Words & Numbers

In the last two and a half generations, the number of students who go on to attend college, as a percentage of the population, has tripled. Today, about 60 percent of high school students go on to college. But has the big push to get kids into college done anything to improve outcomes? Is the average $250,000 investment in a four-year degree at all worth it? If not, what alternatives exist? Join Antony Davies and James Harrigan as they talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Regulatory capture is a problem in this country. The regulatory suggestions that regulatory experts give politicians tend to make life easier for the established experts and harder for those competing with them. What causes private companies to engage in that behavior? Join James Harrigan, Antony Davies, and special guest Robert McNamara from the Institute for Justice as they discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

The fact that the United States' yearly deficit spending is set to soon top $1 trillion might be an indicator that the federal government has gotten too large. No matter which party is in power, the federal government and its spending never stops growing. We're taught in school a tale of selfless public servants chosen by voters to represent their constituency's best interests. But is it true? Join James Harrigan and Antony Davies as they talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Immigration is an important topic in the national conversation these days. It's known that the US is "a nation of immigrants," and yet there remains a skepticism about newcomers. These concerns branch into two categories: economic concerns and social concerns. Citizens seem to think that immigrants are "taking our jobs." or "undermining American culture." But are these concerns warranted? Join James Harrigan and Antony Davies as they discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Socialism is, whether we like it or not, in the national dialogue. However, socialism, in it's purest form, has never been tried. But, by the same token, neither has undiluted capitalism. To understand which works better, we have to think about means and ends. Almost all of us want the same ends, but we disagree sharply about the means. So how do we find the most efficient, most humane means? Join Antony Davies and James Harrigan as they talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent the country into a tizzy not long ago when he declared that the federal government would start cracking down on state-legal marijuana. So how did we get to the point of having federal laws and regulations about marijuana and a number of other things? We had to have a Constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, so why doesn't the government need one to ban marijuana? James Harrigan and Antony Davies discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Recent attention has been brought to the implementation of a regulation that will require all professional childcare workers to have a college degree in Washington DC area. This has raised a cry as it will ban a number of existing childcare workers from their chosen profession. Unintended consequences abound in pretty much every aspect of regulated life to various degrees. Join Antony Davies and James Harrigan as they talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

What do you do on any given day that is not somehow regulated by government in some way? There really isn't much. In point of fact, there are well over one hundred thousand pages of federal regulations alone, to say nothing of state and local regulations. So if there is, indeed, a legitimate purpose for regulation, what is it? Who benefits? And how far is too far? Join James Harrigan and Antony Davies as they talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

It seems, these days, that you can't turn on the TV or log on to social media without someone griping about how awful things are. They complain about everything, from taxes to avocados to bills to cell signal strength. But the truth of things is a lot rosier than popular media would lead you to believe. Join Antony Davies and James Harrigan as they talk about thankfulness and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

The anti-marijuana advocates warned that legalization would lead to increased drug use — especially among teens — higher crimes rates etc. It's still early days, but we do have almost four years of data about the effects of legalizing marijuana to look at. Were the anti-marijuana crusaders correct? Are teen drug use and violent crime rampant? Are visitors shunning Colorado? Was it all a huge mistake? Antony Davies and James Harrigan discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Christmas is right around the corner, and people everywhere are in the holiday spirit. In addition to giving gifts to loved ones, Americans are also giving to their preferred charities. So how does all of this private charity compare to what the government is doing? What does the future for government welfare look like? Is the market capable of taking on the role of the "first line" of help for those who need it? Antony Davies and James Harrigan discuss on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

The problem with CBO forecasts: they're usually wrong. Why are the CBO forecasts so bad? And what does this mean for our economy? James Harrigan and Antony Davies discuss this and more in this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

But it's only natural that this sort of bad behavior has evolved because of the huge problem of overcriminalization. And when the difference between "criminal" and "lawbreaker" is more than just splitting semantic hairs, something needs to be done. Special guest Clark Neily of the Cato Institute joins James Harrigan and Antony Davies to talk about this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

It never seems to fail that whenever any kind of change to the tax code is proposed in Washington, billionaires and millionaires come clambering out of the woodwork to tell Congress not to cut their taxes. Recently, more than 400 of the super-rich signed a letter asking exactly that. Is taxation the only way to financially support the government? James Harrigan and Antony Davies discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

The World Fair Trade Organization has declared this week to be World Fair Trade Week. "Fair trade" is quite the buzzword in commerce these days and is generally associated agricultural products. Chief among those is coffee. The popularity of fair trade coffee is undeniable. But what even is "fair trade" and what does it entail? How "fair" is it? Or is it just a marketing gimmick? James Harrigan and Antony Davies get into the nitty-gritty of this and more in this week's episode of Words and Numbers.