The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Peter Ferrara, senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at The Heartland Institute, on how to address the entitlement crisis. Topics include: why Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable; the importance of coming up with concrete proposals for reining in entitlements; Peter Ferrera’s proposals for reforming Social Security and the health care system.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview John Tamny, editor of RealClearMarkets, on his new book Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You About Economics. Topics covered include: why Tamny thinks we should celebrate economic inequality; why great CEOs are actually underpaid; how the death tax harms even those who don’t have to pay it; effective communication of free-market ideas.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Jared Meyer, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of Disinhereted: How Washington Is Betraying America’s Young on how the regulatory-welfare state is harming younger Americans. Topics covered include: the failure of the government education system, the true cost of government entitlements and regulatory barriers to opportunity.
Peter Bergen argues in a piece for CNN, that it was inevitable that one day actual violence over speech that Muslims find offensive would reach our shores. Now it’s happened. On Sunday, two gunmen opened fire at the “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas. Police shot and killed the two gunmen. One security guard was injured, but it appears the injuries were not serious. We can be thankful for that. Must Americans now become accustomed to this sort of violence?
I’ve recently given a couple talks called “Free Speech Under Siege” in which I argue that the primary threat to free speech today comes not from terrorist attacks, such as those in Paris in January, but from an unwillingness to defend free speech as a right. That’s not to say terrorist attacks aren’t significant — ask Flemming Rose or cartoonist Molly Norris how free they feel to speak after being threatened with death for daring to publish drawings of Muhammad. My point is that the threats and killings can only succeed in chilling our speech if we let them. One way we do that is by appeasing those who resort to threats and violence.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Claremont Review of Books senior editor William Voegeli on his recent book The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.
There are widespread complaints today that the “patent system is broken” and that the “smart phone wars” and “patent trolls” are killing innovation. Yet patented innovation has revolutionized our lives — tablet computers, smart phones and antiviral drugs are just a few of these modern marvels. How to make sense of this contradiction? This talk by Adam Mossoff answers that question.
Here’s the mystery: although most Americans say they support cutting government spending in general, they nevertheless oppose cutting any specific program — least of all the so-called entitlement programs that are driving today’s torrent of spending: Social Security and Medicare.
Fifty years ago, Medicare was sold on the promise that it would unite the nation. But with Medicare’s unfunded liabilities approaching $100 trillion — a shortfall equaling almost six times the size of today’s economy — the question is whether Medicare will instead tear Americans apart.
