Welcome to the podcast that takes apart Paul Krugman's New York Times column. Join us as Tom Woods and Bob Murphy teach economics by uncovering and dissecting the arrows of Krugman. Nobel Prize winner, newspaper columnist and destroyer of nations. It's time for Contra Krugman. Hey everybody, Tom and Bob here with an all-star cast here at Mises University where we are recording before a live audience. Hello! Alright, this is episode 148 and for this episode we're going to talk about a generic topic. We're not going to do a Krugman column, thank heavens. Instead, with this illustrious panel, we're going to talk about why Austrian economics ought to matter to just the average person. Yeah, we're all nerds and scholars, but why should some guy on the street care about Austrian economics? That's what we're going to hash out today. Bob Murphy, of course, is with me here. I'm joined also by Dave Smith of the Part of the Problem podcast who is just the best guy in the world. It's so much fun to hang around with. He does answer probably one out of every 12 emails you send him. It makes it all the more special when that one reply does come first. Dave, of course, you've got to get his Libertas comedy special because it was the number one comedy album on iTunes for three weeks, solid, in 2017. He's the best, so we're glad to have him. And he's on CNN, I don't understand how that's happening. Jonathan Newman of Bryan College, I'm glad, is also with us. He's one of the youngsters. He has that beard to make him look older, but he's like 15 or something. And then Peter Klein. The other end of the spectrum. We have the oldster of the panel, Peter Klein, who has a PhD from Berkeley, back when it, by comparison to today, Berkeley then was like Hillsdale. But Peter is at Baylor University. So we're going to just hash out this topic. And Bob, now that I've done the easy part, you figure out how we start this thing. Sure, I think we should turn it over to Dave. I'd like to ask him the first question. Why do you keep following us around? You don't see us going on TV, right? No, I certainly don't. That is a very good point, Bob. I never see you on television at all. Wait, so what are we starting with? I just wanted to get on the Contra Krugman podcast finally, because it's, you know, it's way overdue.  And one might not have thought you, it's like refreshing. You see a comic occasionally flirt with something fairly solid economically. You actually read Rothbard and so forth. So can you just give us a sense? Were you into like Milton Friedman first and got into this? Why, the average person, why should they care about Austrian economics? Okay, well, the Milton Friedman part, no, I was never into Milton Friedman and I'm still not. But no, I was just, I was not a super political person. I was just kind of, I guess, a left-wing guy who hated the wars under George W. Bush. And then I saw Ron Paul, Ron Paul Giuliani moment, and I was like, who the hell is that guy? Because that was awesome. And then he was just, I thought he was so on point with the war stuff that I was like, okay, I'll hear him out on this Austrian economics that he keeps talking about. Then I found Tom and Peter Schiff and then Tom kept talking about this Rothbard Jew and I was like, well, I gotta check that guy out. And then I started reading Rothbard and my life has been a nightmare ever since because reading Rothbard, it's like getting punched in the chest and I just never recovered from it. So that's how I got into libertarianism and Austrian economics kind of all together. Now to say why it matters to like the average person, I would say this was also at a time where there was just the big financial crisis and I think if you give the Austrians nothing else, which I think it's all great, but nothing else, they figured out this boom bust stuff that nobody else has an answer to. And no matter who you are, this stuff really affects your life. Like, I mean, I'm not as young as a lot of you guys, I'm 35, but I've already lived through a couple boom bust cycles and they're always happening and no one else has an answer for it.  I think that's like the official CNBC response. Like, I don't know, these guys all of a sudden they started being really greedy around 2006 and there was a greed bubble. And then like the lefty answer is that the most hyper regulated market in our entire economy was 2D regulated. Like the 3,200 regulations, if we had just had 10 more, we could have avoided this. So they have no idea, the Austrian economists are the only ones who get this right and that is something that you may not, you know, the majority of people aren't interested in maybe a lot of the topics that we are, but they are interested in why all of a sudden the economy is wrecked every few years. I kind of like this idea of telling our so to speak conversion story. So Jonathan, your turn, where did you come from philosophically, let's say? I was also a convert of the Ron Paul Rejuliani exchange in that debate. It was just mind blowing to me that somebody could have this sort of position and be a Republican. And so I was sort of old school, so I went to Ron Paul's website, looked at the issues and he had, and it was sort of interesting to read all of his different stances on issues. And then I read his book, The Revolution, and then there was some recommended reading in the back of that. And so I read Economics in One Lesson, which led me to Mises.org. And then I realized, so I was in Birmingham, Alabama at the time, and I realized that there was this great organization just down the road, just down Highway 280, that was sort of the center of all this thought and idea. And so then I came to Mises University and the rest is history. Good man. Great. Okay, maybe just to continue the pattern. Peter, can you tell, I'm guessing it was the famous exchange between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas? Well, you know, Carl Manger, the founder of the Austrian school with his famous book in 1871, His Principles of Economics. Carl and I used to sit around the cafes in Vienna. He persuaded me step by step. No, it's interesting to me hearing about kind of Ron Paul-led conversion stories, because there are so many for people who are in Dave's and Jonathan's generation and for many of you. In my day, the kind of gateway drug was more likely to be Ayn Rand. And when I was a high school student, a friend of mine handed me Ayn Rand's book to Fountainhead and said, oh, I think you ought to read this. And I read it. And like a lot of adolescents who sort of were unsatisfied with what they were hearing in their classrooms and from their parents or whatever, I started reading those books and got very enthusiastic about kind of Ayn Rand's worldview. And I started reading her nonfiction books, which included that famous essay on why the gold standard is so great by Alan Greenspan. Yeah, the pre-sellout Alan Greenspan. And from there I heard about Mises and so forth. So I was kind of interested in free markets and liberty from a general perspective before I discovered the kind of technical writings of the Austrian school. And I realized those were the only solid foundation for understanding what's really going on around us. Kind of the same thing that Dave was saying. On the Ayn Rand point, I recently, I read Atlas Shrugged a long time ago, but I recently reread what is my favorite thing Ayn Rand ever wrote, which is the speech in Atlas Shrugged by the worker at the 20th century motor company. And this is where they tried to implement the principle of from each according to his ability to each according to his need. And that sounds very noble on the face of it. But you watch and you read this story, which there's nothing implausible about. You can absolutely see it unfolding that way. How it becomes more and more inhuman and horrible as time goes on. I read it to my 15 year old daughter and it's a long, long, long passage. But I just kept going and reading it and reading it and she was just drawn in and drawn in. And I felt like, although she's already on board with this stuff, I feel like if people read just that, they will be inoculated against socialism forever. And I say that as somebody who doesn't mention Ayn Rand very much. I mean, on my podcast, she doesn't come up much because I wouldn't say she was one of my major influences, but that particular speech needs to be read by everybody. Now, in terms of our general topic, I agree with Dave that the boom bus cycle, if that doesn't matter to the average person, what does? That's really where you see the role of economic knowledge. What in the world just happened to me? What happened to my house price? What happened to what pathetic portfolio I might have? What happened and why? You got to get that right. Now, I have other things to say. Let me just jump in real fast on that point specifically, too. That's also an area where the Austrian school really sharply differs from the Chicago school. So it's true, there's a lot of areas people ask all the time. I like free markets. What's the difference? You guys are basically the same except for minor technical. But that's one where there's a huge difference. And you can see that there were supply side economists in 2006, 2007. George Bush had mildly cut tax rates or whatever. So if you didn't think that there was this issue with the Fed being there, possibly screwing things up, you wouldn't have had anything on your radar. And also famously in the 20s, Irving Fisher and others, people out of the Chicago tradition thought everything was great because they didn't have the Austrian theory of the boom bus cycle. So again, an area where there is a distinction, it's not that they're all the same. They're all just anti Keynesians or something. And this really matters. It's relevant. I was going to say that a nice thing about the Austrian