The Economic Case Against Tariffs, Taxes & Regulation

Bob Neugebauer Welcome to the Idaho Pulse. This is your host, Tea Party. Bob here once again to enlighten you all about what is happening in our state. And with me once again is our good friend, Ronald Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. So without further ado, let us welcome Ron to the Idaho Post and welcome Mr. Nate. Nice to have you again.

Ron Nate Well, how are you doing, Bob? Great to be on Idaho Pulse again. Uh, just just so you know, we have a busy day here at Idaho Freedom Foundation. We’re mailing out a bunch of things to our to our partners and friends of IFF. And so there’s a few volunteers out in the lobby here, um, chatting and stuff while they’re stuffing envelopes. So if you hear a little background noise, it’s just that we’re busy doing freedom work, that’s all.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I love it. More freedom work.

Ron Nate Yeah. Um, I thought we’d do something a little bit different today, Bob. I mean, typically we get together each week and lament about the horrible Idaho policy or legislative leadership or the governor’s office doing things that hurt Idahoans or not doing the things that would help Idahoans and, uh, restricting markets or stuff like that. And so, uh, we get into this, I don’t know, negative cycle of, uh, boo hoo, they’re, they’re horrible. We need to fight for freedom better. But I wanted to do something a little different. You know, I’ve taught economics for twenty five years, and I want to talk about one particular lesson I do that’ll give you, give you and hopefully your listeners an insight into why economists tend to be more conservative than the rest of the world. And it’s because we look at economics through an economic way of thinking. You know, we think about incentives, secondary effects, um, uh, how, how people respond to changes in the world. And, you know how they make their decisions and these economics principles. You know, if you understand them, except for Karl Marx, you know, who apparently couldn’t get the basics right. Uh, understanding the basics of economics, uh, will drive you towards conservatism because it is just a beautiful system which takes the natural inclinations of man and turns it into forces that make man want to serve one another in a free market system.

Bob Neugebauer So today you’re going to treat us to, uh, a complete dinner of economics from the main course, right through to the dessert, correct?

Ron Nate Absolutely. This is my favorite thing to teach in economics, by the way. And so if you want to learn a little bit about the benefits of mutual benefits from exchange people trading with one another, freeing up the market to let that happen, removing any barriers like taxes or tariffs from the process? You’ll find that people get great benefits by specializing and exchanging. It’s a beautiful thing.

Bob Neugebauer Without further ado, let’s get on the bandwagon.

Ron Nate All right. Here we go. Just sit back and hopefully enjoy. But let’s say that this is what I would teach in my college classes. And the way I would approach this principle, it’s called comparative advantage is this way. Let’s say you are new on campus as a freshman, and you’ve been thrown into a dorm with a roommate. You didn’t choose the roommate, but you have a roommate. Okay. And, uh, there’s only there’s only two chores you do each week, you know, during the week you’re doing your schoolwork and everything, but on Saturday is your free day and you have your free time. There’s only two things you ever produce in your apartment on a Saturday, and that is doing laundry and baking batches of cookies. That’s all you do. We’re just going to simplify the world to two simple things. Okay? And you might find out after a couple of weeks that you have very different abilities in terms of producing cookies and laundry. Roommate number one, let’s say you Bob, our roommate number one and roommate number one, you have a certain set of skills, as Liam Neeson would say. And in a day, in an entire day, you could do six loads of laundry. Um, on the other hand, if you didn’t do any laundry at all and only did cookies, you could do twelve batches of cookies in a day. And so that’s quite productive. You could do twelve batches of cookies or six loads of laundry. Or if you divided up your time half and half, you’d do six batches of cookies and three loads of laundry. That’s that’s Bob roommate number one. On the other hand, you have me roommate number two, Ron. Um, I’m not quite as good at these things. Uh, I could do four loads of laundry in a day or four batches of cookies. That’s the limit of my skills. I’m not very skilled. And so if I divided my day half and half, I’d get two batches of cookies, two loads of laundry, and that’s the extent of my abilities. Now looking at this, we have two roommates here, uh, Bob, who can do, uh, three times as many cookies as me and one and a half times as much laundry as me on an average day. So looking at this, if if, uh, Bob, you’re this new freshman there, your mom gives you a call and says, hey, hey, Bob, what’s going on? And you say, great, I’m enjoying college. And then your mom says, hey, tell me about your roommate. What do you say about your roommate, Bob?

