According to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the IIF (Institute of International finance) global debt has soared to a new record high. The level of government debt around the world has ballooned since the financial crisis, reaching levels never seen before during peacetime. This has happened in the middle of an unprecedented monetary experiment that injected more than $20 trillion in the economy and lowered interest rates to the lowest levels seen in decades.

[The Vanishing Tradition: Perspective on American Conservatism. Edited by Paul Gottfried. Cornell University Press, 2020. 223 + pages.]

Jeff Deist joins the Death to Tyrants podcast to discuss themes in his recent article, “Politics Drops Its Pretenses“ and his recent speech on how “meaningless words” create a narrative. Is “democracy” really a good thing? Do those who use it even know what it means?

Increasingly in recent years, criminal-justice-reform activists in states and cities have been campaigning for what is known as “ban the box.” This is an effort to enact new laws and ordinances prohibiting landlords and employers from asking applicants about their criminal histories. The idea is that far too many rehabilitated former criminals are unable to find work or rent an apartment thanks to “the box” on application forms that asks about criminal convictions.

Thanks to the proliferation of body cameras and security cameras attached to homes and businesses, police are far more frequently being caught lying.

A famous adage of questionable origin reads something like this: you can fool all people some of the time, or some people all of the time, but never all people all of the time. The strand of modern economics called ‘behavioral economics’ makes its living on occasionally fooling some people and wrapping the results in daunting mathematical equations.