school, by the way, just kind of an added bonus in addition to helping you understand individual issues is that there's something extremely elegant about the whole thing. But for one thing, we don't say, well, we have microeconomics. And then in a completely different unrelated matter, we also have macroeconomics that seems to operate according to different principles or should be studied from a different point of view. That's not really the way the Austrians think. It all goes back to some first principles that then get spun out. And, I mean, for instance, if you read Man economy and state, you see you're observing the building of an edifice right before your eyes, step by elegant step. And that's, I think, what conveys more than anything else. The idea that you are genuinely learning how the world works. It's not a bunch of ad hoc propositions that might be changeable or testable or that don't seem to integrate with one another. Everything builds on everything else. Now, I say that as somebody who studies economics in his spare time. Tom, can I elaborate on that point a little bit? Something else that I think is really attractive about the Austrian approach to economics is that, you know, while it is, you know, very precise and very scientific in the correct sense of that word, it's also very accessible and interesting to all sorts of people. If you look at sort of most mainstream economists who teach at prestigious universities and so forth, you know, the style in which they write and argue, they use these extremely complicated mathematical models that are almost designed to be incomprehensible to anybody but a very specialized group of experts. You listen to the typical, you know, Treasury Secretary or Fed official talk about the economy.  It's like the old days when, you know, only the priest could read the Bible because only the priest knew Latin. There's this sort of priestly class of economists who speak only to each other and then occasionally give these pronouncements to the lay public. You know, and the lay public is supposed to just take it on faith that what these technocrats are doing and saying is right and that's why the Fed has to be completely independent of interference from the rabble, you know, us. Now, while the Austrian school, of course, has its professors who write articles and books and teach at top universities and so forth, Austrian economics is also a lot more interesting to lay people.  Oh, well, the Austrian school, that's got all these populists and sort of cranky people who write newsletters and have podcasts and blogs and so forth. That sort of delegitimize it somehow in the eyes of the elite economists. But to me, that's a huge feature and not a bug. I mean, the fact that lots of people, not only professional economists, really care about what we're saying and are able to engage with us and we can engage with them in dialogue, that's a great advantage of Austrian economics as opposed to this other kind that is almost designed to be accessible only to sort of an elite few. Yeah, just to jump in on that, so I've given plenty of talks to financial professionals and I'll walk through, you know, what we would all recognize as Austrian business cycle theory to explain the housing boom and bust, and then here's what Bernanke's been doing and everybody, oh my gosh, and afterwards one of the common things, the feedback of good people will say, I hated economics in college, but you just said that was great, you know, and they think that this, I thought economics was just all about drawing curves and so forth. So I think Peter's right about that. They also sometimes say, for an economist, you're really funny. And I'm wondering, do you ever get people to say for a comedian you actually know a lot about economics or is that probably, because you do, you know, it's really, it's charming.  There's no one else more. And by the way, that's not really high praise. Like, I'm not, yeah, there's nobody else. But there is, I mean, I think your point and what you're touching on, I mean, for me personally, like, that was so true. There was something about, look, I never liked school. I hated high school, I hated college, I never liked any of it. And nothing to me was ever as interesting or exciting as, like, libertarianism and Austrian economics. And the fact that it was something that, like, what you were saying, it wasn't just like, okay, here, here's this very complicated thing and you either have to understand this and then you're in and if you don't, you're out. Austrian economics actually teaches you to think. It's teaching you to actually think things through yourself and logically deduce them. And as you were pointing out, it's this wonderfully consistent ideology that nobody else has. And even in the Chicago guys, I mean, they wildly contradict their own worldview. And so anyway, for me, that was like what drew me in. Yeah, just to follow up on that train of thought. Like, notice, for those of you who are here at Mises U, the lecture, obviously we cover a whole wide range of topics. But notice, it's not that at the beginning, we spent five minutes saying, here are my assumptions for this talk. There's gonna be, you know, three firms and they have six different inputs and we're gonna have constant returns.  For one thing, oh, is this labor economics? Okay, then I know the kind of package assumptions we use here. Oh, this is international trade. Oh, this is macro. This is micro. And it's not just that the focus of what they're talking about would be different. It's that their whole method and the assumptions they make and the types of models they build would be completely different. Whereas again, you're not getting that here. We're all coming from the same starting point. We're just applying the analysis to a particular area. One other thing too, regarding what Peter was saying, Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, Nobel Prize winner, he tells in one of his autobiographical works that he was given a talk at some international conference on like solving the problem of inequality or something and they were just asking all these big thought leaders. And so as a huge, famous physicist, he came over and he gave his thoughts and other people were getting up there and pontificating and afterward he was leaving and he said the janitors were cleaning up and one of them came over to him and said, hey, you know what? We could kind of hear what was going on. You were the only guy who I could even understand what you were saying up there, that everybody else, it was just gobbledygook. And so that's, I think, to show that basically we're all as smart as Richard Feynman. What's been cool to see over the past few years is that especially in macroeconomics, there have been a few of the top economists saying that the models have broken down. The models don't work. Specifically, Paul Romer has a great paper and he's regretted the increasing mathiness in economics and saying that when economists are doing a paper presentation at a conference, for example, it's like they're doing a magic trick that nobody really understands how the model works. There's this big, long equation, our big, long system of equations and nobody in the audience knows how this equation works and we're all just supposed to be amazed at the outcome just sort of like the economists just did a magic trick. And many other top economists have also said that these mathematical models that we're using to try to guess what's going to happen in the economy or predict what's going to happen to the economy totally failed in predicting the most recent boom and bust cycle and so there is at least some introspection going on in the mainstream macroeconomics field. Can I just touch on that? A friend of mine who was, this is like right around I guess 2009 and he was getting a Series 7 license to sell stocks and bonds and he was telling me that the guy teaching the course, basically what they teach in the course is this like Keynesian, like you can either have high unemployment or inflation but you can't have both. And he said he just asked the instructor of the course at one point he was like, but don't we have high unemployment and inflation right now? And he said the instructor just goes, this is textbook stuff, not real world stuff. Like that was his response to it. And it's like what, like how could any student, how could you like not look at that and go, this is just all ridiculous. So anyway, sorry, just made me think of that. A couple years ago at the opening talk I was given the topic of the role of Austrian economics in the liberty movement. And I was at pains to emphasize that libertarianism and Austrian economics are of course two distinct things. But at the same time, I wanted to show that it's not complete coincidence that we happen to, you know, most of us be libertarians. So why should that be? So I was talking about different aspects of Austrian economics that even though Austrian economics is value free seem to be congenial to us. And one of those things is if you look through man economy and state, it's not till the very last chapter the economics of violent intervention into the market that we even get the state at all. It's not this benign institution in the background throughout the text. It's not even there. We're describing how production and, well, life proceeds and then all of a sudden it's, oh no, by the way, if you had a group of thugs here's what the economics of that would look like. So that, you know, I get that that's not saying therefore be a libertarian, but that's a pretty conspicuous omission throughout the text. And so I think it's particularly helpful for the average person to be knowledgeable in Austrian economics or at least get the basics because it inoculates them against the worst kinds of populism where you have a demagogue who is