Bob Neugebauer He’s real slow at doing laundry and cookies.

Ron Nate Bless his heart. Yeah. So he really sucks at everything, right? And so he’s not good at cookies, not good at laundry. And here is the, the, uh, instinct that Bob might have. I’m better at cookies, better at laundry. There’s no reason to deal with roommate Ron. He can’t possibly help me because I’m better at everything. And that is the classic mistake. At at first level, thinking in economics is that you’re looking at it with a standard that we would call absolute advantage in absolute terms. You can do more cookies in a day. Absolutely. It takes you less of your day to do a batch of cookies. Fewer resources. In absolute terms, you have an absolute advantage also in laundry doing. You could do more loads of laundry in a day. In other words, it takes less of a day to do a load of laundry than it does for me. And so that is absolute advantage way of thinking. And you would say, I’m not even going to deal with roommate Ron because he can’t possibly help me. But what we’re going to find out today is that standard is wrong. I would like to introduce you to another standard, which people use all the time without even realizing it. And it’s called comparative advantage. And comparative advantage doesn’t look at how much resources you use to produce a good or service. It says, what is your opportunity cost of producing a good or service? An opportunity cost is a different standard. In other words, when you do a load of laundry. Absolute advantage says, how much of my day does it take? Comparative advantage says, how many cookies do I lose to do it? So a different standard is comparative advantage when I do a load of laundry. How many cookies do I give up when I do a batch of cookies? How much laundry do I give up? And looking at that, you’ll find out that Bob, you do not have a comparative advantage in everything anymore. Because when you do a load of laundry, it takes you two batches of cookies to do that, right? AM I right?

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, but I’m going to lose more weight.

Ron Nate Yeah, but that’s who cares. Your goal here is to consume as many cookies as possible, as much laundry as possible. But when I do a load of laundry, how many cookies do I give up? One. So I give up one batch of cookies to do a load of laundry. Bob, you give up two batches of cookies to a load of laundry. Now, in absolute terms, you’re better at laundry than I am. You can do more in a day, but every time you do a load of laundry, you give up more cookies than I do. That is the principle of comparative advantage. And we’ll find out that you know what? By applying the law of comparative advantage that says producers who have a lower opportunity cost of producing something should specialize in that good. And you’ll get better results. Because here it is. If we divided both of our days equally, and we each only produce for ourselves half and half bob, you would get you would get six batches of cookies and three loads of laundry. I would get two batches of cookies and two loads of laundry. So all combined, that’s eight batches of cookies and five loads of laundry in the apartment. Now look at it this way. If I specialized in laundry and did four loads of laundry, and you specialized in cookies and did twelve batches of cookies, that’s twelve and four. Now, is that better than eight and five? Well, it’s more cookies, but it’s a little bit less laundry. All right. Well, what if you did ten batches of cookies and one load of laundry? That leaves us with five loads of laundry done in the apartment and ten batches of cookies. That’s two more batches of cookies than would have been done otherwise. That’s two bonus batch of cookies. Just because you specialized more in cookies. And I specialized in laundry. And then we could negotiate and divide it up in a way that makes us both happier by one batch of cookies. So instead of ending up with six batches of cookies and three loads of laundry for your consumption, you end up with seven batches of cookies and three loads of laundry. I end up with three batches of cookies and two loads of laundry. We’re both better off by Buy a batch of cookies because we specialized and traded instead of produced for our own selves. That was not obvious at the beginning. In fact, the obvious thing at the beginning is what you told your mom, Bob. You said, oh, Ron, he’s a sweet spirit, but he can’t do laundry and he can’t do cookies very well. But we just found out that if I specialize in laundry and have you mostly specialize in cookies, we actually get more total production than if we divided time equally ourselves. And that is the world in which we live in. It’s not just cookies and laundry we produce. It is potatoes. It’s lumber. It’s bananas. It’s cars. It’s computers. It’s everything we produce takes absolute set of resources. And oftentimes we’ll confuse ourselves by saying in absolute terms, the United States is better at production of a lot of things, but in comparative advantage terms, if one country has a comparative advantage in producing one good, the counter to that is another country has a comparative advantage in the opposite good. Let me give you an example. We might look at Canada and say, oh, bless Canada’s heart, but the US can produce more lumber and more wheat and more cars than Canada. In absolute terms, we have more resources. Maybe we even have better resources, but it takes us less time and less resources to produce each car, each bushel of wheat, each chord of lumber. And that might lead us to the conclusion that we can’t possibly benefit by dealing with Canada. But what we find out is Canada does have comparative advantages. While we can produce more wheat and cars, uh, and lumber than Canada, When Canada produces lumber, they give up less wheat and cars than we do when we produce a batch of lumber. Maybe we are giving up more wheat and more cars than Canada does. Because of comparative advantages. We have different abilities in terms of the trade off of our resources, not just the absolute use of them. And so what this tells us is, even though in absolute terms, we might be better than Canada at producing everything in comparative advantage terms, we’re not. If we’re better in comparative terms at wheat, then they are better in comparative terms at lumber. And we’d be better off by specializing in wheat. They specialize in lumber. We trade with each other, and we both end up with more wheat and more lumber than if we produced on our own. It’s a beautiful thing, and it happens all the time. Let me give you another example. Example closer to home.

