Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Listeners and bears everywhere. Welcome to the Sound Barrier, the official podcast of Northeast State Community College. We're coming at you today here from our second studio in Wayne Bazler Library. My name is Thomas Wilson with my fellow co host Mackenzie Moore, gentleman. And like I said, we're coming from Basler Library.
Say thanks to our good friend Dean of Libraries Mr. Chris Demas and the entire library staff here. They're tremendous and I want to thank him for giving us the space to record today's episode. Well, bitcoin cash, dinero, wampum. Let's talk money, friends. And we got a guest today that's going to help us talk some money and that is associate professor of economics here at Northeast State, Mr. Wayne Loving.
What does all this mean? What is the financial world? What does economics mean? And how valuable is that dollar in your wallet? Let's talk about these things, shall we? Wayne, welcome to the podcast. Really glad to have you here.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Excellent part of it. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a professor here at Northeast State and a little bit of your background?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Sure, sure. I grew up in the area in Elizabethan and attended King College in Bristol and majored in economics. Got interested in economics and that was my bachelor's degree. I had to leave the area though to find my first job after college. The economy around here was pretty bad at that time and one of the best job markets in the country was in Tampa, Florida. So I moved to Tampa with a friend and we, we looked for jobs and everything worked out pretty well. We found good jobs. I worked in commercial finance there for a while and got the great privilege of working with financing yachts and boats and really exciting.
And had the good fortune of working for a top tier company, transamerica.
If you look at the San Francisco skyline, you notice the pyramid. That's them.
And had actually worked on with another company that they acquired called Borg Warner and they're a really well known company in the Midwest and automobile parts and finance also if you win the Indianapolis 500, you win the BorgWarner Trophy. So that's, it's a, it's a big deal. So true. So anyway, I got that opportunity, really loved it, traveled the state of Florida and worked at learning finance and learning a lot about that industry. But we decided to move back closer to home when we started to raise a family. I met my wife there and we got married and so we moved back here and I got the great Opportunity to work for two more multinational corporations, Texas Instruments, which then was acquired by Siemens. The location in Johnson City.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: So I've actually worked for four different multinational corporations for a total of about 25 years and only changed jobs once. So it was mergers, acquisitions, and that's economics. That's really what's going on there. And so anyway, some more economics happened and that job with Siemens, that location was sold and moved to Mexico. So more economics. And so I'm learning a lot along the way and I'm going to school and I get my master's degree and I come out here at night and start teaching some economics courses at Northeast State and start to enjoy that a lot. And then in 2008, when we had the crisis, the credit crisis, housing crisis and all that at the same time, Mr. Cartwright, who used to teach here for, I don't know, five or 10 decades, he was here a long time. He retired. And so I got a chance to become the economics professor here. So that's how I got here in a kind of a boring nutshell, but there it is. And so I've enjoyed it and have been teaching since the 90s as adjunct, since about 2008, as full time.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Okay. Interesting. Yes. The, the late, great Dick Cartwright. Yeah, A great man and a really, really good guy.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Funny guy.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Absolutely. A, a treasure here at Northeast State and we certainly miss him. Now, what, what interested you about economics? What, what did you find interesting about the field?
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Well, well, first of all, I had really good teachers. I had really teachers in high school and in college. Mr. Opp and John Olsh and some others, they impacted what economics truly is. The decision of science. Excuse me, it's the science of decisions.
It's a type of decision science where you're working with constraints and you got to make choices with everything from time, money, money, effort, energy.
So in order to accomplish anything, you have to decide, well, I only have so much time, I only have so much money. I have to make decisions about that and I have to look at what I give up to do that. So that was really interesting to me because when you do that and when everyone does that, there's sort of an order that emerges out of the chaos and understanding how that happens and why it happens. And you know, we get certain products and services delivered to us and there's nobody really controlling most of that. It's just people's self interest and certain rules. And so that really made it fascinating to me that you start with something like scarcity, not having enough of everything. And you can create from that, you can grow from that, you can make from that, and then suddenly you do have. So that's. That. That whole. That whole process of commerce and creating value and so forth just intrigued me. I liked it.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: And in the discussion of creating value, like, with the current US Dollar now, like, how would that be described? Would that be described as, like, weak, strong? Where do we stand right now in terms of what our money's worth in America now?
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Okay, so, yeah, let's talk about money. So start with what money is. Okay? And first of all, one of the things that every human being has to deal with is. Is how do they look at money? Okay, is. What is it? And for. For many people, it's just a scorecard. It's like, if I have this much money, I've accomplished this much. And for some people, it's, you know, it's something they worship. And for some people, they could take it or leave it. Okay? And you have everything in between. And I see that with all my students, the varying things. But. But here's what money is. It fills some roles, the first of which is it's a medium of exchange. It. It lets us trade. We don't have to do barter. So. So you start with that. And it also fills the role of a unit of account. So, so you think, okay, what's $20 worth? What will it buy me? And so we all understand that it's a reference point. It's a store of value. Once you. Once you work and sell your labor for money, like a paycheck, or you sell something or you make something and you sell it, then you.
You have something in. In money where you can hang on to it for time. It doesn't ruin. So if you think you're a dairy farmer, you produce some, you know, you produce a truckload of milk or whatever, and you wanted to take some classes at Northeast State, you would show up in the parking lot with, okay, where you want this milk? I want to take some classes. You know, trying to barter. Money lets us not have to do that. You can. You can sell your milk. You can say, I want to take that money and buy a car with her, or go to classes at Northeast State or whatever. So it gives you that. That ability. Now, with those roles filled, money has to have some other characteristics. Things like it has to be acceptable. You know, you and I have to agree what a $20 bill is or a $10 bill or whatever. It has to be limited. There just can't be unlimited amounts of it. It's gotta be hard to counterfeit. It's gotta be perceived as valuable. It's gotta be divisible. So if you want to buy a smaller container of milk than a larger container of milk, or, you know, a smaller sweater than a large, so you can, you can divide that out. And so once you have money that fills all those roles and is safe and secure, then you can talk about, okay, so how does my money compare to somebody else's? So when you start to talk about a stronger or weaker dollar, you're saying, how does my, how does this currency compare to other currencies?