promising you all kinds of benefits delivered via the state that on the surface of it sound pretty plausible. Yeah, sure, I'd like to get a free X or a free Y. But when you see, when you get the Austrian understanding of the world and the way it works and the benefits of voluntary cooperation you become instantly skeptical of anything outside that voluntary nexus. So that's a good thing to have under your belt. Maybe following up on that I'm curious as the panel's thoughts, why is it that it seems politicians can get away with promising stuff that's clearly absurd for those who are trained in economics or why is it so hard to get the public perhaps to be on their guard with that stuff. For example, stuff that's happening in Venezuela they're running the printing press and then they put in price controls food disappears from the shelves. I mean that is so obviously what's going to happen. And so it seems impossible. How can the people there not know that and they blame greed or speculators or oil prices collapse? I'm just wondering, is there something about economics per se that makes it trickier or you don't see politicians promising perpetual motion machines and the physicists having to say, man, we just get the public to stop. So what is it? I guess some of the conclusions or claims that politicians make they can seem very easy and achievable just superficially that if you don't put at least five minutes worth of thought behind it then you would just sort of nod your head. Yeah, that sounds great. I would love free healthcare. I would love everybody to have a college education. And so it takes just a few minutes of thinking critically about the claims that politicians make and I guess maybe there's a deficiency of that sort of thing happening. The analogy with physics is pretty interesting. I don't know for some reason, I think contrary to what most people believe economics in some sense is harder in that you've got to think through the consequences of different things. I mean anybody can do it but it takes a few moments of reflection. It's not like a bumper sticker thing, right? Most economic propositions don't fit on a bumper sticker. I think everyone understands like, you know, why don't we have flying cars? Well, it's just really hard to have flying cars. Okay, I accept that. But why can't we all have free healthcare and why can't we have free housing and why don't I get paid more money? It takes like a few steps to sort of explain that. And I think sometimes it's hard people don't have the patience and that's why when, you know, the Bernie Sanders types or whatever come along and say, oh, well, of course, vote for me. I'll give you this, I'll give you this. You can have free this and free that. It just sounds so great and people don't want to take the time to have to, you know, to sort of think through why that's impossible, why that can't work. But I think also it's because those sorts of things involve parts of life that they're intimately familiar with. They know what healthcare is. They know what education is. They know what housing is. But if they had 58 lifetimes, couldn't even conceive of how to build a flying car. So that they're willing to let the experts deal with. But when it comes to healthcare, they say, well, look, I see a doctor. I see a patient. I see a rich person. Well, that's all I need. What would be the problem? So that's the thing is that they, that's the case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Well, also zero knowledge is even worse. And by the way, just the other day I was driving around, don't you hate that bumper sticker? Do you think education is expensive? Try ignorance? Yeah, I know. So Tom gave it a try. Yeah. I'll call your bluff.  Why don't you just, actually, you know what won't seem ridiculous? You know where you won't be following us this year. That's right. I'm so bummed, but I won't be on the Contra cruise this year. I got to do this silly little thing, having a kid. And that's, I asked my wife, well, thank you. Yeah.  She's making me come to the delivery. So anyway. But okay, now I completely lost my job. Oh, on the, well, this is like what the worst element, well, maybe not the worst, but one of the worst elements of the state and democracy in general is that we all, you know, people end up voting on stuff that they don't know anything about.  Like if we're, if we're in a car and the car broke down and there's like five of us in the car and one of the people in the car is a mechanic. And he was like, okay, well, this is what we got to do to fix the car. I wouldn't be like, let's just all vote on that. And we'll see what, you know, it's like people are voting in things that they don't have any expertise in. And there's, there's a lot of things that everyone in this room doesn't know anything about. I mean, if everybody in the world were obsessed with economics the way we are, we, we are all starved to death. And like we'd have some perfect model of why no one's producing any food or something. But like people have to specialize in different things. And the problem is the state comes in and then it's like, well, you, you, everyone's going to vote on what sounds more popular and giving away free stuff is always going to win. Yeah, you actually reminded me of something that happened.  And I'm an economist. And so we were talking about the federal reserve because this was when QE was going on and he asked me my opinion and I was believing in social segment. My goal is not to convert people or anything like that. I just try to keep my head down. And so I lightly said something, well, you know, I think it's kind of risky and it could lead to some problems down the road. And you know, that kind of something, a truthful statement, but not volunteering to which. And so he goes, yeah, I don't agree with that. And he proceeded to tell me his views on quantitative easing. And I was thinking, if I had said I was a heart surgeon and said something about how valves work, he wouldn't be like, yeah, I don't think that's how it worked. So, I mean, that is funny. But on the other hand, you can sort of give them the benefit or you can see why people would think that because he could go on TV and see economists saying diametrically opposed things where you probably wouldn't see two heart surgeons on TV disagreeing on such a fundamental level, you know, where they were saying one person said, yeah, we cut the heart out. The other one said, we put in 16 hearts. That's what the person needs. That's kind of how economists are sounding, you know, in terms of the recommendation about QE or not. Some are saying this is great. We need 10 times more. Other people are saying this is awful. It's setting us up. So you can understand why the public doesn't trust economists, even though, as these guys are saying, it does lead to the absurdity of people just voting on things where economists who know what's going on can say this clearly is not going to work. What do you think is going to happen? All right, let me try this again. You know where you will find some economists who know what's going on. There you go. Yeah, I was thinking we could just ask the panel to tell, you know, why are we interested in economics? Why should everyone go on the Contra Cruise? I think that would be... Well, you should go to contracruise.com and then look at it lovingly and say, I'm just a poor student. So either I'll have to beg my parents or I'll just have to go out and work and someday you'll be able to come with us because it's so great. And Jeff Deist is coming this year. I mean, could you imagine a week hanging out with Jeff Deist? Yeah, they probably have no idea. A week with Jeff Deist. What would that even be like? I don't even know. Yeah, that's right. Well, what would we compare it to? All right, what else do we want to talk about? Anything? While we have them here, let me ask Dave this. Do you... Okay, you see one sees people on TV and they're espousing things. Is it the case? Are they just putting on a show and behind the scenes they're more reasonable? Like people who say crazy stuff are Bill O'Reilly. I'm not saying him in particular, but the people you've interacted with, is it like they're doing pro-wrestling and behind the scenes they're all in on the joke or anything along those lines? Because again, I'm not on TV like Dave is, so how would I know? Yeah, I think there's a little bit of a split. There are a lot of people who are straight up doing pro-wrestling who know this is... I mean, I've had experiences before. There was one military guy, this is back when I was doing Fox News shows, and he was talking to me backstage and he was like... We were talking about waterboarding and he goes, Yeah, waterboarding. We were waterboarding. It's absolutely torture. There's no question about it. And then he got asked on the panel, do you consider waterboarding torture? And he goes, I consider it enhanced interrogation.  And that... So there is stuff like that. And I've had moments with people like... I was on Essie Cupp's show the other day and it was, you know, she's going... She had Max Boot on the show. You guys know the wonderful Max Boot. And yeah, I was in a room with Max Boot and I felt dirty for the rest of the day. But he...  And I came on to the panel and she just asked me, like, off camera. She was like, Well, what do you think of the whole Trump-Putin summit? And I was like, Well, I wish he would get as much scrutiny when he say, bombed another country as to when he spoke to somebody. And she just goes, Fair point. Fair point. And... But then she continued on with the crazy hysteria. So I don't know. The whole thing is wrestling. It's ridiculous.  It's like these big red, blue screens and you have like five seconds to talk about the most important issue ever. It's like, Hey, what's that cable? They all... You know, what is it?   