Bob Neugebauer Let me wait one second. Yeah, that all depends on how the trade agreements are put together.

Ron Nate Oh, absolutely. And would you ever trade to your detriment? No. Nobody would trade unless they’re better off. These two roommates trading cookies and laundry Bob. Because you’re better at both in absolute terms. You end up with more cookies than laundry. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that I end up with added cookies and laundry that I couldn’t have gotten to on my own. I don’t care that you have more cookies than laundry. Overall, I care that I have more than I would have without dealing with you. That’s all that’s important to me.

Bob Neugebauer Got it.

Ron Nate Yeah. And so you might look at a doctor who lives on a street. They have a nice house and a nice yard. And this doctor is very good at medicine and also very good at lawn mowing. Down the street is a kid. A kid is not good at medicine. Can’t do it at all. In fact, isn’t licensed. Would probably kill his first patient. But the kid can also mow lawns, but still not as good as the doctor can mow lawns. Nonetheless, the doctor still hires the kid down the street to mow their lawn. Why?

Bob Neugebauer What does that answer for me? Yeah.

Ron Nate Why would a doctor hire a kid down the street to mow his lawn when the doctor’s better at mowing the lawn than the kid?

Bob Neugebauer It’s more efficient in real time. Tell me. He gets. He gets to spend more time doing medical things, which he’s very good at, while the kid gets to mow lawns. And he loves it.

Ron Nate All right. Idaho Pulse listeners, do you see the opportunity cost embedded in Bob’s answer? He said that when the doctor knows his own lawn, he gives up time of billable hours at the office when the kid mows the lawn, what does the kid give up? An hour of video games? Whatever it is, right? The opportunity cost to the doctor of mowing the lawn is much higher than the opportunity cost for the kid. Therefore, the doctor is better off specializing in medicine and trading to have his lawn mowed rather than mowing it himself. And the kid is better off spending some time mowing the lawn, even though he gives up some video game times, the money that he gets is much more valuable than that video game time. Both parties benefit, even though the doctor had an absolute advantage in everything. It’s a beautiful thing.

Bob Neugebauer Sounds good.

Ron Nate How about this? Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a machine that we could dump? Bushels and bushels of wheat. Wheat. Not wheat. Wheat into. We dump a few bushels of wheat in there, and we push the button and it goes boom! And out pops a brand new car. More bushels of wheat. Out pops a brand new car. Wouldn’t that be a cool machine to have? That’d be amazing. Because of comparative advantage, we have that machine. It exists. It’s called Japan. We send them wheat and cars show up at our shores. We don’t care how it works. We don’t care how the machine works. But by sending them wheat at a low opportunity cost, they send us cars at a lower opportunity cost than producing their own wheat. Both parties benefit and it creates possibilities that we would have imagined were impossible. The wheat car machine exists, and it exists through trade, not through mechanics. It’s it’s a beautiful system here that through specialization and trade, we both end up with things we couldn’t have possibly achieved on our own. Roommate number one could not possibly get seven and three on their own based on their own abilities, but by specializing and trading, they get a bonus batch of cookies.

