It can be tempting to think that because people have been warning about the dangers of the U.S. national debt for a long time, this means it isn’t a huge problem. I had Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute on Econception, my podcast with AIER, to talk about how the debt problem has changed over time — for the worse. No longer connected to the business cycle or any kind of one-off emergencies, the budget deficit is set to increase each year going forward, and that’s assuming everything goes well.
Next, I talk about Bernie Sanders’s latest talking point: that people making minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment. I look at the statistics on who actually makes the minimum wage to demonstrate why this isn’t a problem policy-makers should be concerned about.
Then I take a break from current events to talk about the economics of gift cards. Gift cards are just money, but worse, since you can spend them only at one place. But they fill a market need: gifts for people you don’t know that well.
For the Paper of the Episode, Brian picked “The Overextended Retirement State” by his Manhattan Institute colleague Chris Pope. More than redistributing from the rich to the poor, the federal government actually redistributes from the young to the old.
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