So when you say the dollar is stronger or weaker, you're actually saying it is stronger or weaker versus other currencies. Now, you could compare it directly with, you know, the euro or the Japanese yen or the Chinese yuan renminbi. You could choose what you want to compare to. Most of the time they're comparing it to a composite index. So they're saying this money, you have this currency that is a store of value and a means of exchange and all that.
When I look at this money versus another money, it's stronger or it's weaker. So what that means is when you compare it to the index, if it's stronger, it takes more of the other currency to buy your unit of currency, okay? So if it's weaker, then it doesn't take as much of the other to buy you. The other got stronger. So one is going to get stronger, one is going to get weaker.
That's the trade off there. And so when you think about a strong dollar, it means it is more respected, is more desired than other currencies, okay? And when you think about a weak dollar, then on the stage, on the national, international stage, it's saying basically other currencies are more preferred than yours. Okay? Now what could cause that? What could make your currency stronger or weaker? Things like interest rates. So if you could earn 5% interest in the United States or the euro, if you wanted to go to a European financial center or whatever and you could earn 10%, the euro becomes more attractive. You, you could go deposit money as euros and it comes. So people would say, I would rather have a euro than a dollar.
If the opposite was true, then they'd say, I'd rather have a dollar than a euro.
Inflation. Okay? So, so if, if the value of the dollar is being whittled away by rising prices and people are like, why would I want to hold a dollar? It's losing its value. I would rather hold a euro or a yen. Or something else.
So, so that's what makes something stronger or weaker is how it compares to others, other, other currencies. Okay. Now what most people don't think about is the next step, and that is a stronger dollar sounds like a really good thing. And it is. It means your currency is more respected than others. But it also means you can buy more of other people's stuff.
So your trade deficit is going to rise because all of a sudden you command more euros or yen or yuan or Australian dollars. You can now reach out and import more stuff. It's more valuable to you that way. So you see that? You see that picture?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yes. Okay.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: In exchange, they got weaker, you got stronger, you can now buy more of their stuff. Your trade deficit is going to grow, which a lot of people have a problem with. You know, they think trade deficit's bad. It is not necessarily bad. A trade deficit is not. It's actually a sign that your living standards going up.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: What's the negativity surrounding a trade deficit? Like, why is it perceived as bad by some.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: I like, you know, Americans and I guess people in general don't like the word deficit. Means you're behind or whatever. But actually in the case of a trade deficit, you are importing more than you're exporting.
So on paper that sounds bad, but in fact, what are you importing? Well, you're importing a lot of cool stuff, stuff that you couldn't otherwise get.
Things like silk, bananas, nickel, copper. Okay.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: And here's two things that if you didn't import, I believe we'd have a civil war. Chocolate and coffee. Okay. We don't, we don't grow those. We don't make those. Okay. Now what would the world be without those two? Right. Okay.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: The stress levels would not even.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: So think about it.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: So we have to import those. And, and so if we import a lot of stuff more than we export, we have a trade deficit. It actually, though, when you look at it and dig into, actually means our living standard is higher. Now one of the other things we're importing when we do that is capital equipment, things that, you know, things that make us stronger as an economy and as a country, things that we're producing.
So yeah, on the other hand, a weaker dollar means it sounds bad and it's got some concerns. You don't want it to be too weak. But what it also means is, guess what, your exports are going to go up because other people can buy more of your stuff now.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:13:35] Speaker C: So it's a trade off.
The the economist Thomas Sowell is one of my favorites and he has a saying. He basically says they're often in economics and society, there's no solutions, there's just trade offs and you know, just treehouse, you're balancing most of the time you. There's not a silver bullet that takes care of problems. In a lot of cases it's, yeah, you want more of this or you want more of that? Yeah.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: So kind of compromise.
I have a question. I know we want to get into all the digital currency, the Bitcoin doge, but something you said in that, you said, you know, we have to agree, like we came to an agreement as a society what this dollar means for us. How did we reach that agreement, how did we go bartering and trading services and goods to coming to just a full on consensus, like as a country, like we're going to accept this is the dollar, this dollar means the same for you and me. How did that happen?
[00:14:35] Speaker C: Yeah, so monetary history, which I've studied only a little, but you know, it's. We started out with some colonial coins that, you know, were respected by some people and not by others. We went through periods of, of having commodity money which our money actually had silver and gold in it. You know, it was actually gold coins. And even the paper notes along the bottom, they said, we'll pay to the bearer on demand. One silver dollar. That's what a $1 bill said along the bottom. In the 30s and 50s. Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: In the 1900s.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Oh, that was it.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: But even before that there was a lot of turmoil. There were periods where states and cities and even banks issued their own currency.
You got to think about what does that mean? You got to have people that will say, yeah, I trust that and I'll accept that for payment, you know. And so a lot of that's collector items now. You can see ebay fooled with that, you know, full of that. It's, it's got, you know, a lot of that is, is highly sought after because some of that older currency is, it tells us about a time period where states and cities and banks were trying to get along with improving the barter situation by creating their own currency. Well, in the 1900s, of course. Here's another picture of it. During the Civil War, the Confederacy created their own currency. And as a weapon of war, what the Union did was they counterfeited a bunch of it and sent it south. And the same thing happened, the same fear happened in World War II in Hawaii. There's a collectible note, what the Fear was, was the Japanese were going to print a bunch of counterfeit money and drop it in Hawaii and hurt our monetary system. So they, they took all the money, the, the bona fide money in, in Hawaii at the time, 1943, 44, I believe. And they printed along across the back of it the big word Hawaii. You can see these on ebay. I mean, they're collectible albums now. And so. And they also stopped letting money leave the island. And so if, if what that was, is, it told the monetary authorities that, hey, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna corral this, insulate it, and we're gonna take care of it here. We're not gonna let the Japanese drop counterfeit money into Hawaii and make it back to the mainland and use it as a weapon. And so you see, you could think about this. Well, anyway, we have wide swings in what a dollar's worth and what it, you know, coinage and so forth and so on. And you get to 1913, we. We have the Federal Reserve developed and created. And so Congress creates the Federal Reserve. And there's a lot of thoughts about how that came about and who caused that to happen and what is it really about.