Bob Neugebauer But you’re talking about free trade.

Ron Nate I am absolutely this is a great case for free trade because imagine if we had a a residential assistant on campus that said, you know what? Every time you trade cookies for laundry, we’re going to tax you buy a batch and a half of cookies. That would totally negate the benefits of trade that you would have had. Bob. And therefore you would say, you know what? Now, I’m not going to deal with Nate because there’s no possible terms of trade with this cookie tax that makes it beneficial. And so what has happened? We both are worse off because we don’t get to specialize in trade and enjoy an extra batch of cookies, because the evil cookie tax has made it economically impossible for us to achieve those benefits. And that’s what a tariff is.

Bob Neugebauer So taxes are detrimental to trade.

Ron Nate Absolutely. And so this comparative advantage example that several I’ve given you and the benefits of specialization and trade even by somebody who has absolute advantages over everything than another country. Um, says that we should get all regulations and taxes out of the way because it negates the benefits of trade. And this is both international trade. This is domestic trade. This is trade between individuals. Anytime you put a tax or regulation that gets in the way of that trade, you potentially either stifle or eliminate completely the benefits of it.

Bob Neugebauer So just like regulations, we have a housing housing shortage because what’s happened with the regulations, if they increased so much that they’ve increased the cost of housing, that’s why we have less housing.

Ron Nate That’s right. And so if they artificially increase the cost of housing by putting regulations, permit fees, taxes on them, it will make fewer of these mutually beneficial trades possible. Developers have to build a house and they have to pay costs for it. If they have to pay permit fees and taxes on top of that, it changes the terms of trade. So maybe there’s fewer houses that make sense for them now because of the cost of resources and all these regulations than would be possible before. And so here’s here’s the trouble we get into as consumers. We’re like, oh, there’s not enough houses anymore. We need to run to government to get them to provide incentives to developers to produce more houses. Well, how about just getting the detriments out of the way? That’s all that’s needed. Um, sometimes is that we don’t need government to fix the problem. We need to government to stop creating the problem.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I don’t think you’re ever going to get that to happen, especially when you see your taxes double every ten years.

Ron Nate That’s right. Our government wants a cut from all of these trades. And that’s why I say, you know what. Let’s let’s get government out of these these trade negotiation things. And that includes property taxes, sales tax, income taxes. Maybe we should get rid of one or two of those so that we can focus on just, you know, I, I know government needs to be funded in its limited and proper role. I say it’s being overfunded and it’s outside of its proper role. Not only that, because it wants to be overfunded. It’s finding every possible way to collect taxes from citizens. And so it’s taxing all kinds of transactions. It’s taxing resource transactions, also known as your income taxes. It’s taxing consumption decisions, also known as sales taxes. And it’s taxing wealth accumulation and storage, also known as property taxes. It’s taxing almost every economic decision you make.

Bob Neugebauer Can’t we? So what you’re what you’re telling me is that we need to stop electing legislators who like taxes.

Ron Nate That’s right. You know, I, I think the decision has been turned on its head that the. Think about it. Every legislative session they come in saying, look, tax collections are this. Here’s what government spending is. We have room to to grow government by five percent because tax collections are up five percent. So they’re just looking at. All right, what what is the possible increase in government we can have? Because these tax collections are all going through the roof. Why don’t we flip flip the script and say, what is the absolute limited, uh, proper role of government that we need? Detail that out. Say, what does it cost? And then create the tax rates according to that limited and proper role. I guarantee you we’d probably cut taxes by a third if you just went through the exercise the reverse way one year.

Bob Neugebauer So if that’s the case, why can’t we change it?