And they're like, Hey, what's going on, everybody? Okay, five seconds. Dave, Iraq war. What do you think? And I'm like, bad. And they're like, good point. Next. And it's just... This is all insane. And there's something interesting about the psychology of people who watch cable news, who don't, you know, read further or aren't interested in things like this. It's like they almost want to... They know they don't know anything, but they want to feel like not... They don't want to feel bad about that. So they're like, Oh, no, you know, I watched Hannity. So I'm good. And but yeah, it's all... It is pro wrestling.  If you say something that's a little bit off, then media matters going to slam you forward. I mean, you're going to get smashed on all sides. I mean, it's risky. Yeah, it is. But I've always, from the very beginning, when I started getting these cable news shows, I was just kind of like, in my mind, I thought, well, it's a matter of time until I get fired from this. And then I'll have an awesome, like they can't handle what I have to bring to them story. But they just never fired me and kept bringing me back. And now I'm like, I guess this is cool too. But truthfully, it's... You know what, I think, and I think part of the reason, because people ask me, they're like, why does Essie Cup keep having you on her show? Because you make her look bad in times and all. And I think it's just that I'm interested. And at the end of the day, they are driven by ratings. And it's like, it's so... Have you ever seen that show? It would be so freaking boring without Mayanna. It would just be the most... People agreeing on nonsense. And I at least make the panel... But they can kind of... Since there'll be like four people in me, they can kind of keep me in that box where it's almost like what they used to do to Ron Paul on the debate stages.  But anyway, I don't know. As co-host, I get the privilege of telling an unrelated story. Totally unrelated. It has nothing to do with anything. But there are people we know in the story. Years ago, when Glenn Beck used to have his show on Fox News, they wanted to do a whole hour on the road to surfdom. So they invited me to come on. And then they said, well, so who else should come on? Is there anybody else? So I thought Yuri Maltsev.  He had to read the road to surfdom in a special room at Moscow State University. He had to read a special room and he had to sign something promising he would not disclose anything he had read to anybody else, any of this bourgeois nonsense. So I thought he'd be great. So they called him up and the producers called me back and said, Glenn is gonna love this guy. Thank you for the tip. So anyway, so we did this full hour. So as we went to the commercials live TV, he said to me, Glenn says to me, during the commercial break, go in the green room, flip through whatever chapter it was, and just find three points that we'll talk about. And I kind of felt like, shouldn't you have done, don't you have like a staff of 35? Why am I doing this?  So then he's lecturing me about, you know, we really gotta, we should be having lunch. And I'm thinking, two minutes is ticking away, live television is coming up, I have not found one out of the three points. So by the time, I had 20 seconds by the time I got the judge to be quiet. It was not fun. So that's it, has nothing to do with anything, but we know the judge and Yuri, so I thought I would tell it. It involves TV. What was the point? What was the point that you found? Oh, I have no idea. I don't even remember. Really? I have no idea. It's a fairness. Do any of us remember anything Haig wrote down? All right, so basically what I've done by bringing that up is to give you all the freedom to say anything you like about any topic. Well, I can say something relevant to what Dave just said. So he was talking about, he's on the show and just the very fact that he has a different opinion than everybody else that makes it interesting. And to connect that to the theme of this episode, why should Austrian economics be important or why should the ordinary person care? The ordinary person cares about diversity of opinion. It's interesting to at least see diverse views presented. And so if you go to a history class or a literature class or really any other field, people will value different perspectives on the subject. But for some reason in economics, if there's like one little bit of diverse opinion, then it just gets knocked down and gets hammered down. So that's one reason why the ordinary person should value learning about Austrian economics or at least be okay with it being presented alongside other views. I guess also, can you guys maybe suggest for people who are out there who are saying, yeah, you know what, this has really pushed me over the edge. I want to either read my first thing or go watch somebody's lecture or whatever. The three of you guys, you could just say, what's your recommendation for a newcomer who's interested in this? Someone who listens to Contra Krugman actually has not done any other work. What's the analog of Tom just cribbing in 20 seconds trying to pretend he knows Hayek? Well, I think Henry Hazlitz's economics in one lesson is the best introduction. If you don't know anything about economics or even if you know a little bit about economics, his book does a really good job of taking you through those, you know, the first, at least the first two steps to think critically about different policy proposals. I can't recommend that enough. Yeah, and if you prefer other media besides reading, if you go to the Mises Academy website, we have a large number of courses, many of them free, including introduction to economics, sort of economic principles, level talks, all the way up to more advanced talks, and of course just the media archive on Mises.org has lots and lots of material at all different levels. But I agree that Henry Hazlitz's book is extremely well done and a lot of Ron Paul's books, which are not sort of academic books, but they're very accessible and there's actually a lot of content, especially about things like business cycles and inflation and other phenomena that Ron Paul's interested in that also serve as great introductions to the Austrian theories. Yeah, so I completely agree. The first book, especially if it's someone new getting into it is always economics in one lesson. I just think it's a great one because it just gets you thinking. It's very easy. It's not a difficult read at all and it gets you thinking the right way. Unrelated to Austrian economics, the two essays that I always recommend by Rothbard just because they had such a profound effect on me are Anatomy of the State and War Peace in the State. Those two just really hit me hard and I think if you get into that way of thinking it probably will make you more interested in Rothbard's other work. But the other book that I would recommend specifically about economics is Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. I thought it was just great and it's pretty easy. You wouldn't want to give someone man economy and state to start with. I think that might have the effect of just being like, okay, there's no way I can do this. But if you do, once you get into that stuff, then I mean human action and man economy and state are the ones that'll finish it off for you. Another great short Rothbard book is What Has Government Done to Our Money for Money and Macro is probably the best introduction. I want to just say a quick something about what do you do when you've read economics in one lesson but you still feel intimidated by human action. And I think some people are in that situation where okay I've got the basics but man that book looks heavy. So there are some intermediate texts that you might consider and of course the primary one is Bob's book Choice. And that way you can start getting into Misesianism without having to go all the way through human action. And then you'll feel much more confident going through human action. So that was a gap that needed to be filled. From Haslet to human action is a huge leap and Bob has basically given you some lily pads in between.  The idea is I was trying to explain not to left-wing Catholics whom I've given up on more or less. I mean absent divine intervention. But on the right the so-called traditionalists who won't listen to you because they think the free market came out of the Enlightenment which they hate. So I was trying to explain a lot of basics to them and that I think is also a useful intermediate text because that starts off talking about praxeology and shows you how you get from human beings act to the law of demand. You know because people say oh there's this action axiom. But I'm not sure everybody knows exactly how you go from the action axiom to something like that and so I start from there and then go on. So those are two intermediate texts and then I kind of came up with a bunch of good resources that would take you from beginner to advanced and I posted them at learnostrianeconomics.com. So we're going to link to that and we're going to link to all the stuff that our folks here on the stage are up to at contracrugman.com slash 148. Now obviously if you're watching this streaming that page doesn't exist yet because we're recording it now. This episode now. But when this episode goes live at contracrugman.com we'll have that stuff up there. So I'd like to say thank you to Peter Klein, Jonathan Newman, Dave Smith, as always Bob. Any parting words before I wrap this baby up? Thank you Tom for all you've done. I sure appreciate that. Thank you everybody. Thanks for listening to Contracrugman. Subscribe to the show for free on iTunes or Stitcher at contracrugman.com. You'll also find detailed show notes pages on blog, books by Tom and Bob, and more at contracrugman.com. See you next week.