But at that point, the, the charter for the Federal Reserve was keep currency stable. We don't want to worry about. We don't want to worry about hyperinflation process going through the roof and this stuff becoming useless. We don't want wide swings in interest rates. We want some stability because that will help us grow.
So that was their number one charter. And so that gave us. We put the mint under them, the treasury, and the mint had to work with them. And they said, well, here's what the money supply should be. And so that's how we kind of got more stable with the money. Now one of the problems or one of the ways you can affect the economy is through what's called monetary policy. And that is changing interest rates and changing how much money banks have to hold the reserve ratio and open market operations, selling and buying bonds, things like that. But anyway, that gives us a lot more stability to our, to our currency. Okay.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: I hope that answers your question.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: And it's an interesting history, but I think there have been lots of books written about monetary history and where we might go, because, you know, right now the United States dollar is the, is the currency of choice on the world stage.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:18:36] Speaker C: But, but that is. I mean, it's the reserve. It's what.
What's a bitcoin Worth. Okay, okay. But it's measured in dollars. Okay? You see what I'm saying? It's what everybody refers to. And if you've ever been to other countries, many of them, Mexico is one of them, Jamaica's another, Costa Rica's another, if you pull out a dollar, they're fine with it. I mean, it's okay that you don't have their currency. They'll take that dollar. So that hasn't always been the case. For the 1800s, it was the British pound that everybody in the world respected. And so this can change over time and probably will, and maybe it will go to Bitcoin or who knows, we can talk about that.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: But yeah, I've also heard the term the petrodollars. And oil is certainly a huge commodity in the world, and it's traded in dollars, I believe. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that. And I know there's been for, I guess, decades, a lot of pushback against that, I guess politically motivated, among other things. But when did. I guess because it's still respected, why is the petrodollar still very strong? And why is that still very important for the United States, both economically and politically, to keep oil, or at least that source of energy, traded in dollars?
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know a lot about the petrodollar. I do know this about oil.
It may be, until other technologies replace it, it may be the actual real currency, because the ability to get somewhere and go somewhere and make something always involves oil. And so I could see the desire to tie to that. But I also see that, okay, that makes us just another player with places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and others who produce Russia, produce a lot of oil. So there probably is a hesitancy to give back ground on that.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: So, and you know, speaking of other, you know, other countries, other players and, you know, the world economy, what do all the, you know, tariffs that we've seen in the new administration, what does that mean for our economy as well as just internationally for these other countries too, who are in trade with us?
[00:20:53] Speaker C: Well, I just watched a really good video by Professor Davies. He's a professor at Duquesne, I believe in, in Pittsburgh, and he does a really good series of, of podcasts on economics. He's an economics professor there. And the title of it was tariffs the 300 year old bad idea. Okay? And this. So tariffs are not new.
And to be honest with you, almost every president has played with them, has done it. Okay? Every president, Republican and Democrat and wig and tor, whatever, what they've all played with. Okay? So tariffs are tax on imports. And regardless of how you track them, how you trace them, it's a tax and who ends up paying it is the consumer.
So, so you're going to, you're going to bring in something from another country, chocolate. Okay. And somebody says we're going to have to put a tariff on that. Well, the country selling chocolate is going to say one of two things.
Oh, I got to pay 25% more to sell it to the United States. Well, customers are going to have to give me 25% more to cover this.
Or no, I can go right over here to fill in the blank. France, Belgium, whatever, and I can sell my chocolate there and I don't have to pay this 25%. So you either go up in price or you don't get it. So, so when you put a tariff on something, lots of parties get hurt, but the consumer ends up paying it. So, so they're not a good idea. Now why would you still do that? Well, maybe there's, maybe there is some inadequacies or some errors in the playing field, let's put it that, that way. Maybe there's some things going on that aren't fair trade wise and you want to get somebody's attention. And, and if you're, you know, if you're the big dog or the bully, you could say, I'm going to get your attention by putting this on you. And I want you to, you know, I want you to clean this up or clean that up now. Maybe that's what's going on. I don't pretend to know. Maybe there's no real intention for long term tariffs. They would be very detrimental, period there. But they do get your attention, you know, so maybe that's what's going on. I don't pretend to know, but I do know this. They're damaging to international trade. And international trade is really a good thing. There are so many benefits to it, there's problems with it. I mean, look, I'm in this job because my job moved to Mexico, okay? There is, there is no one who knows more of what international trade can be detrimentally.
But overall, when you look at the picture, the benefits far outweigh the losses.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Now I know another unbelievably hot topic, and it's been for a while, is inflation and the price we're paying at the grocery store and just about everywhere on most commodities.
What causes inflation and what's kind of the big misconception about inflation? And I'll ask a Follow up question after that. Just inflation in general. What is it and what causes it?
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Yeah, so inflation is the overall rising of prices and it's measured by an index. And so you take a sample. In the case of the cpi, it's several thousand items and you say, what are those costs? Let's go pretend we buy them today. And then you wait some time and then you say let's go pretend to buy them again. What happened to the prices? And some may have gone down and some may have gone up and some may have stayed about the same. But overall the basket's going up, the market basket, samples going up.
So in essence what is happening there is if you have $100 in the bank, it will buy so much and then when prices go up, you can't buy as much.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Okay. In general. So that's inflation.
That's the picture of it. What causes it is generally I'd buy, I buy into the Milton Friedman school of thought, which is basically all inflation is generally a monetary phenomenon, meaning it happens because the money supply has changed beyond what productivity and output changes. So what that means is this here's a really simplistic and it doesn't cover all the bases, but it's a pretty good picture. So it's lunchtime and here on the table we have a, a big pal and some fries and a shake and a tea PGT. Okay, so and you and I and you have $10 in our pocket and that's the only one available. Let's bid on it. So what's the highest price? We could bid that to $10, right? Whoever's first to $10 is going to get it. Now this is overly simplistic, but listen to what I could say. Oh, well, you know, we're having a recession and I'm not sure you can take care of yourself. I know you know, you can't cover all the bases. So I'm going to give you some more money. I won't give you another $10 or we have a pandemic or I need you to vote for me or I don't think you're making enough money as, you know, minimum wage worker. So I'm going to raise, I'm going to give you some money somehow. I'm not asking you to do more work, I'm not asking you to produce more. I'm going, I'm just saying I'm going to give you a stimulus check or I'm going to cut your taxes. So now you and I and you have $20 in our pocket. And it's lunchtime.