Ron Nate The political system is built to reward power and political leaders, and the electoral process works that way too. You know, as as voters consider things, are they are they more excited about somebody who says, hey, I want to eliminate attacks? Or are they more excited about somebody who says, I’m going to fix your potholes and, and fund your schools and fund the new bridge project and put a new park in there. You know, the the voters tend to reward the expansion of government processes. Um, because, and I hope my economics example pointed this out, that the benefits of specialization and trade are, are often very personal. And it’s even difficult sometimes for the people benefiting from it to realize exactly the detriments or the harm being done by a tax system that makes some trades It’s impossible that even the consumers themselves didn’t realize would have been possible but for the tax. And so this is another case where you have the obvious benefits of government thing, but hidden cost in public choice economics, we call that fiscal illusion. People are paying more for government than they realize because they don’t they don’t understand all the ways that they’re paying for it, even outside the monetary system, in terms of the opportunity cost of the other things you could achieve is often not very obvious to the consumers and to the taxpayers and to the voters.

Bob Neugebauer Well, it’s obviously not something that they’re looking at, but when I see thirty percent of the voters come out and vote in the last election, it tells me there’s an enormous amount of apathy, and most of them do not understand the process.

Ron Nate That’s right. And, um, you know, and that is part of the job of Idaho Freedom Foundation. And I argue Idaho Pulse is that in terms of teaching economics and teaching public policy, maybe we can uncover that which has been covered. Maybe we can open the listeners eyes to, hey, you know what? Here’s here’s what’s going on in economics terms, a tariff sounds like a great thing to punish China, but who actually ends up paying the tariff? Those who still buy the goods and those who don’t buy the goods, who otherwise would have bought the goods, but for the price going up because of the tariff. In fact, you know, uh, um, uh, I got into trouble online one day because I pointed out the problems of the tariff and I used this, this great meme that was shared to me by somebody from the Mercatus Institute. And it said, uh, putting a tariff on goods is similar to setting your own house on fire in order to punish your neighbor. And that’s really what you’re doing when you put a tariff on a good, let’s say we put a tariff on Chinese, uh, on Chinese sugar, then we’re saying that, oh, you want to buy sugar from China because they’re able to produce at a lower cost. Well, we’re going to put a tax on it. So therefore consumers end up paying more for sugar than they would have, either by paying the inflated, inflated price from China or not buying the Chinese sugar and buying the more expensive American sugar. Instead, the consumers are hurt themselves, and we are no longer getting the benefit of a cheaper produced good from another country. And if.

Bob Neugebauer We don’t.

Ron Nate Get to everything. I’d never get to consume a banana in Idaho.

Bob Neugebauer I don’t disagree with you, except for the simple fact that for the last twenty years, we have seen the globalization of commodities around the world. Yeah. That that has destroyed our manufacturing processes here. We have lost seventy thousand factories in the last twenty years. Most people don’t understand that. But along with those factories went many jobs. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of those jobs should have gone the way of the dodo bird. But by the same token, if you’re going to have national security, you need to procure the important goods and services in your own house. So therefore, there is a reason at certain terms to tariff certain items. That’s my opinion.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I get that.