There's the option to display candlesticks on the book map chart. Let's go up to the studies configuration button. We'll click on candlesticks here and select it. And you can see that candlesticks are now being displayed on the chart. There are some settings here. In the mode, we can display the candlesticks with open, high, low, closed by the trades that have taken place. Or you can look here at the open and close by trades, but the high is by the ask and the low is by the bid, lowest bid. Or we can also display it here with open, closed by trades. And the high is by the highest bid and the low by the lowest ask. It's really up to you. There are other settings here for the body width in pixels.  There's another section here for displaying the VWAP on the candlestick.  It is displayed here with this line that is going across in the candlestick. I can also display the bid ask volume weighted average price by selecting this option here. Let's take a look at it. We'll look at this candlestick here. We have our VWAP overall here with the horizontal line. And this upside down T shape that is green is showing me the overall VWAP of the aggressive market buy volume that has taken place on the best offer. You can see with the T shaped here that is red. This is showing me the overall VWAP of the aggressive market selling that has occurred on the best bid. How this can be helpful is to show specific areas looking for pullbacks within these time frames. So for example with this candle here, you can see that we traded down and had a pullback very close to where the overall VWAP and the VWAP for the bid and ask is. We see continuation to the downside and the overall VWAP within this 5 minute period. And we see that actually we get a pullback here back to the aggressive selling VWAP that occurred in this area here.


China's new five-year plan exposes the wishful thinking behind socialist regimes. By Mark A. DeWeaver, an audio-mesist wire narrated by Michael Stack. On October 29, the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party concluded its fifth plenum, a four-day meeting devoted primarily to laying the groundwork for China's 14th five-year plan, which covers the period from 2021 to 2025. Most of what has been made publicly available about the planner's thinking is hardly novel. No one would have been surprised to read that they plan to hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, for example. But one thing in particular stands out. The hope that the country can become less dependent on the outside world, both for advanced technology and as a source of final demand. Given China's steadily deteriorating external relations, it is easy to see why moving toward autarky might seem desirable. But in the absence of a reduction in the state's role in the economy, something that is clearly not under consideration, policy is designed to stimulate innovation and household spending are unlikely to succeed. Mal-incentives generated by the state sector have always been the obvious obstacle to socialist countries' efforts to achieve technological breakthroughs. State-owned enterprises have only weak incentives to innovate because they face almost no bankruptcy risk. At the same time, for both state-owned enterprises and private companies, competition under socialism manifests itself mainly in the endeavors of people to court the favor of those in power. As Mises wrote in 1940, rather than in attempts to build a better mousetrap, the system incentivizes rent-seeking, not tech entrepreneurship. Increasing research and development budgets or encouraging the re-innovation or co-innovation of foreign technology, all priorities dating back to the mid-2000s, have done little to strengthen China's capacity for indigenous innovation. The Chinese economy continues to rely almost entirely on foreign intellectual property, whether acquired by fair means or foul. Even the four new inventions, trumpeted by the state media as the country's contribution to the modern world, were all actually invented elsewhere. Japan has been running high-speed trains since 1964. Mobile payments were introduced by Apple in 2014. Internet e-commerce began with Amazon and eBay in 1995, and bike sharing started in Copenhagen also in the 1990s. Replacing exports with local household consumption will also be a non-starter. Chinese household spending is low not because households are frugal, but because such a large share of the national income pie is attributable to the state. While in theory, the state's assets are the collective property of all citizens, in practice ordinary people have no meaningful claim to the income they produce, which instead serves as a funding source for government projects and or lines the pockets of the well-connected. The government has in effect crowded out the consumer, a situation that can hardly be reversed, while at the same time following the socialist road. The trouble with China's new five-year plan is that it attempts to solve problems while leaving their underlying structural causes unaddressed. In this, it is not unlike the final Soviet five-year plans of the 1980s, which were also supposed to boost innovation and household consumption in the absence of any real system reform. The 11th Soviet plan promised a switch over to efficiency and quality on the basis of the universal introduction of fundamentally new machinery and materials. Just as the new Chinese plan calls for, improving economic quality, efficiency and core competitiveness through the development of strategic emerging industries. Concrete concern for concrete people was to be the alpha and the omega of Leonid Brezhnev's economic policy. The communique issued at the conclusion of last month's 5th plenum makes a similar promise, asserting that benefiting the broad masses of the people would be the point of departure in the end point of development. China today is of course in a much better position than the Soviet Union ever was to make progress toward these objectives. Yet the basic problem remains the same. The distortions resulting from the state's economic interventions cannot be overcome as long as these interventions continue. Any attempt to be self-reliant in key technologies will either have to be abandoned or leave the country struggling to keep up with the rest of the world. Nor can local markets be expected to replace the country's current massive export volumes. A move toward autarky would be a move not toward increased domestic consumption, but toward Mao era poverty. For more content like this, visit Mises.org.