How much is the burger worth now?
20.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: 20 bucks.
[00:26:35] Speaker C: It's not a different burger. It's not a better burger. And you and I didn't have to do anything more to get it. But look what just happened, okay? Now if you and I are producing more and that happens, we turn around and we say, okay, it's time to eat. There's three burgers on there because we, you know, we produced more. Maybe the inflation is not so bad at that point that, you know, there's still enough that we could pay $10 a piece for them and we have some money left over. But in the case where you're not getting any productivity for it, you're just saying, hey, here's a stimulus, here's a stimulus.
Or the Federal Reserve is, is keeping interest rates so low that money's almost free for investing and borrowing and so forth.
That's what can happen. So it's typically money supply, mismanagement of money supply. Now that can happen from the Federal Reserve. That can also happen from fiscal spending. The elected officials can decide, hey, let's go, you know, let's go spend a bunch of money we don't have. Let's, you know, let's go deficit spend. That's another, another issue, a major issue.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah, my follow up on that is like inflation, everyone knows that. What is deflation? What if the, the bottom kind of drops out and prices drop out because either nobody has the power to buy any longer or there's been some kind of devaluation or of across the economy. What. And does that even happen? And how, how common is that?
[00:28:04] Speaker C: It's not common.
Two things can go wrong with inflation. One is hyperinflation. Your process can just go skyrocket. And there's been historical examples of that. It generally happens when nobody trusts the money. Oh, you're going to pay me with that? I don't trust it. So you got to give me a lot of it. Okay, so prices are changing maybe daily or something, and that's dangerous. And like I said, there's history of that. Deflation would be, oh, prices, we can't sell anything, so we got to lower the price because things are so bad and usually is accompanied by downturn in business. Okay, now that might sound like a really good thing. And in fact, you know, to, to be honest, I think most economists think that we'll have to go through a recession to cool down inflation. I mean, in general, historically, that's what's happened. You hope it's A soft landing. You hope it's, you know, short term, but it cools down inflation and you can get back to business and moderate growth and believable growth. But what happens with deflation is prices in general are falling because people aren't selling as much and people aren't buying as much.
And so that sounds on the surface like a really good thing. And it does have some pluses. Everybody likes to see the price of gas go down or the price of tuition go down or whatever.
But it has some negatives, one of which is that businesses who started the year, started the decade, started the time period saying, we're going to buy and build at this and we're going to sell with maybe a 10% profit margin.
Well, then you have deflation and let's say prices drop 10%. They're selling at break even. They're not making any money. So trivia question. How long do businesses that aren't making money stay in business?
Not long. Yeah. NFL. Okay.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Bingo. Yes. Yeah.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: Not for long. Okay. Okay. The second thing that will happen is the economy will continue to spiral downward. Here's why. You need to buy some groceries, you need to buy some clothes, you need to buy some furniture, you need to buy whatever. Prices are going down. Do you want to buy today or maybe wait till next month?
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Price, I would buy today personally, but.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Prices are going down.
Maybe you would wait as long downward trend.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Like, is it. Yeah, but it's never completely 100%.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: Right. But let's say that, let's say it starts to repeat itself. Things are getting cheaper because the economy's, it's spiraling downward.
So what would happen there is. Most people would say, well, I'm not going to buy today, I'll buy tomorrow because tomorrow will be a little cheaper and next week will be even a little cheaper. And if people and businesses start thinking that way, then the economy does grind to a halt. Okay, See that. And here's the third thing that will happen and nobody will like this, is that if you have a deflationary spiral, processes are dropping, prices are dropping. It's not long till your boss comes to you and says, well, maybe you've heard we're having a recession and deflationary spiral.
You're making $20 an hour. I'm sorry to tell you, but starting next week, you're making 15 an hour because I can't cover the costs.
You won't like that. So, so deflation is problematic. It is, but it, but it happens because of malaise and the, the economy just souring and it, it's a self fulfilling prophecy because it'll get worse. It's like a spiral.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:47] Speaker C: What, what the Federal Reserve would like to see, and this is, history would tell you this is really, really healthy. About 1% inflation.
Because most people think you give me 1% inflation, I can beat that with investments, savings, a little overtime, a side gig, a promotion. 1% I can deal with 5 I cannot. Minus 4, minus 5, I cannot.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Where are we at now in terms of.
[00:32:15] Speaker C: I think the last numbers I saw was around four. Okay, three and a half to four.
But that is down from what it was. So they are, it's called disinflation. They're slowing the rate. And that's good news. That's good news.
So, but we've, you know, in my lifetime we've seen higher.
When I graduated from college, the misery index was like 15%, 17%. Which means the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate. The inflation rate was probably around 9%.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: And mortgages on houses then were like 13%. You could never pay off a house at 13%. It was terrible.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: But anyway, so speaking of. So do we think we're entering an upcoming recession and that from the sounds of it, it would actually be not quite as a bad thing as everyone makes it out to be? Really?
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Well, in history you're going to have recessions and expansions. They're just going to happen. And when they happen, a lot of times politicians will take credit for them or they'll disavow and blame the other party for them. Okay, that's what happens. But they happen. I think what the Federal Reserve has done by raising interest rates is try to cool the economy down such that it will probably enter a recession. And they'd like to see that in a managed form for maybe a couple quarters. Prices stabilize and things, you know, things settle in and then you can begin expansion again, you know, so I think that's, that's the plan now. Hopefully that happens. But there are other shocks that can happen. Like internationally.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Of course. Of course. So I mean, I think I've lived through three or four recessions in my lifetime. So it's, it's not, it's like you said, it is a cyclical event. It happens sometimes we try to manage it. Sometimes it just happens because the economy is still what it is.
