So many of the problems with higher education stem from the involvement of government in the market.

Not a day goes by without a TikTok video surfacing of unhappy Gen-Zers or millennials lamenting their career choices that stemmed from college education. On top of this, student debt has become a hot-button political issue. And nearly every conservative laments the rise of such degrees as “gender studies” or “sociology” that seem to be little more than proxies for progressive ideological indoctrination with a price tag. Higher education has become a mess.

The American people have the great pleasure of electing either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president this year. With the election approaching, formal debates between the candidates have begun. A lot has been said about President Biden’s shaky performance or former President Trump’s comments on the 2020 election, but their comments on the economy or trade have seen less attention. Both presidents spent trillions on government programs, increased the national debt, and participated in protectionist trade policies.

For this week’s episode, I wanted to find something familiar in the form of a “saying” to try and convey my thoughts about the economy as it stands today. I even thought about nursery rhymes like “ring around the Rosie” and “musical chairs,” but those did not exactly fit and did not stand up to historical or logical scrutiny the way I hoped.

The concept of reality is questioned by the notion, as László Krasznahorkai expressed it, that there are “many realities, or none at all.” By contrast, in Human Action, Ludwig von Mises offers a clear concept of reality, which he describes as “the whole complex of all causal relations between events, which wishful thinking cannot alter.” Building on this idea, Murray Rothbard argues that the entire science of human action can be deduced from a f

According to the most recent report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 206,000 jobs during June while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1 percent. Unlike most months over the past year—which repeatedly described the employment situation as “strong” and “a blowout”—the general media narrative for the June jobs report was far less enthusiastic.

As anyone who is conscious knows by now, the Joe Biden re-election campaign is in serious trouble.

Profit, in a broader sense, is the gain derived from action; it is the increase in satisfaction (decrease in uneasiness) brought about; it is the difference between the higher value attached to the result attained and the lower value attached to the sacrifices made for its attainment; it, in other words, yield minus costs. To make profit is invariably the aim sought by any action. If an action fails to attain the ends sought, yield either does not exceed costs or lags behind costs. In the latter case the outcome means a loss, a decrease in satisfaction.

All human action, so far as it is rational, appears as the exchange of one condition for another. Men apply economic goods and personal time and labour in the direction which, under the given circumstances, promises the highest degree of satisfaction, and they forego the satisfaction of lesser needs so as to satisfy the more urgent needs.

Excerpt from The Case Against the Fed

Central Banking began in England, when the Bank of England was chartered in 1694. Other large nations copied this institution over the next two centuries, the role of the Central Bank reaching its now familiar form with the English Peel Act of 1844. The United States was the last major nation to enjoy the dubious blessings of Central Banking, adopting the’ Federal Reserve System in 1913.

Excerpt from The Case Against the Fed