look what I just happened to stumble upon. Looks like simplicity just decided to drop a whole new collection on us. I didn't see anything about it in email or online, Instagram, none of that. I just happened to be on here by accident and saw this photo and said, well, I guess I know what first impression Friday is gonna be this week. So, let's jump right in and start taking a look at the patterns that they have for spring. Obviously, Mimi G is still a part of simplicity. I think some of us are kind of wondering maybe she'll end up somewhere else based on the rebranding, but for now, here she is. She has a knit dress, knit only dress in two lengths. So, it looks like in typical Mimi fashion. It's very, very fitted, low cut. It's kind of hard to see all of it in one photo. How about, well, even that you can't really see. Gosh, their website. We're gonna look at it small then. So, yeah, it's got a deep fee. It's also got a, I don't know, it's not a sleeve, really. It's just a little tab that goes over your shoulder. It's got these pockets, gosh, and now that's in the way. And it looks to be like, it's got a midriff panel. So, this empire waist seam, and then this is at your natural waist. Fitted, tight. See, it's more like a shield. I don't know what else to call it. It's like sewn in to this midriff seam, and then there's, you know, your underarm is under here, which is also covered. So, this is like just an extra little panel thing. Here it is from the side. We've also got little bust darts.  Here's that. Yeah, yes, ma'am. We all know Mimi does it sexy, so this should come as not much of a surprise to anyone. But, oh, they're also touting her sew-alongs now, which is cool. But, here it is. And then here's the line drawing. This is kind of cool. I feel like I have seen this in some ready-to-wear. I would probably swap this skirt out for like a more A-line skirt. Totally easy to do, you guys. It's not difficult at all. Just find another pattern that has a waist seam, and you can swap out the skirt for any bodice. But, I do like this bodice a lot. It is really pretty. You could also use my tutorial that I did for the knit sew-along to raise this, if you wanted to do that as well. And then sizing, it looks like we've got floor fabrics, stretch knits only, cotton interlock, ITY, and jersey. And then a little bit of lining. I'm assuming it's for the bodice. Less than two yards for dress A, which is the shorter version. And then just above two yards for B, which is the longer version. And then all these lovely finished garment measurements. So, the bust is 31 to 46, and the hip is 35 and a half up to 51. So, not the most inclusive, but not certainly not the worst we've seen either, right? Okay, and then, did they say anything about notions? Oh yeah, one yard of one and a quarter inch wide elastic. I'm guessing that goes in here, in the waistband? Not totally sure. And then the sizing comes in two different size ranges, six to 14, and then 16 to 24. All right, that's the first one. Now we have what she's calling a bra top and gathered pants. Very, I dream of Jeannie, in my opinion, but you've got, hello, you've got this little bra top.  It looks to just be like one giant rectangle with elastic at the bottom. And then elastic at the top with a little paper bag, you know, seam there, and then you've got this little halter coming out of it. And then the pants have, looks like three rows of elastic at the waist. Hard to see if it's, but certainly very relaxed. And then the three rows of elastic at the bottom as well. Here's the pants in the back. Yeah, I don't think that's a drop crotch at all. Nice fitting in the back, I think. Although I'm not entirely sure what this is happening here. It could just be the way the photo was taken.  That's what this is to me. Yeah, it's cute. I can see a lot of people making this, loving it, looking great in it. Not sure about myself, but I do think that we'll do well. I think people will like it a lot. So yeah, there you go. And of course you can make the pants and then not cuff the bottom. That would certainly remove some of the I Dream of Jeannie aspect of it. And that would be really cute too. All right, so fabrics, boutique, shally, gauze, jersey, lightweight stretch, terry, linen, linen blends, silk types, and soft cotton types. So yeah, it looks like they're going for, you know, the lighter weight wovens. I do believe they need to have a little bit of structure to them. They can't just be like completely drapey. The shally to me feels like, my concern is that if you made it in a shally, all of the extra ease and the bra and all of this here would just fall over the elastic rather than kind of holding itself up a little bit. Does that make sense? Okay, thread, half inch wide elastic and then five, five and five eighths yards for B. Oh, so they all use half inch elastic.  That's why you need so much elastic, my goodness. All right, and then we've got some finished garment measurements, a little bit negligible in the bust, also in the hip really, because it's just so roomy, but here they are nonetheless. And then the elastic, you would get your perfect waist fit there because you could adjust the elastic to whatever size you need. So all right, sizing comes in the same as the last one, six to 14 and then 16 to 24. All right, next we've got a knit dress and tunic. This is the women's sizing. So it's 18 to 26 and then 26 to 34. And hopefully they'll show us what that means in the way of some finished garment measurements. But you've got a knit dress with kind of like this overlay that ties on one side. Certainly not something that, at least in the Mrs. category we haven't seen before, can't really speak to exclusively the women's category, but I will say I do appreciate the fact that this is fitted through the waist, fitted through the bust as well. I like that they are kind of accentuating some curves in all the right places. Nothing kind of bothers me more than when a company's like, we're a size inclusive, look at all these great sizes we include and then all the patterns are like shapeless and oversized and you're just like, well, I don't know that that's the point either. You know what I mean? So yeah, it looks like it's probably pretty easy to sew.  Here's the back, pretty, right? Simple but flattering. And then it looks like we have a shorter version, a mid-length version, which is this, and then a longer version, which I think is what the model is wearing, A, B, C, C. Okay, yeah, so she's wearing C and then there's two other lengths as well. And then here's that, yeah, not much to it. There's no darts, pretty simple to sew, I would think. All right, size for stretch, and it's only jersey, cotton like reblands, stretch velvet, that's nice. And ITY knits. I could also see it in that double brush poly if you live in a warmer climate. Oh, I didn't even really think about it, but it also has elbow length sleeves and three-quarter length sleeves. It does take quite a bit of fabric because you've got the overlay, so it's like pretty much like two and a half dresses. So two and a half yards, three and a half yards, almost four, depending on your length. And then look, finished garment measurements, so. Oh, bust, waist, and hip, love that. So 37 and a half inch bust, up to a 53 and a half inch bust, and then the hip goes from 44 to 60. So I would actually fit into this pattern, but on the low end, so I would be cutting an 18W and then a 22W, and I would just fill in the waist accordingly. So I guess that's one of the pluses of being at the high end of the misses, also puts you at the low end of the women's. I would be interested to see how they fit because I'm assuming they use different blocks to like as a jumping off point. So I imagine that this would be a little bit curvier. You know how like in ready to wear, they have pants that are like curvy cut? I imagine that would kind of be what this would be in addition to the larger sizes. So that might be a cool little experiment to try. I'll get a simple basic knit dress, misses, cut it in my sizes, same thing for this one, and compare and see. I mean, maybe a knit dress isn't the best example because knit is so forgiving in the fit department, but you guys get my drift. All right, so yeah, there's that. Nine, two, five, nine. Oh, look at this one. This is so on trend right now. I talked about it in my trends video. These flowy tier dresses are like everywhere. This one looks like they have misses and women's all-in-one. 2XS up to 2XL, and we will see exactly what that means when we look at the finished garment measurements. But this looks to have like a little v-neck plus a little like stand collar. And then it also looks like the tiers are, oh gosh, how do I explain this? The tiers are sewn on top of the tier above it. You know what I mean? They're not necessarily sewn right sides together.  