[00:34:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it will go up and down like a sine wave. Okay, it'll do that. But overall you have to hope the trend is up. So, so we were working a problem in class the other day and so we've had three recessions since this time period. But we were talking about the GDP in 2010 when we were in the, you know, the Great Recession, the housing crisis. And so, okay, so the unemployment rate at that time was 10%. Okay. And, but the GDP was $13 trillion.
And today in real dollars, the GDP is about $35 trillion. So we've almost tripled since 2010. A part of that is because of good money management. The inflation is because of bad money management and lots of other things. But.
So, yeah, so that, that's, that's a piece of it.
You do have ups and downs, but overall what you have to hope for is the trend is up.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: You know, what are, what are these, you know, many different factors that are contributing to the state of our current economy. I mean, I know that so many, like international affairs, politics. Could we kind of dive into that, like just how multifaceted economics really is.
[00:35:29] Speaker C: Yeah. So, so you have some core things that happen. People are going to respond to incentives.
There's demand and supply. And those, those seem to be kind of universal and they seem to work. They seem to work regardless of what government type you have you put in place or whatever. People won't buy as much at a high price and they'll buy more at a low price. That, that's, you know, sure can't get away from those. But then you have political concerns, which is really a challenge in my classes to try to mention the political, discuss the political, but don't go down all the rabbit trails you could go down.
And so you have a lot of things going on.
There's an importance to oil.
People like to be mobile. They don't like it. We learned that during the pandemic. You know, people don't want to be, they don't want to be stable. They want to move. And so they don't want to be stationary. And then you have medical concerns. Everybody wants to live longer. Everybody wants to, you know, and so 20% of our GDP is in the medical field. If you count services and over the counter and prescription drugs and health and wellness, one out of $5 is spent on living longer, living better. Okay. And not dying. Okay. Of course. And so you have, that, you have the political wins with, you know, who's saber rattling and who's, you know, who's shaking whose cage and kind of thing. Okay. Then you have some real war things. You know, you have the, the thing in Ukraine that's, you know, threatening parts of Europe. And, and really, you know, you have technology changing unbelievably, you have AI, you have automation.
I think the fear there's maybe a little bit overblown because what, what technology has done to this point is that it has changed jobs, it has made people more productive, thus summarize an income. But it has, it has the ability to make people think, oh, it's going to take my job. What it's going to do is it's going to change your job.
The same for international trade. People think, oh, well, if my job goes to China, then it's gone forever. Well, no, your job might have just changed. You may no longer be making the thing, you may be transporting the thing, receiving it at the dock.
You might be doing the logistics side of things. So you have that going on, which makes it pretty complex. You have, well, you know, what's the next black swan? You know, nobody saw the pandemic coming, nobody.
You have environmental concerns. Okay, you know, we won't have all this stuff, but we don't, you know, wreck the home place. Okay? Right. You know, you know, so you have all that. And so it's really, it's really complex. It's, that's what I was talking about. It's kind of fascinating to me that, that you see order emerging out of the chaos, you know, out of, out of, out of all this things. I mean, get this, okay, think about this. Today, every day, Monday through Friday, 1.6 million people, 1.6 million people will go into Manhattan and work.
And today between 4 and 7 o'clock they'll go home.
And most days there's not a traffic jam. And the jobs they performed are everything from mopping floors to brain surgery.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Extraordinary. Yeah.
[00:39:13] Speaker C: And, and most of the time there's not a murder, there's not a fight on the freeway or the, or the, or the subway or whatever. Now that's just one town, that's just one big, it's a big city. But you know, now think about that. And then that happens all over the world to some extent, and in cities across America to some extent, you think, well, how does that happen? There's nobody, there's traffic rules, there's subway schedules, but there's nobody who's controlling that. So how does that order emerge? That's kind of fascinating to me. I mean, it's just like, it's demand, supply, incentives, scarcity.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: So like economics, you mentioned it earlier as the science of choices.
That does not necessarily mean money choices all the time. No, no, it does mean it can be across a wide spectrum of all your choices. Like Just what you kind of laid out there going into New York. It's, it's throughout life choices.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Time with your family. You know, what the pandemic teaches is the most important choice. Tom.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: True.
[00:40:19] Speaker C: Yep. Because you know, that one's, that one's fixed for. Yeah, yeah. You just. But you can spend it doing this or you can spend it doing that, and you can't do everything or you won't do it. Well, yeah. So it's kind of fascinating for me to think about that and what others have thought about that.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Bitcoin, digital currency. How do you see these evolving in the coming years? Technology is constantly improving and progressing too. So what does that look like?
[00:40:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I wish I knew where it was going. I mean, it's really fascinating to see this. So the first question you would ask is, why would you need something like Bitcoin? What does that give you that you wouldn't have before? I have students who say things like, I'm investing in bitcoin. And I think, well, it's not really an investment, traditionally speaking, because investment, traditionally speaking, you would buy a stock and hope that company does well by making something, or you would invest in a business you start, or you invest time in bettering yourself by getting an education so you get a return for it. In this case, you're buying another currency. You're just taking dollars or something and you're buying another currency. So it's not an investment in that sense of the word. I don't think, however, you could say, well, why do you need this other currency? And there's this hope. I mean, bitcoin meets all the things that we talked about earlier that a money must have.
The one problem it hasn't really overcome yet is, well, two things. Not everybody believes in it.
And also only certain people are, quote, unquote, investing in it or buying it. And it's, it's not yet easy to use. So go in Dollar General and buy some, you know, M and Ms. Or whatever that's going to cost you.0000073 Bitcoin. So the dollar General is not ready to do that. And I don't think consumers are ready to. Was that 12 zeros or 11 zeros? You know, that's, that's difficult.