Ron Nate Can I qualify that a little bit this way? Saying that this national security argument may be the only industry it really is, is most applicable to is maybe steel production. But even there I say this, that, um, the national security argument is the go to argument about tariffs. It’s like if we lose all this industry, we’re not able to produce for ourselves. We’re no longer self-sufficient. And therefore we’re vulnerable to outside attack. Um, I, I categorically dispute that that claim and here is why, uh, we, we can always ramp it up and produce it again if we need to. That threat is always there that if we become too reliant, say, on, on Asian steel that, uh, and then then they try and punish us by holding back on it, which, by the way, punishes them themselves to getting rid of a big part of their consumer base hurts them too. But, uh, if they did that, we could always say, you know what? We have the resources, we have the ability, we have the technology, we can start producing it ourselves. And let me give an analogy on this, um, that, uh, as a family, you know, raising four kids, me and my wife, We didn’t produce our own food. Yeah, we tried to do a garden once in a while, but in Rexburg that is a futile attempt a lot of times. But we didn’t produce our own food, not by a long shot. We were entirely dependent on the grocery store for our food. Did that make us vulnerable? I guess in a sense. But it also made us more secure because we got more food and the grocery store wanted to make sure we got the food because the grocery store benefited by selling us the food. I didn’t want anything to happen to that grocery store, and I don’t think the grocery store wanted anything bad to happen to us either. Similarly, with trading partners, if countries are trading with one another, even for vital goods, they have an interest in each other’s well-being that relates to their own well-being. Trading partners typically don’t want to shoot one another. It is a national security thing to have free trade. Free trade makes us mutually beneficially related to one another, and it makes us less likely to get into these conflicts because we’re both benefiting by being specialists. Idaho doesn’t produce its own bananas. I’d say the US doesn’t produce as many bananas as it consumes, but it benefits by trading with South American countries who are great banana producers. But you know what? They want to buy our cars. Great. I don’t want to hurt any South American countries because I like bananas. They don’t want to hurt us because they like cars. It’s a great thing.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I understand what you’re saying, but I tend to disagree in a simple sense that let’s just take a look at a perfect example. China has been responsible for the last ten years for producing most of our pharmaceuticals. We do not have a great relationship with China in terms of trade. They have also said no more rare earth minerals. They have most of them captured around the world. Now, mind you, we have tons of rare earth minerals here in the in the United States. We could produce them ourselves, probably for about the same cost as China sells them to us. All right. We can produce our own pharmaceuticals. And the only reason we went to China is because they were making a lot cheaper. But we were still selling them over here at the same price. So that the pharmaceutical companies were benefiting and not the populace. So there are exchanges that take place that do have some different ramifications. It’s not always equal.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Ron Nate Well, embedded in your answer. There was a lot of references to this comparative advantage principle. We talked about the resources and the trade offs of China doing it, or Asian companies doing pharmaceuticals, and we’re paying either cheaper or the same here. If the price ever got to where the opportunity cost was greater by buying it than it was by producing it themselves, ourselves, we would return to producing it ourselves. And so as long as we can buy it and, and really, uh, trade doesn’t care who profits. Consumers won’t buy unless they’re benefiting from it. Uh, companies won’t engage in that trade unless they’re benefiting from it. And so obviously, the consumers of these pharmaceuticals in America find it cheaper and better for themselves to buy it than to produce it themselves, or then to even buy it from U.S. companies if some other foreign company is providing it cheaper. So as a dispassionate economist, I care less about who’s getting all the benefits, then getting rid of benefits to try and achieve some sort of fairness. Markets have a better way of achieving these mutual benefits from trade than government ever will. I know we always want to go to government to try and fix what we perceive as a bad market or a bad outcome, but getting government more involved leaves leads to more headaches, more administrative costs, more, uh, more losses in these comparative advantages than if we let markets work things out better.

Bob Neugebauer I would agree with you one hundred percent, but I have seen the variations that take place in my years dealing with corporations who will always take advantage of the consumer and suck the dollars in themselves to enrich themselves because they can.

Speaker 3 And that’s why I say this.

Ron Nate Let’s let’s not let corporations operate in a vacuum where they are the head honcho. Let’s get rid of regulations, permitting fees and taxes that might prevent the upstarts from coming in and competing against those corporations. Let’s lower the barriers to entry, and therefore we will have fewer corporate giants.

Bob Neugebauer I don’t disagree with you there either. But once again, let’s go back to something that everybody needs. We’ve got a terrible virus going on. There’s only two companies that make that vaccine. Okay. Now these guys are going to charge whatever the market will bear if they can, unless the government gets involved. Now, why are.

Ron Nate There only two? Why are there only three companies?

Bob Neugebauer Because there’s not enough competition within it. However, they all get together as a monopoly. And therein lies the rub.

Ron Nate That’s right. They operate as a monopoly, even though there are a few firms. Uh, and that’s called a cartel, by the way. Um, and they exist as a few firms dominating the market because of government largesse and government, um, permission that they are the, the, the bestowed that these are the companies. Uh, in fact, in nineteen eighty six, Reagan gave the pharmaceutical companies, uh, liability exemptions that they’re not going to be liable for vaccine injuries because the vaccines are too important to, uh, to get in the way of, of development. And so, um, yeah, that it has been government regulation, government, uh, permitting, government licensing that has created that oligopoly scenario. And I say, let’s get government out of the way, let people make their own decisions. And you know what? I bet that the that the protections of the consumer against bad vaccines would operate better in a market system where I can rely on reviews and expert analysis from companies that are. Absolutely invested in weeding out bad vaccines and bad outcomes, and that their names on it rather than government who is always shielded from the consequences.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I always say there has to be a policeman someplace. Okay. Only because when I see what’s happened, even with something like the Covid vaccine, you get somebody in to the FDA, which has been absolutely horrible for years. They have had their own people in. They make their own decisions. They tell you what they’re going to do, what you’re going to get and how you’re going to get it bad. That’s government again. All right, get it out of here. You get somebody like Kennedy in here and he says, why are we giving this vaccine to newborns for something they could never have but once in a million. Right. This is where this is where the problem lies. And I agree with you. Government is ninety percent of the problem. Mhm.