Same for this one. We've got a long sleeve. I think there's a little bit of elastic there. And then just a little baby hem. Here it is without her swooshing around. Here's the back. Yeah, look at that collar. How do you get into this? Do you just pull it on over your head? I don't know that the opening, this little opening is enough. But you can see here the neckline and collar a little bit better. I'm not sure that that is, I think the illustration, something's amiss between the illustration and this. Possibly this is too small through here for her. Maybe, maybe. And that's why it feels like it's a little bit wider than it is long. Cause look at this again, right? Doesn't that look like more of a sharper V and a little bit lower too? I don't know if they altered it to be higher or what exactly, but here is another version. That hat. So the last one was sleeveless. This one has this little lantern sleeve. And then look how cute this one is. A completely different version because it only has the one tier. Super cute too though, right? Here they all are. I like that neckline. I would just, it doesn't look like it's pulling. Like I don't see any gathers or any, where the fabric is strained. I just think, I don't know. Maybe her hair is covering those things. I don't know. I just feel like this does not look like this. So that would be something I would be double checking. And then here's our line drawings. Oh, it also has pockets. Oh, and a center back zipper. Okay, that's how you get it. I was like, how in the world are you getting into this thing? Okay, that makes sense. So cute. I like that it has some shaping, even though it's an oversized kind of blousey dress. I do appreciate that they at least put a bust start in. Okay, batik, chambray, cotton lawn, cotton blends, linen blends, rayon, poplens, shirtings. Well, yeah, anything in that light to, I don't want to say mid-weight, but the lighter side of mid-weight woven, any of that stuff. It does take quite a bit of fabric for almost five yards for the longest version. And then the shortest version is a little less than two and a half yards for the largest size. And then our finished garment measurements are 33, which is a little disappointing because I've been talking to some of the petite girls, like the opposite end of the plus size market. And what they had told me, if you're like a double zero or a zero and ready to wear, your bust is around 30 inches. So this would be very large for them. Granted, this is finished garment measurements, so maybe there's that much ease in there. I don't really, I don't know how much ease they won here. So maybe it would be just enough for those little girls but or the smaller end of the size range. But the 2XL only goes up to a 54 inch bust, which, I mean, what was the, here, let me just for, just because I want to know what was the bust of this one that was a true women's? This one went up to 53 and a half in the bust, okay. And this one was 50, what was it? I already forgot. Oh, and it goes up to 54 finished. Okay, so yeah, it is pretty inclusive. I think because it is so loose, they're able to kind of skip, you know, and there's four inches between each of these. I don't think you'd be able to do that on a fitted dress very well. So very forgiving in the fit department, which is why they're able to do that. Cute though, very on trend. All right, next up we've got Mrs. V neck shift dress. This looks identical to the love notions. Oh shoot, I literally just got it the other day. They have the same exact v-neck. I also feel like there's another one, the tab or, is it soaholic? Who has the one that's just like this too? That's funny. All right, well either way, you've got a little shift dress with this like little crossover V. No darts, no nothing. This one happens to be a little bit past the knee, center back seam with an invisible zipper. There's a little facing here too that you can see. This version shows bust darts. Yeah, those are some very hidden bust darts. This one also has a little cuff here and it has little slits on the side. There's that one. And then you can also add elastic to the waist and come up with a version like that. So here's this little number, really not much to it at all. Now I feel like we really are in the like, the thick of the simplicity rebranding where everything is really simple. You could also do a lot of really fun color blocking. All right, shally, crepe, lightweight linen blends, poplin, shirting, silky types, soft cotton blends. Yeah, anything lightweight and drapey is gonna be really good for this. You just need some fusible interfacing, I guess for the facings. Two and a half yards for A with the sleeve with a longer sleeve. And then finished garment measurements are 37 to 52 and a half and then 40 to 55 and a half for the hip. And this is a pretty close fitting like shift dress thing. So yeah, I'd be making, oh, actually it's not, I'd make one side. No, that's not it. I'm down here, finished. So yeah, it'd be the same as me making any other pattern. I wouldn't really change my sizes at all. Okay, okay. All right, I'm trying to confuse myself. I don't need to do that. Six to 14 and then 16 to 24 on the size range. It does look like it fits her really well. The sleeve looks like it's in the right place. The sleeve cap looks nice. The shoulder, all that looks really good. So even though it's simple, they're doing it right. So all right, this is a Mrs. and women's button front dress. I wish we would have seen this a couple months ago because we could have added this to the voting for the sew-along that I'm doing, but you can take what you've learned in the sew-along that I'm doing for the shirt dress and apply it to this one if you like it. So very traditional shirt dress elements. We've got the button front. We've got the collar with the collar stand. We've got, I think princess seams here that open out into like they released down here, I think. You've got your sleeve that gathers into a cuff and are those side seam pockets? You've also got a patch pocket here and then this one is ankle length. They really did buy up a lot of this purple fabric, right? Oh, this one has more of like a stand collar only. Oh, and you can see the princess seams go all the way down. So there's that. Here's the one that the model's wearing and then here is a short sleeve version. Here they all are. So yes, this is simple, but I also feel like it's classic too. Here are our line drawings, right? Really pretty shaping all through here. It's gonna look really beautiful on all body types. Batik, chambray, pinwheel corduroy, cotton blends, poplin, shirting, lightweight stretch wovens. And then 13 buttons or 11 buttons depending on which length you make and then some bias tape. The longest, oh, the sleeveless version takes five yards. The one that's the middle length and has sleeves is a little less than five and a half yards and then the short sleeve short version is still just under five yards. It's these princesses, these panels are all cut, one long piece, there's no waist seam. That's what takes up so much fabric. And then we get finished bust measurements of 38 and a half up to 56. And this is a pretty fitted bust and an a woven too. So I feel like this is pretty accurate to how inclusive their sizing really is. It's really, really pretty. Really pretty, okay. Now we have tops and pull-on skirt, okay. What do we have here? Some kind of, is this just a rag, no. Some kind of detail here that would make me think it's a raglan sleeve but then you also have this which is that a sleeve seam? Is this supposed to be a drop shoulder? I can't really tell what's going on there. You've also got these little, I guess, wealth pockets. And then what's really interesting is the skirt is elastic waist but also has pleats. I do not understand that. And I guarantee you that if she were to pull up her top all through here, this would be like one giant bubble. That is just so odd to me. Okay, so here's the sleeve detail again. Here's this center back seam. Like why is there all this fabric if there's an actual sleeve? I'm not understanding this at all. Here it is in the line drawing. Why isn't this all just one piece? Okay, fine. Let's just assume that they wanted to add some different style lines. Hers does not look like this smooth at all. She's got so much extra. I guess it's just too big for her. That's all I can think of. Or maybe it's the block that they're using because this is one of those that was Mrs. Anne women's, right? Right? No, only to exhale. Lynn, I have no idea what's going on. But look at this. Elastic waist and, please, I don't get that either. This is gonna be a pass for me simply because I feel like even to get the top to fit right would take a lot of work. And then I just have no confidence that this area here would not accentuate my least favorite part of my body. Like if you have like a lower belly, like a pooch of any kind, it's going to, the elastic is gonna sit above it. And then this is gonna be flat over it. And then this is gonna open up underneath it. What do you think that's gonna do to your body? Like, no, thank you. But we'll go through the rest of it just because. Okay, boutique, chambray, cotton lawn, double