So it's not a usable currency in that fashion yet. But there's some things they're working on that's coming from that. So. And it's limited. They're. They're only going to make so many of them. 21 million, I guess. By the year 2140, it takes a great deal of energy to produce them because of the blockchain that has to be protecting it. And, and each coin. And so you could say, well, why would you jump into that? Well, there's two reasons. One is you think it's going to go up. So that's speculation, okay? So you have people taking cash dollars or other currencies and buying into bitcoin. Cause they're convinced, you know, it's 80,000 today, sometime this year. Later it'll be 90,000 or a hundred thousand. And maybe I'll switch back and maybe I'll make some money. I'm sure that we have students, just based on what I've been told by some of my students. I'm sure we have young people who are not in school right now across this country who've made a lot of money in bitcoin. I've had some of my students tell me what they've made. And so they're like, why don't you. Education. I'm just doing this, you know. But if it's true speculation, there could be a bubble there that can get you later, okay? Because it's going to fix itself. Now, does it serve a purpose? And the answer is probably yes.
It is not controlled by central authorities.
It's controlled by demand and supply, you know, and they're only going to be so much of it. And so if you get in while it's cheaper, you're going to get a benefit. But it's also something you can use as currency.
There's some fears about, you know, well, black market uses it and criminals use it. Well, that can be, you know, that can be addressed or at least ignored. I mean, it is what it is.
So you have this need for something other than the currencies controlled by governments that some people perceive. So here's an interesting story. In Nigeria, which is the largest economy in Africa, they have been trying for about 10 years to keep people from doing cryptocurrency, okay? They have been trying to discourage and outlaw using cryptocurrency. Currently, 25% or so of their economy is in cryptocurrency. And the reason is, is because the Nigerian currency has experienced hyperinflation. Inflation's been real bad. And people are like, we need out of this. We need to get. We need. So you can buy bitcoin. They go buy bitcoin, okay? So they don't experience the government's shortcomings in managing their money supply, okay? And so. So it is, you Know, it can be seen as a hedge against inflation. Now, here's the problem with that. It is very volatile. You know, you might, you can switch $1,000 into Bitcoin and it can be worth $1,000 next week, or it could be worth 500, or it can be worth 2,000. Okay, that's still there. And that's the market. So it's very interesting to watch what's going to happen there. And somebody's going to lead. Okay. And I think just like with a. The strategy is you need to be the leader. So I think that's what you see going on. I think you see people saying, something's going to happen. This is probably going to be it. Let's don't be second or third place. Let's jump in. So that's my take on it. That's my take on it.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Now, bitcoin is bitcoin. It's a brand of digital currency. It's not the end all be all of a digital currency. Do you see now can different factions, and I don't even want to say countries, because can different economic factions or industries kind of leverage their own type of bitcoin and their own brand of bitcoin against each other? Could that be something in the future you could see that could even become not a threat, but certainly an influence on the global economy and certainly national economies if it gets to that level of influence.
[00:46:30] Speaker C: Yeah, there are hundreds of those out there now. Other currencies, cryptocurrencies, it's just. How believable are they to you? How much do you trust? If you put in $1,000, it will retain its value, it'll be transferable to somebody and usable in the future. I mean, maybe I'm, maybe I'm a little, you know, skeptical of it, but I think it's real. I think it's going to be, you know, it's here to stay.
But I don't know what it looks like, you know, and it's in, in game.
I do know this. I mean, I really think this, that our, our grandkids will probably not deal with currency.
They will probably, you know, when they walk into work, the machines, the, the cameras and so forth will know they're at work. They'll know that they're busy. And every hour that goes by or every 30 minutes that goes by, there'll be a little chunk of change, go into something like a bank account.
They won't have to wait for two weeks to be paid. Every, every two weeks get paid. And the government takes out there, you know that a lot. That'll happen fluidly, continuously. And when you leave work and you stop at the convenience store, you'll just walk in and get what you want, and you'll walk out, and the scanners will know, hey, you know, that's Tom, and he's got a thousand dollars in the bank, and out comes, you know, $8 and 56 cents because he got some granola bars. And I think that's coming. There are people working on and. And people that want to see that happen are people like Visa, MasterCard, Apple.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Right?
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, they. This is there. They want to lead, they want to be there. And so, you know, you can. You can. You can tap on your watch and say, how much money do I have in the bank? And, you know, I think all that's changing. And so cryptocurrency would be a part of that. I mean, you know, the question is security, privacy, so forth and so on, because, you know, cash is not very secure. It'll walk off, you know.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:48:30] Speaker C: So, but with. With that cryptocurrency, you can track every. Or with electronic transactions in general, you can track everything. Question is, is do you want everything tracked?
[00:48:40] Speaker B: And a very good question to ask. Yeah.
[00:48:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So if you had a student who bought a 12 pack of beer here, okay. And then later tonight, they buy another 12 pack of beer, and in Knoxville, okay, they could have been delivering a 12 pack of beer to their, you know, to their separated parents. Okay.
But what could a good lawyer turn that into? You're driving around drinking beer. Yeah, you know, I'm. So you see the picture?
[00:49:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:49:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, anyway, that's.
That's some of the fun.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. It's truly, we. We recorded a. A different episode not very long ago about the power of technology and how you. You can pretend it doesn't exist, but it's going to roll right over you if you don't adapt and get with it.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: Who ways to ride a tiger on his back or in its stomach.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: Oh, great analogy. Never heard that one. Hid one.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Do we want to talk free trade? Since we did cover tariffs a little bit earlier, I didn't know if we wanted to do that.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: And what would you know what would drive innovation in a free market economy?
[00:49:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: What would that look like?
[00:50:01] Speaker C: Okay, so free trade, it's sort of like not having tariffs and allowing people to produce and work on what's called comparative advantage. And you end up with more stuff, you end up with easier on the environment, people they don't force things to be made. They do what they naturally have a, a tendency to make well or do well. And so it's a good thing. There's lots of benefits to free trade, more than the costs. Okay. And so you end up with a higher standard of living for all the countries involved, traditionally and historically. You can go back empirically, you can see that, and you end up with more things, more stuff from fewer resources. And in the end, I think this is part of what's happening in society is you'll end up with more leisure.