Ron Nate Yeah. So I think we agree on that. And getting down this vaccine road again, uh, that is a I mean, it is so frustrating because it’s one of the most highly regulated, uh, industries. I don’t even want to call it a market anymore because it operates very little like a market. Government tries to mandate it, government protects the companies, government permits the companies. And, uh, it’s, it’s the furthest thing from a free market we could think of. And so yeah, we’re frustrated by it. You know, think about those areas of your life where you’re most frustrated. Vaccine policy, the post office, garbage disposal. Think about the areas where you’re most satisfied with things. Shoe selection, uh, where to go for dinner tonight? Um, what to do for entertainment, the things that you’re most satisfied by, by and large operate in a free market system where you’re most frustrated by and large, operated by government or highly regulated by government. Just think about your lives.

Bob Neugebauer Not hard to think about. I sit on a governing body here in my Home Owners association. The fact that we have people who live here and have to deal with being governed by themselves, are less likely to cause problems and put in costs that are unnecessary because they all get affected.

Ron Nate Yeah. So I’m going to finish with two things, if you don’t mind. Economics in one lesson is a book that everyone should have on their bookshelf right next to their Bible. Have economics in one lesson, and you can read the chapters in this. There’s an entire chapter on on who, who is actually protected by tariffs. There’s one on the curse of machinery. You know, that that old wives tale that every time we have new technology, like a new machine or new AI, it’s going to cause vast unemployment. Um, it’s it’s an old wives tale. It’s never been proven. In fact, the opposite is always proven. AI is going to make us more productive. It’s going to create more work, more jobs and more benefits for, for all sorts of people, just like automation did back in the day. And so you ought to read this book. And I’m, I’m going to go through different sections of this as we continue on with the Idaho polls. And the other thing I want to point out to you, I should have mentioned the author, Henry Haslett. He’s a gem. Um, we have our July eighteenth America two fifty celebration sponsored by Idaho Freedom Foundation. It’s a fundraiser for us. And, uh, it’s down here in the Boise Center. I know it’s a long drive for you, Bob. It would well be worth your time, but, uh, we encourage people to buy tickets and buy tables for it. Uh, we, we do want, we do want to operate, uh, in, in the fundraising mode on this, but we have the Babylon Bee editor in chief speaking there. We have Kelly J. Keane of Let Women Speak, who is a firecracker of a speaker. It’s going to be a great night. Um, July eighteenth, uh, five p m down here in Boise. Get on down. Get on Idaho, freedom dot org and buy your tickets before they’re gone.

Bob Neugebauer Only if the price of gas comes back down.

Ron Nate I’ll come pick you up, Bob.

Bob Neugebauer Oh, then you got a deal.

Ron Nate Okay. We can do a whole Idaho Pulse broadcast on the trip down. That would be awesome.

Bob Neugebauer There you go. That would work. We can find out where all the problems are on the roads.

Ron Nate That’s right. Well, again, it’s a pleasure being on the on the show. Idaho Pulse ox. I appreciate you and your team for putting this together.

Bob Neugebauer Ron, thank you very much for joining us again. And, uh, let’s see if we can actually educate some people as to what’s real and what’s not real, what’s perceived and what is not perceived, especially when it comes to economics.

Ron Nate Let’s go. It’s economics can only help your life. Economics. The root of the word is management of the household. And we want to see all households thrive and prosper.

Bob Neugebauer God bless you my friend. Hope you have a great day.

Ron Nate Thank you, thank you.