Hawk Talk

Oddly, there’s not a lot in the news this week. Given what we’ve all been through the past couple of years, that’s likely a good thing. This week, we sit back and take a casual look at inflation, economic growth, entrepreneurs, standardization, and the gig economy.

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Weekhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASREGW

https://gasprices.aaa.com

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-cream-trucks-are-the-latest-target-of-inflation/ar-AAZYTxK

Foolishness of the Week

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Bruce#Death_and_posthumous_pardon

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/21/1112722821/dave-chappelle-minneapolis-show-canceled

Topic of the Week

https://www.usacarry.com/40-yards-elisjsha-dicken-landed-shots-mall-shooter/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/us/eli-dicken-indiana-mall-shooting-bystander/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/us/armed-bystander-indiana-mall-shooting.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indiana-mall-shooting-elisjsha-dicken-neutralized-gunman-15-seconds/

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&geo=US&gprop=news&q=shooting

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Social Security has become a trillion dollar weight dragging down our economics and politics. On the one hand, according to the Social Security administration itself, the program will be insolvent within a decade. On the other, we can’t shut it down without condemning many elderly to destitution. This week, we talk about a plan that would phase out Social Security, do it without cutting benefits to current retirees, leave future retirees better off, and save the government money. The catch is that the phase-out requires many decades.

 

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/snaiohx-hampton-suites-irvine-orange-county-airport/

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-new-york-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-queens-congress-7e1d71dec55714872f60a4f34d02b7d7

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/aoc-laments-insane-cost-of-being-congresswoman

Foolishness of the Week

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11022021/Jill-Biden-voices-frustration-Joes-lack-progress-White-House.html

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20407226/bidens-dissertation.pdf

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Recently, we talked about polls showing a serious erosion of trust in the branches of government. This week, we focus on the media. It turns out that Americans trust the media about as much as they trust Congress - and it’s amazing how little they trust Congress. Interestingly, there’s a sharp division among party lines.

 

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.amazon.com/Alone/dp/B07RYP2QSW

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/outrage-erupts-white-house-calls-013222807.html

Foolishness of the Week

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pregnant-woman-given-hov-ticket-argues-fetus-is-passenger-post-roe/ar-AAZoI2r

Topic of the Week

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship

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No matter what we do to tweak our healthcare system, we seem to end up with the same problems decade after decade. Proponents of socialized medicine say that healthcare is simply too complex of a problem to leave to profit-seeking actors in the marketplace. Proponents of free market medicine say that healthcare is a product like any other product and that much of the complexity that exists is actually due to government regulations themselves. This week, we talk with an economic historian and ask, what happened to healthcare in this country?

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/wxn8qx/amtrak-spent-11-years-and-dollar450-million-to-save-acela-riders-100-seconds

https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/3480/1.pdf

https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-down-average-new-low.aspx

Foolishness of the Week

https://abcnews.go.com/US/couple-fined-1500-parking-driveway/story?id=86181089

Topic of the Week

https://history.umbc.edu/facultystaff/full-time/christy-ford-chapin/

https://www.amazon.com/Ensuring-Americas-Health-Creation-Corporate/dp/1107622875/ref=sr_1_1

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Historian Rob McDonald joins us on this Fourth of July week to talk about the events leading up to the founding, and his observation that the Founders thought less that they were declaring independence from Great Britain than that Parliament and the King had effectively declared the colonies independent by failing to fulfill the basic functions of government.

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/this-gorgeous-leather-is-made-from-the-hide-of-an-invasive-predatory-fish/

https://www.inversaleathers.com

https://www.fb.org/newsroom/cost-of-july-4th-cookout-17-higher-compared-to-year-ago

Foolishness of the Week

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-gas-prices-surge-stations-now-hold-up-to-175-of-your-money-when-you-swipe-11656277411

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James R. Harrigan on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/JamesRHarrigan

 

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For one-hundred years, the United States has been conducting an experiment in unlimited government wherein politicians spend far beyond the government’s means, kicking the fiscal can down the road for future generations to pay. The future has finally arrived and we are that future generation. The inflation we’re experiencing now is the beginning of the price we’ll be paying for a century of unlimited government.