You won't have to work as hard to produce or to enjoy what you have. So you can think about your grandparents. Here's an example I use in class. Think about going to Zaxby's and getting their Cobb salad, okay? It's pretty nice salad. You can get it for 10 bucks. 12 bucks.
And it has in it probably 15 things, three or four kinds of lettuce, two or three kinds of tomatoes, whatever meat you like, whatever. It's a pretty special thing.
$10. You had to work an hour to get that.
Your grandparents had to work three days to get that.
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:34] Speaker C: Okay. Your great grandparents never saw that salad.
So that's, you know, you see the picture.
[00:51:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:42] Speaker C: So free trade and automation has made those things and technology have made those things easier for us to have, easier for us to enjoy. And that's some of that mechanism behind that that I think is fascinating. So, yeah. So capitalism works on three pillars.
One is private property that gives some people some heartburn button. If you work today and you make some money, it's yours. And you buy that property out there, that's yours to do what you want to with. If you invest in an education, that's yours. Okay? And so there are laws in place that protect. That doesn't belong to everybody, it belongs to you. The second is free exchange. So if you decide to sell that property or go to work for somebody else, you can do that. Okay. The third is a profit motive. I'm doing this because I want to make a profit someday.
And that's not just I'm going to buy this Jeep and sell it dear. It's I'm going to build something, use X number of dollars, and I'm going to sell it for 2x number of dollars, okay. Or I'm going to go to school today, I'm going to spend some time today, but in the future I'm going to make more money. It's going to be a profit. So those are the three pillars that's what makes up capitalism. Mutually beneficial free exchange, private property, and a profit motive. Now, there are people that have problems with all of those, and that's good to discuss and good to talk about. And there are people who say, yeah, but this is what gave us environmental disasters. Well, no, actually environmental disasters violate some of those private property. You're encroaching on somebody else's property or the public property.
Well, you get labor atrocities. You're making people. No, people, if they have a free exchange, they can work when they want to work and not when they work. Well, you got slavery from this. No, no, that's a violation of private property and free exchange. Okay, so capitalism doesn't give you those evils. Those evils are bastardizations of capitalism. Okay? Capitalism is just saying people can chase their own self interest and there's rules to play by, but private property is allowed, free exchange is allowed, and profit motive is expected.
So that's kind of what that is. So what do you get from that? Well, you get incentives to try to do better. I'm going to go to school, I'm going to invent something new. I'm going to come up with a product, but come up with a microphone that's better than that one. So I know you'll buy that and you'll quit buying that one. Okay, so we get better microphones, we get better food, we get better. That's, that's how, at least innovation, okay, that's, that's what I think is, is a main driver for the new things we have. The, the production advances that we have. Creative obsolescence is part of that, which is when they made this microphone, they know someday that's going to be an old microphone. There's gonna be a better one. Yeah. And so they know that's only got a certain lifetime.
Now, that is hard on the environment, that is hard on resources. But here's what you have, you have some leisure time to think about. How can I do that better? If you were just struggling to find something to eat, a place to get out of the cold, you wouldn't have time to think about tomorrow and the environment. Okay? So, yeah, I think that's a big part of it.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: And then one word no one likes to hear is debt. How can college students avoid debt while earning their degree or certificate?
[00:55:20] Speaker C: Okay, that's a really good one.
There are a lot of opportunities for financial aid now to do things. So students coming out of high school, that should take advantage of the Tennessee promise.
Adults that want to go back to school taking advantage of the programs that are available to them. That's a big deal. I mean, why wouldn't you. You just, you know, put yourself through some meetings. A little bit of discipline, a little bit of community service. There it is.
I would say another part of that, though, is, is don't be afraid of debt. I mean, borrowing $10,000 to get a bachelor's degree is not the end of the world. But make sure you get a degree that is usable, marketable, and you have a plan to say, okay, I can pay that back in three years, I can pay that back in five years. It's a good math exercise. It's a good set of goals, you know, and you know, who wins if you say, I'm going to borrow $20,000 to go to ETSU over the next two years and I'm going to finish out my bachelor's degree there and I'm going to go to work as a fill in the blank, pharmacy tech, engineer, teacher, and I'm going to pay that debt back in five years. Now who wins? Well, the lender, you, because you said, I set some goals and I'm going to achieve them. So you work a little harder, you, you get creative, you take care of your own, but you show some responsibility. I mean, that's, that's a win, win. So I wouldn't be afraid of debt, but I would make sure you're choosing a career and a path that's going to say, I can pay this back. But for Northeast State, there's really not much reason to be in debt or to borrow a lot of money. And that's the name. We're proud of that at Northeast State. We like that. So.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: So, yeah, 90, 99% of students graduating from Northeast State do so without debt. I don't think we can overstate that. So.
[00:57:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And many of them maybe even get a small check along the way.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:15] Speaker C: They get more aid than this require, so it helps with the gas or the childcare or whatever. So. Yeah, that's a really good situation.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Yep. So many resources with. You've got Tennessee Reconnect, too. If you don't buy.
[00:57:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: An associates or bachelor's, you're looking to get back in school.
[00:57:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:32] Speaker A: Tennessee Reconnect. That covers the cost of tuition. So. And there's so many scholarships to pay for books, childcare, subsidies. Subsidies.
[00:57:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: There's a service.
[00:57:44] Speaker C: Really?
[00:57:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:46] Speaker C: And you know the, you know the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: No.
[00:57:52] Speaker C: You know, the second best time to plant a tree today. So adult learners should think about that. Okay. You know, go for it.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
What is like one, well, maybe one piece, a couple pieces of advice for a college student. Say I'm 21, I've got a college degree, associate degree or a bachelor's degree. I don't have any college debt, I don't have any. I've managed to do it without getting any student loans or student debt and I've got my first job. What's like some sound economic advice you would give your 21 year old self again? What kind of advice would you give?
[00:58:29] Speaker C: That's easy, that's, it's fun to give advice.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: Yeah. To ourselves. Only we could.
