After French protestors took the street to complain about the increase in the retirement age, I read quite a few jokes in social media about how protesting in France is the local pastime.

Download Episode.

Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people?

Jeff Deist: First of all, congratulations on your new book The Price of Time. It was fantastic.

Edward Chancellor (EC): I’m glad you enjoyed it.

JD: I ask all authors this question, especially authors of weighty books. Was it worth it, in terms of the opportunity cost in your own life?

On January 17, the Saudi minister of finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, announced that the Saudi state is open to selling oil in currencies other than the dollar. “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV.

The value of time, i.e., time preference or the higher valuation of want-satisfaction in nearer periods of the future as against that in remoter periods, is an essential element in human action. It determines every choice and every action. There is no man for whom the difference between sooner and later does not count. The time element is instrumental in the formation of all prices of all commodities and services.
—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States
By Arthur B. Laffer, Brian Domitrovic, and Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield
Post Hill Press, 2022, xxv + 413 pp.

Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people?

Bernie Sanders and other politicians have made socialism attractive to voters, especially young ones, because it promises to eliminate the injustices of capitalism. As to what socialism and capitalism mean, no one seems to care much, other than that by socialism, they mean a kinder, caring society without income extremes, whereas capitalism is the preferred system of ruthless exploiters who amass obscene fortunes while real workers struggle to survive.