Words & Numbers

Latest Episodes:

Episode 22: Do Airlines Charge Too Much? Jul 12, 2017

Show notes

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?

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Episode 21: Let Amazon Play Monopoly Jul 05, 2017

Show notes

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 Words and Numbers, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan discuss the probable future of the Amazon-Whole Foods merger, what it could mean for us, and what it could mean for another once-equally feared corporation: Wal-Mart.

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Episode 20: Just Say No to the War on Drugs Jun 28, 2017

Show notes

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 many people suffer from alcoholism as do heroin abuse, and eight times as many die from alcohol abuse as do heroin. Many who support the war do so with the best of intentions, but has it really helped? Or has it done more harm than good, like the Prohibition of the 1920s? Is this war even legal in the first place? James Harrigan and Antony Davies discuss these questions in this week's Words and Numbers.

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Episode 19: The Population Boom Could Save the World Jun 21, 2017

Show notes

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 more brains, which means more ideas, inventions, and innovations. This week on Words and Numbers, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan talk about how and why the world is improving despite widespread negativity towards the idea of a growing world population, and why that negativity persists regardless of the prosperity we see every day.

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Episode 18: What You Should Know About Poverty in America Jun 14, 2017

Show notes

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/

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Episode 17: Earning Profits is Your Social Responsibility Jun 07, 2017

Show notes

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.

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Episode 16: Is Your College Degree Worthless? May 31, 2017

Show notes

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.

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Episode 15: Government Can't Stop Creative Destruction May 24, 2017

Show notes

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/

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Episode 14: You Can't Trust Employment Statistics May 17, 2017

Show notes

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/

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Episode 13: The Minimum Wage Conspiracy May 10, 2017

Show notes

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

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