[00:58:33] Speaker C: And only the, you know, the, the 2020 hindsight. Yeah. Well, I tell the same thing to my students that I would say to that there are some things that you can do that don't cost a lot of money and they change your trajectory. So think about how much did it cost Chick Fil A to just tell all their employees instead of saying you're welcome, say it's my pleasure.
It didn't cost a thing, but it became a brand. I mean it was a little change. Oh yes. That everybody understands and man, that didn't cost anything to do that. Well, I tell my students that, you know, there's, there's two or three things you could do that you have, you have mostly control over. One is investigate and think about your circle of friends, your network, okay? Now here's some things about that.
Who you hang around with and how you spend your time is going to have a lot to do with your tomorrow, okay? It's rare, impactful, and here's a couple of things that might not be easy to hear. Okay? If you're the smartest person in your circle of friends, you need a new circle friends, you need to hang around people smarter than you. And we all do.
Here's something else uncomfortable about your circle of friends and that is not everybody in your circle friends might want to see you succeed.
That's interesting, that's tough to hear, but I've seen this in families and I've seen this in circles because if you succeed and I don't, looks bad on me.
Yeah, there's a lot of that out there. There's more of that out there than you think. Now not everybody's out there to undermine you, but you need to be skilled at looking for those things.
That's one thing. The second thing you could do is investigate your information stream. So from the time you got up this morning till the time you Go to bed. Tonight, you're getting hit with information. Most of it. You choose.
What are you doing on your phone? What is coming into your mailbox? What is coming into your, into your brain? What are you hearing? What are you listening to? What are you watching on tv? What do you investigate that and say, is it taking me closer to my goals? Now, nobody's saying don't have any leisure, don't enjoy playing video games. Nobody's saying that. I'm just saying investigate your information stream and could you up at a notch, could you improve it a notch? You know, what, what podcasts do you listen to? What, what music do you listen to? What debates or what books do you read?
So you might tweak that just a little bit and find out it makes a really big difference in your tomorrow.
It's capital investment. It's human capital that you're investing in. So you could think about that. And then maybe the third thing is to think about what you do. Spend time on a lot is probably your phone and your computer and you could say, what. It's probably taking me one of two directions. It's making me stronger for tomorrow. I'm learning things. You pull out your phone, you think about it. I'm connected to everything that man has ever known.
Okay.
[01:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:55] Speaker C: Am I using it to become a better human and a better student and a better understanding person of the world around me? Or am I using it to close off the world and create my own little world? And which one's going to pay you back better? So I see that with some of my students and I ask that question, you know, you got to think about this because economics is the science of choices and you only have so much time. And so how do you, how do you use that time? And could you use it a little better? And the answer for all of us is, yeah, of course. And, you know, so anyway, that's, that's something I would say to a person who's just started a job or a person who's still in college, you know, working. Think about your circle of friends in your network. How could you improve that? How could you be aware of that? Your information stream.
What is the technology around me doing for me or to me, those three things, I think you, you know, you could sit on a porch one day with a, with a cold beverage and figure those out.
[01:02:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:02:55] Speaker C: Or at least a lot about them. You know, and maybe we should, but we don't have time for those things anymore that we, we, we go, go, go, go. And yeah. So anyway, that's, that's me.
[01:03:05] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:03:07] Speaker A: That was very sound advice. Thank you. Yeah, I might use some of it myself, to be honest.
[01:03:11] Speaker B: I think I will too.
[01:03:13] Speaker A: Yes.
Always room for improvement. Free trade.
[01:03:17] Speaker C: Bitcoin. We didn't get Doge.
[01:03:19] Speaker A: Doge.
[01:03:20] Speaker B: Doge.
Well, no, we kind of talked about it with, with like, yeah, the digital, digital currency and how different factions may try to leverage that against each other in the next few decades.
[01:03:33] Speaker C: Doge is interesting because, you know, it makes you, some of the stuff they uncover. You're like, well, how long has this been going on? Okay, and the number one, the number one goal, number one role of a government is to take care of its citizens.
And so anybody who's ever been over a government or a leader, they have different ways of thinking about how you do that. But when you, when you think about what they're doing, they're like saying, okay, we're taking taxes from people and we're borrowing money we don't have from, and using taxes to pay the interest on that or creating money which can cause inflation. And so are we being efficient? Are we being wasteful? I think it's a really good question.
And you know, you've asked your hard self hard questions like, is this really required?
What should the government be doing? Is this, what is this buying us? You know, and so, and it's painful to do that. I mean, if you want to clean out your garage, what you do is you take everything out of your garage, put in the driveway, and then you only put back what you really need. And we all did that. We be surprised at how much stuff we don't really need. Okay. So if nobody's ever done that in 240 years of government spending I mentioned earlier, piles of cash will walk off, you know, and so if, if somebody's main goal in life is making sure my budget next year is approved, what are their motivations? What are their incentives? And so there's a lot of good people in government and there's a lot of hard working people in government. There's no doubt about that. But there are some people that have different motives and they don't, they don't always end well. So they're uncovering some things that probably needed to be uncovered. It's painful to do that, but yeah. So I think, I think that's, that's what's going on.
[01:05:24] Speaker B: Wayne, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a very enlightening episode and the, the science of choices, a fascinating way to apply that to, well, to every part of your life, really, just as you talked about as far as recommendations. But really appreciate having you on and really enjoyed enjoyed this this hour we had together.
[01:05:45] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Some good, some good questions.
[01:05:49] Speaker B: Well, we appreciate it as always. And that will do it for this episode of the Sound Barrier. Again, you can subscribe to us on any platform that you get streaming media from Amazon Music to Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, we're on them all. Or you can go to thenortheaststate.com thesound barrier. That's our direct website link. We're also on Facebook, Instagram X also. So please get on there and give us a listen, give us a, like, leave us a review, a good one. We'd appreciate it. But also check out Northeast State Community College, NortheastState. Edu. That's NortheastState. Edu. We're going to be registering for summer and fall classes soon. So, hey, there's no better time than to sign up, get registered and use your Tennessee Promise or Tennessee Reconnect scholarship money. Until next time, this is the Sound Barrier podcast. We're signing off and we'll see you again.
[01:06:53] Speaker C: Sa.
