth comes from, the story gets a lot more complicated than the internet would have you believe. From Starlink satellites spooking people in the night sky to SpaceX cafeteria workers sitting on surprise fortunes,...

Happy Birthday, America! What better way to celebrate 250 years than by arguing about taxes? Turns out the Founders had some thoughts on the matter. Lou and Phil dig into the surprisingly economic origins of the American Revolution, and why the tariff debate happening right now looks a lot more familiar than anyone in D.C. wants to admit. Also, was the Revolution actually just class warfare agains...

The Federal Reserve: everyone's heard of it, nobody really knows what it does, and somehow it controls your mortgage rate. Lou and Phil crack open the black box of America's central bank—what it's supposed to do, and its, uh,  mixed  track record of actually doing it. Also: is there a world where it just… doesn't exist? Welcome to Happy Hour Econ from Free To Choose Network, where comedian Lou Per...

Hollywood has a problem. Star Wars just posted its worst domestic opening in the Disney era, the cost of an afternoon or night out at the multiplex keeps climbing, and somewhere in a boardroom, nobody seems to be connecting the dots. Lou and Phil grab a seat to break down why the movie industry keeps flooding the market with slop, ignoring the sovereign consumer, and acting surprised when nobody s...

Vacations? In this economy? Rising inflation, spikes in fuel prices, airline closures (RIP Spirit Airlines), and a whole host of other factors have people feeling the budget crunch as schools let out and summer looms. But we all need a break sometimes, so we just put the plane tickets—or admission fees or tanks of gas or nice lunches—on the credit card. Convenient, sure, but at what cost? Join com...

We already tax the rich. Like, a lot. The top 1% pays over 40% of their income in federal taxes while shouldering more than 80% of the federal government's revenue. So why does everyone keep yelling "tax the rich" and "pay your fair share" as though it's not already happening? Lou and Phil follow the money and the rhetoric to uncover who's really behind the push for wealth taxes, what they're actu...

Used to be, California was a land of freedom and opportunity. A place where you could go to escape the oppressive regulatory regimes of the East. Today, it’s a different story. “Petty” crimes get ignored while burdensome regulations are strictly enforced. The money from high taxes gets spent on projects that never materialize. Join Lou and Phil as they chat about the absolute state of California o...

“The rent is too darn high.” We hear a lot about a “housing affordability crisis” in the U.S. And to be fair, in some places around the country, particularly certain urban areas, the cost to rent or buy a place to live is very steep. But not everywhere. So what’s really going on here? Is it a supply-and-demand issue? Landlords and sellers just being greedy? NIMBYs run amok? Well, it’s complicated....

Look, we all need to eat. Where there are people, there is a built-in demand for sustenance. Therefore, the existence of “food deserts” is obviously the result of late-stage capitalism deliberately keeping nutrition away from certain groups of people. Right? Well, no. In this week’s Happy Hour Econ, Lou and Phil are cooking up a spicy look at what’s behind how we feed ourselves. Welcome to Happy H...

With the successful execution of Artemis II, manned space exploration is back on the scene. But sending humans to the moon raises a whole host of questions. Why are we doing this? Why did we ever do this? Should we be spending money on it? Who owns the moon, anyway? And what does any of it have to do with Spaghetti Westerns? Join your favorite space-cases, Lou and Phil, as they boldly go where no...

It’s 4/20, and you know what that means! Love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in the middle, the simple fact is that marijuana—or cannabis, or weed, or even the Devil’s Lettuce—is having a very real moment. But how did we go from  Reefer Madness -levels of social stigma to sleek, sophisticated dispensaries that will deliver directly to your door? Join Lou and Phil for this blazing episode of  Happy...