Words & Numbers

Pope Francis devoted his Christmas homily to speaking out about the evils of pursuing wealth. This week, James and Ant share their different takes on the topic. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers Apply...

Listener questions this week include: What are the benefits of central banking? Is it time for the states to have an amicable divorce? What would it take to reduce the size of the federal government? What’s the difference between private and public companies? Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org...

This week, listeners ask whether it’s right to think of contagion as pollution, and if so, whether government has a role in containing contagion, why are we so litigious, and how we can say anything about socialism or capitalism if neither one has ever existed in a pure form. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wor...

Over the past century, three constraints on the federal government have failed. When we started ignoring Constitutional constraints, we opened the door to massive increases in federal spending. When voters started asking politicians for more “free” stuff, we walked through the door. And when we went off the gold standard politicians were able to strong-arm the Federal Reserve into funding the mass...

Whether regulations are a good thing or a bad thing is a more complicated question than it appears. Government can regulate through law. But consumers can also regulate through choice. Some government regulations protect people from harm. But some purport to protect people from harm while actually protecting favored businesses from competition. In this live episode, recorded at Susquehanna Univers...

Our greatest immediate concerns are the combination of inflation and recession, and the threat of war with Russia. The United States faced this combination of problems forty years ago. One important difference is that whereas we are politically divided today, then we were politically united. Going by electoral votes, Ronald Reagan was the last President who united the country, and the only Preside...

Last week, we talked about the world population crossing the 8 billion mark. This week, we look at a related topic, population growth. We find the interesting fact that population growth has slowed to near zero in the developed world, and that future population growth will come mostly from Africa.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant a...

The world population crossed the 8 billion mark this week. As far back as at least the late 1700s, experts were predicting that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation. Time and again, the experts end up being both right and wrong. They tend to be right in their projections that the world population is exploding, but they are always wrong about it leading to mass starvation. In fact, today’s...

For our 300th episode, Senator Phil Gramm joins us to talk about his recent book on income inequality in America. The disturbing thing is that the government figures that people quote concerning income inequality exclude all the tax and transfer adjustments we deliberately make to mitigate income inequality.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See...

Do the dead have rights? This Halloween, philosopher James Stacey Taylor joins us for a live (heh) recording of Words & Numbers to take this question seriously.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers...

People spend a lot of time talking about the debt and deficit, but most are unaware of the mechanics involved. This week, we cover some of those mechanics with a discussion of Treasury notes, bills, and bonds.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Pat...

This month, the world takes stock of international poverty, and James and Ant put poverty into perspective both across countries and across time.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers Quick Hits https://...

All of economics boils down to a single fact: people respond to incentives. The first step to thinking like an economist is to take that fact seriously. Once you do, the world never looks the same.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https:/...

People - including some economists - are so used to governments establishing currencies that we are unaware that there are alternatives. Money is simply a tool that reduces the frictional costs of trading goods and services and of saving. Markets can evolve money in the same way that they evolve all manner of other solutions to even more complex problems. Prof. Lawrence H. White joins us this week...

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution lists the things the Federal government is permitted to do. Somewhere in our history, citizens have come to regard the Constitution as a document that outlines what the government is not allowed to do. That’s exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant...

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution lists the things the Federal government is permitted to do. Somewhere in our history, citizens have come to regard the Constitution as a document that outlines what the government is not allowed to do. That’s exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant...

The “age of majority” is the age at which a person is considered, legally, an adult. Not only does the age of majority vary by state and over time, it also varies by activity. Someone who is considered an adult for the purpose of voting, may not be for the purpose of drinking. As only adults can exercise their freedoms fully, the question of what constitutes an adult goes to the heart of what it i...

This episode is an excerpt of an interview we gave with Dr. Anwar Dunbar for his YouTube channel, Big Discussions. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers Carson Collins’ Award-Winning Video on the Minimum W...

We discuss two topics in-depth this week: student loan forgiveness and lying to pollsters. There’s an interesting technique for distinguishing between what voters say they believe and what they actually believe, and there’s a recent poll that uses this technique in asking people about their attitudes toward controversial topics. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperation...

Today’s woke-ism evolved from political correctness of the 1990s. While people have embraced many lessons about inclusion and empathy from the era of political correctness, people appear to be rejecting the woke-ism that tries to insinuate itself into popular culture. Post-covid movies provide a good example. Elite critics are applauding, and audiences are largely rejecting movies that use enterta...

Maybe we’re in a recession, but maybe we’re not. This week, we talk about what a recession is and what it means, practically, for people.   Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers Quick Hits https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/columbia-us-news-rankings.html ht...

The Founders gave strong philosophical arguments for why secession from Great Britain was right and proper. Yet, when the Confederacy tried to secede from the Union, philosophical arguments against secession were few. Clearly, ending slavery was right and proper. And, the question of secession was, practically speaking, answered with the eradication of slavery. But the question of whether it is ri...

Part of the reason we make little progress on this topic of guns in this country is that the pro- and anti-gun camps talk past each other. This is fueled by a media that tends to show only one side of the story, causing both sides in the debate to become paranoid - one side comes to think that half the country is looking to disarm them, and the other side comes to think that half the country is bl...

Oddly, there’s not a lot in the news this week. Given what we’ve all been through the past couple of years, that’s likely a good thing. This week, we sit back and take a casual look at inflation, economic growth, entrepreneurs, standardization, and the gig economy. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patr...

Social Security has become a trillion dollar weight dragging down our economics and politics. On the one hand, according to the Social Security administration itself, the program will be insolvent within a decade. On the other, we can’t shut it down without condemning many elderly to destitution. This week, we talk about a plan that would phase out Social Security, do it without cutting benefits t...