Words & Numbers

We’ve argued before that the value of a college degree was questionable. That was before covid. Since then, the value proposition has deteriorated markedly. Foolishness of the Week: 05:15 Main episode: 07:07 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...

The annual gross interest on the debt exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in history. Years ago, we warned that the combination of on-going deficits and inevitably higher interest rates would give us exactly what we have now. Foolishness of the Week: 08:16 Main episode: 09:31 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www...

A generation or two ago, people wrung their hands over the population explosion. What will happen, they said, when we finally have too many people! It turns out that, not only was overpopulation not a problem, underpopulation has become one. Foolishness of the Week: 8:25 Main episode: 14:19 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James!...

Foolishness of the Week: 11:09 Main episode: 16:35 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://twitter.com/amyklobuchar/status/1786794183312748959 Foolishness of the Week https://www.the-expre...

Clark Neily joins us again this week. This time, we’re talking about how we have come to muddle the separation of powers among the three branches of government. As Congress has largely fallen asleep at the wheel, the executive branch has come to play the roles of all three branches, all by itself. Foolishness of the Week: 04:46 Main episode: 05:49 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! htt...

The National Association of Realtors recently agreed to pay almost half a billion dollars in a class action suit involving sellers fees. This week’s guest, Judd Bristo, is unique in being a listener, an economist, and a realtor. We asked Judd to come on to talk about the settlement and the complex world of real estate commissions. Foolishness of the Week: 04:38 Main episode: 07:03 Get Your Copy of...

Foolishness of the Week: 06:30 Main episode: 09:25 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://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1183025683040361&id=100039988210787&mibextid=oFDknk...

James has an ax to grind. Google made him mad. FedEx made him mad. Many things make James mad. But this week, he tells us why. Foolishness of the Week: 16:22 Main episode: 20:01 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/words...

James recently wrote an article on the price of admission and food at baseball fields over the years. To look at the prices, it appears that baseball has shifted from entertainment for the working classes to entertainment for the middle and rich classes. Or perhaps we’ve simply all become richer and baseball has simply followed along. Foolishness of the Week: 13:07 Main episode: 16:09 Get Your Cop...

We all know that the FDA saves lives by keeping bad drugs off markets. But far fewer of us understand that the FDA costs lives by keeping good drugs from markets. Often all it takes to see this other side of the FDA is to be confronted with a life threatening disease for which there are treatments - just not FDA-approved treatments.  Foolishness of the Week: 08:38 Main episode: 14:53 Get Your Copy...

Each election cycle, we’re treated to politicians and their supporters crying about the disappearing middle class. So many people repeat the mantra that most of us just accept it as fact. It turns out that those people are right - the middle class is disappearing. Where they get the story wrong is that it isn’t bad news. It’s excellent news. Foolishness of the Week: 09:12 Main episode: 15:32 Get Y...

Spike Cohen, 2020 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential nominee, joins us this week for a two part series in which we discuss the upcoming election, the Libertarian Party, the future of politics in America, and his work in single-issue activism - You Are the Power. Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers....

Spike Cohen, 2020 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential nominee, joins us this week for a two part series in which we discuss the upcoming election, the Libertarian Party, the future of politics in America, and his work in single-issue activism - You Are the Power. Foolishness of the Week: 11:05 Main episode: 13:14 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com...

The United States has been a two party system almost since its inception. In modern times, this has led to the Democrats and Republicans having a virtual monopoly on the political landscape. Despite the fact that a plurality of Americans don’t identify with either party, they won’t allow a third party to compete. And what’s the only thing worse than a two-party system? A one-party system. Foolishn...

Last week, we recorded live from Hampden-Sydney College. This week’s episode is the Q&A from that recording. Foolishness of the Week: 09:21 Main episode: 10:05 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 Qui...

Last week, we talked about the incongruity of not only having a majority of voters not like either major party candidate, but to have those two candidates appear twice in back-to-back elections. This week, we explore what happens when a President is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office. Foolishness of the Week: 11:01 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperation...

Last week, we talked about the incongruity of not only having a majority of voters not like either major party candidate, but to have those two candidates appear twice in back-to-back elections. This week, we explore what happens when a President is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office. Foolishness of the Week: 09:59 Main episode: 12:50 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! ht...

  The Trump vs Biden election of 2020 was noteworthy because, for so many voters, it wasn’t a matter of selecting the person they thought was best suited for the job so much as a matter of selecting the person they thought was least ill-suited. As if it isn’t weird enough that, out of 200 million or so adults, the best we could do was to bring Trump and Biden to the fore, here we are in 2024 appar...

People used to scared about the federal debt. But it's been so huge for so long that people have lost interest. Yet, despite people's lack of attention - or perhaps, in part, because of it - the debt has continued to grow. For the past 50 years or so, it has been doubling every 8 to 9 years. Foolishness of the Week: 09:10 Main episode:  13:36 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://w...

Many people share an intuition that “excess” profits are a sign of something having been stolen from labor. Karl Marx shared this intuition and formalized it in his writings on the surplus value of labor. Foolishness of the Week: 05:48 Main episode: 11:55 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show...

For whom does the corporation exist: investors, workers, customers, the community? Economists tend to answer, "investors." That's not to say that workers, customers, and the community aren't important, but rather that the corporation exists to further the interests of the investors. Where the interests of the workers, customers, and community coincide with those of investors, the corporation also...

Economic "degrowth" seems to be the new socialism. Like the old, it promises all manner of wonderful things, from equality to a cleaner environment. And like the old, it will deliver nothing but misery. Foolishness of the Week: 10:24 Main episode: 13:35 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http://www.wordsandnumbers.org Show Y...

Intuitively, people understand the value of time. We consider it every time we decide to put off something we want now for something better later. Psychologists call it, “delayed gratification.” But when we think about things like banks and landlords and Wall Street, we fail to see the time value of money driving people’s behaviors. Foolishness of the Week: 14:15 Main episode: 18:13 Get Your Copy...

Colleges and universities, for years now self-proclaimed bastions of “safe spaces,” are allowing some students to express anti Semitism and call for genocide. Should colleges allow this in the name of free speech, or should it disallow it in the name of protecting students? Congressional hearings into prominent universities appear to reveal administrators picking a third and worse option: selectiv...

We respond to an article that claims that “the good life” has become so expensive as to be beyond the reach of most Americans. We conclude that what is beyond the reach of at least some Americans is the ability to perform simple math. Foolishness of the Week: 05:33 Main episode: 09:16 Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now! http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com See More Ant and James! http:...