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.wuft.org/news/2022/06/02/gainesville-residents-and-city-officials-gather-to-strategize-how-to-tackle-affordable-housing-issues-in-the-city/

https://www.sightline.org/2014/09/29/zoning-inclusionary-v-exclusionary/

https://dailytravelpill.com/montane-mansion-hong-kong-monster-building/

https://news.yahoo.com/affordable-housing-california-now-routinely-120027201.html

 

Foolishness of the Week

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/19/holiday-weekend-sees-massive-amount-of-flight-cancellations.html

 

Topic of the Week

https://www.aier.org/article/a-time-for-reckoning/

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Critics of drug laws focus on the costs, both in dollars and lives, of incarcerating people for an act that often hurts no one. Lost in the discussion is the cost of making it harder for people who suffer from chronic pain to obtain drugs they need to function.

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-31/yellen-says-i-was-wrong-last-year-on-the-path-of-us-inflation

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2322693-damaged-liver-repaired-inside-machine-for-three-days-before-transplant/

Foolishness of the Week

https://news.yahoo.com/justin-trudeau-points-u-gun-193328676.html

Topic of the Week

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/crime-pmn/canada-to-temporarily-decriminalize-some-drug-possession-to-tackle-abuse-problem

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We all see the profits companies make when they sell things for more than it cost them to produce. Companies carefully measure these profits, and many are required to publicly report them to the penny. What we don’t see, but is every bit as real, is the “profit” consumers make when they buy from those companies. A consumer’s “profit” occurs when the consumer pays less for a thing than the maximum the consumer was willing to pay. The fact that we readily see companies’ profits and don’t readily see consumers’ profits contributes to many people’s misunderstandings about economics.

 

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Quick Hits

https://wordsandnumbers.libsyn.com/episode-243-the-nature-of-exchange-pt-1

https://wordsandnumbers.libsyn.com/episode-244-the-nature-of-exchange-pt-2

Foolishness of the Week

https://apnews.com/article/california-race-and-ethnicity-san-francisco-voter-registration-6bc187073ed7477f654b63d869bacdf7

Topic of the Week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLXKazEbRJ8

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James and I were invited to kick off UNC Wilmington’s annual Business Week with a live recording of Words & Numbers. The talk was loosely based on our book, Cooperation & Coercion. If you’ve read the book, you’ll still find fresh material in these episodes. The first part of this two-part episode is the presentation. The second part is the audience Q&A.

 

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Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

Quick hits and the foolishness of the week have gone on vacation for a few weeks. In their places, we’ll be talking about unintended consequences.

Topic of the Week

https://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/insights/robert__burrus/csb_business_week_2022_-_connecting_uncws_cameron_school_of_business_to_its_powerful_network/3365

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Antony Davies on Twitter

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James R. Harrigan on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/JamesRHarrigan

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James and I were invited to kick off UNC Wilmington’s annual Business Week with a live recording of Words & Numbers. The talk was loosely based on our book, Cooperation & Coercion. If you’ve read the book, you’ll still find fresh material in these episodes. The first part of this two-part episode is the presentation. The second part is the audience Q&A.

 

Get Your Copy of Cooperation and Coercion Now!

http://www.cooperationandcoercion.com

Show Your Support for Words & Numbers at Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/wordsandnumbers

Quick Hits and Foolishness of the Week

Quick hits and the foolishness of the week have gone on vacation for a few weeks. In their places, we’ll be talking about unintended consequences.

Topic of the Week

https://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/insights/robert__burrus/csb_business_week_2022_-_connecting_uncws_cameron_school_of_business_to_its_powerful_network/3365

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More James at Smoke & Storieshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjILow4-ZJpBV-NnmSusZJ_vCuzKUJ4Ig

Let Us Know What You Think

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Antony Davies on Twitter

https://twitter.com/antonydavies

James R. Harrigan on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/JamesRHarrigan

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