Words & Numbers

Recently released data from the Federal Reserve indicate an increase in income inequality and wealth inequality in the country. People often assume this means that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In the US, it generally means that both the rich and poor are getting richer, but the rich are getting richer faster. Moreover, “the rich” is not a static group of people. Peo...

Amazon made online comparison shopping easy for all. Now it’s Amazon’s turn to comparison shop: for a city to host its new corporate headquarters. It’s looking for which major metropolis will offer the sweetest deal. Unfortunately, the welcome package will most likely be paid for by the city’s taxpayers. Amazon claims it’s worth it in the long run, given how much tax revenue the corporate titan wo...

Once upon a time, an out-of-touch queen heard of her subjects’ lack of bread and supposedly responded, “Let them eat cake.” Hunger has become so bad in Venezuela that its own out-of-touch ruler has proclaimed, in essence, “let them eat rabbits.” This is how far Venezuela has fallen. And yet, only a few years ago, many (including the American left) were heralding the rise of “Bolivarian socialism”...

Does the debt ceiling even mean anything? It’s like a credit limit on your credit card, but one which the borrower (the US government) gets to set for itself. Moreover, it’s most likely that the government has been borrowing way above the ceiling but simply doesn’t make it official until after the debt ceiling is raised: as it always is. Economists Antony Davies and James Harrigan discuss what thi...

Nurse Alex Wubbels refused to let police draw blood from an unconscious crash victim and ended up arrested. The ensuing national controversy has brought police conduct back into the spotlight, raising several questions. Is it necessary to be above the law to enforce it? Does the policy of granting “qualified immunity” to officers incentivize irresponsibility? Would police ranks have far fewer “bad...

These days, everybody is nervous about what you can say in public without getting slammed by retribution. But is that a free-speech problem, or does it only become one when the police start showing up? Do we live in a truly tolerant society if voicing an opinion, even if it doesn’t land you in jail, ends up ending your career? Antony and James explore these intricate issues on this weeks episode. ...

In 1938 the US government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act mandating a forty hour work week, establishing a minimum wage, and prohibiting child labor. Because of legislation like this, government is often credited for making the American work environment safer and more fair. Yet, as Antony Davies and James Harrigan demonstrate with historical data, market forces were already making things easie...

In private schools, as in private enterprise in general, poor performance drives funding away by driving paying customers away. Yet in public schools, poor performance is used as an excuse for increased funding. With incentives like these, is it any wonder that public schools are failing our children so badly? Isn’t it time to inject some competition into the system? Education for all is a worthy...

In 1922, famed etiquette writer Emily Post advised her readers that 10% is the standard for tipping your waiter. Since then, “gratuity creep” has been so steady that tip jars are now ubiquitous and 25-30% is considered the rule in New York City. Uber once resisted this trend, but recently added a tipping feature to its app.  What is the economic rationale behind tipping? Does the usefulness of tip...

A viewer recently asked us what Words & Numbers thought of Universal Basic Income. Antony Davies likes the idea of it, provided it’s done well, but doesn’t think it could ever possibly be done well. But what about a theoretical UBI? If we could actually figure out how to implement that well, would that work? And why wouldn’t that work in the real world? This week on Words and Numbers, Antony a...

Income inequality has been in the news more and more, and it doesn’t look good. It’s aggravating to see people making more money than you, and we’re told all the time that income inequality is on the rise. But is it? And even if it is, is it actually a bad thing? This week on Words and Numbers, Antony Davies​ and James R. Harrigan​talk about how income inequality plays out in the real world. Learn...

This week on Words & Numbers, Antony Davies​ and James R. Harrigan​ tackle the disaster that is the Illinois state budget crisis.  Pro-tip: Don't let it happen to your state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on Words & Numbers, James R. Harrigan and Antony Davies tackle the issue of airline pricing. Why do they charge what they do? What do those prices mean? Is it too much and are passengers being ripped off?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon’s offer to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion sounds pretty great to both parties, but it seems that isn’t good enough. The proposal has a lot of people worried about Amazon becoming an indestructible monopoly, and the government is all too happy to step in and settle the issue. But this concern ignores consumers’ own preferences as well as business and entrepreneurial history. This week in...

Ted Cruz recently asserted that the United States military needs to be sent to Mexico to attack the drug cartels head-on. This is a bad idea. But so is the drug war itself, both constitutionally and logically. Forty-six years and one trillion dollars after its start, President Richard Nixon's War on Drugs is still going, with 300,000 people currently in jail on drug charges. Meanwhile, 26 times as...

In 1798, 95 percent of the world lived in poverty. Today, less than 10 percent do, in spite of the world’s population growing by 700 percent in that same time. The common thought among young people is that this 700 percent population growth is going to overpopulate the earth. But given the number of people in poverty, it looks like population growth is actually good for poverty – more people means...

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 Number...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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: ta...

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 t...

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 h...

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.”...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Ma...