gauze, lightweight blend, soft cotton blends and wall. No shoulder pads. So I'm not sure why there's so much ease in those shoulders. And then you don't need a ton of fabric and the finished bust measurements go from 35 to 52 inches. But again, as you saw, it's very, very, very roomy. Okay, now we have a dress, jacket, and a top. I traditionally love these wardrobe patterns because they are the great basis for a capsule wardrobe. You can just buy one or two fabrics, make it all up, wear them together, wear them separate. It's a really easy way to get dressed. But what do we have here? So we've got a, let's start with the jacket. It looks just like an open front jacket, maybe no closures possibly. And some version of a notched collar, drop shoulder. Then you've got your sleeve, really, really wide sleeve opening, but it opens into a cuff. And this jacket, it looks like it is hemmed to about the low hip. And then underneath, we've got a dress. All I can really see is the center front seam right now. Maybe there's more. Here's the center back seam. It looks like the dress has the drop shoulder too, but no sleeve on it. Here is the dress. So yeah, all it's got is that center front seam. Here's the top, same thing, just shorter. And then here's the jacket. Jacket has side seam pockets, and I was right, no closure. So very simple, not a lot of pattern pieces. Really pretty shape to the dress, even though it has very few seams. What's going on in the back? Nothing. No darts, nothing. Same thing with the jacket. All it has is this little pleat that opens up to give you some ease. And that's it. Chambray linen, linen blends, rayons, silky types, soft cottons. Probably depends on which version you're making. I don't know that I would make the jacket in a rayon necessarily, but the top I would. So you just have to keep those things in mind. And then the dress is two and three quarters of a yard. The top is more than one and a half yards. Wow. And then the jacket is two and three eighths yards. All that seems like a lot. But I guess if the front, well it's two pattern pieces for this top. I don't see how that's one and five eighths of yard. That to me would be like one yard wonder.  I don't know, that seems like a lot. Okay, finished bust is 33 inches up to 58 and a half. And that's for the top and the dress. The jacket is even more relaxed, more loose fitting and goes up to 54 inches. Yeah, I imagine the dress is really, really flattering on lots of different body types. Okay, now we have a women's lifestyle wardrobe pattern. Jacket, knit top and pants. Look how cool her shoes are. Old place, aren't those cool? Okay, so jacket has shoulder dart, button front, no collar. It's a little long in the shoulder. But I do think the sleeve is really pretty. You know what I mean? Though this is a little, is it supposed to be a drop shoulder? We'll have to look at the line drawings. You also have a center back seam and then pockets. Here is your knit top, grown on sleeve, no big deal. It does have these little slits here. And then here is the jacket. So it's not a shoulder dart, it's actually a princess seam. And then something special going on with the sleeve here. And we've also got these pants, elastic waist pants, shocker that have this little opening here. Let's look at them.  Okay, well, it's a little disappointing. And those of you that are in the women's size range, let me know what you think. But it's a little disappointing that the pattern we just looked at was basically this. It had a dress instead of the pants. But the jacket for the Mrs. version had that really nice collar. This just feels, I don't know. It's not not cute, it's still cute. It just feels like a little less special maybe. Like there's the, there's the KERDI girls, plus size women like, or not like collars, does that like draw attention? I think that would draw attention to your face and your neck and you would like that. I don't know. Okay, so the top is for knits only, interlock and jersey. And then the jacket and pants. Denim linen, linen blends, rayons and tinsel. Red buttons, elastic. This top takes one and three quarters of a yard, but it's both the back and the front are cut on the fold. So that I can kind of see, I guess maybe. And then the jacket is two and a half. Pants are a little more than two and a half. Finished bust for the knit top. It's gonna have negative Bs. So 40 inches to 54 inches. And then the jacket has a little bit of ease to it. So it's gonna be a little bit has extra wearing ease. 45 to 59 inches. And then the hip for the pants is 44 and a half to 59 and a half. So there we have that. Two different size, two different envelopes, 18 to 24 and 26 to 32. It does look nice. I don't like it as much as I liked the first dress though. But I guess that kind of just depends on your overall style too. But like I don't see why they couldn't have made this jacket in women's and advice versa honestly. Like, I don't know. Okay, now we've got top and pants in two lengths. Okay. So I like this collar that they're doing this round where it's just a V-neck and then the collar is sewn like into it. It's like a collar, but not all the difficulty of a collar. This has got to be a drop shoulder, right? That's gotta be very intentional. This is also a gauze fabric. If you're curious, hemmed to three quarter length, some buttons and then they've got it half tucked into some elastic pants, really straight line pants. No big deal there. I don't see any pockets, nothing. This fabric does lend itself to kind of looking like pajamas a little bit. I don't know if that's what they were going for, but there you have it. It looks equally nice and like a crisp shirting too. So that's kind of what this alludes to. You also have this forward shoulder which I didn't notice before, which is nice. You've got a shorter sleeve, little side slits. Here's your pant. I didn't think that pants have pockets. They're just about as basic as basic gets. You can also do it in a short. You can do it in a short, go on. There we go. Slow to load the images today. All right. Yeah, not a lot going on here, right? Here is the line drawings. Yeah, very intentional drop shoulder. No, yeah, no real shaping, no yoke, no nothing. Like very, very simple. It is a really cute design for the neckline though. I really do like that. All right, cotton and cotton blends, double gauze, linen and linen blends, poplin, rayon, tinsel, thread buttons, and elastic for the waistband. And then up to two yards for the top, about two yards for the short sleeve top two, and then the pants are two and a half ish yards, and the shorts are one and a half ish yards. Finish garment measurements for the tops, 38 and a half up to 55, and for the pants and shorts, 36 inches up to 52 and a half. Yeah, I probably would never make the pants, and it's debatable whether I would make that top or not. So are they all kind of starting to look the same to you guys now? I think we have yet another elastic waist pant coming up and a light, flowy top and a light, flowy jacket. So here we go again. This one has like a square neckline. This one opens more like a robe, drop shoulder, wide sleeve, patch pocket. It does have a wide leg to the pant. Here is the outfit without the jacket. I see a bust start here that might be it facing for the neckline. Here's the back of the jacket and the pants, and the back of the top. Come on, okay, we're gonna skip that one and just look at the top. The top does have bust starts. The neckline is somewhat interesting, but you can do that yourself to another little tank top pattern. Here's the jacket, and then here's the elastic waist pant, and here is the hole on below. Let's try this one again. There we go. Yeah, nothing going on there. Okay, so here are, oh no. They copied and pasted the wrong picture. This is the back would not have darted in it.  At least put pockets in this one to make it a little bit more different, I guess. And then shally crepe linen, rayon, and soft cotton types for the fabric suggestions. And then thread and some elastic for the pants. You don't need any special notions for the top or the jackets. And then that this top is one in three quarters. I do not understand where they are getting these estimates from. There's no way that's right. How is this one in three quarters of a yard? I can make a dress out of one in three quarters of a yard. That makes no sense. Okay, jacket is two and three eighths, pants are two and three eighths. Finished bust, 36 and a half to 52 and a half, and the pants go from 37 to 54 inches. You think the, I guess the top and jacket have the same finished bust? That can't be right either. Okay. All right, now we've got a little bit different of a silhouette, slightly. We've got a knit cardigan top and pants. So it's a little knit capsule wardrobe, lifestyle wardrobe pattern. Very classic knit cardigan, set in sleeve, buttons down the front, some little tank top or t-shirt possibly underneath that has a bit of a higher neckline and then your pant is like a pull-on drawstring, not really wide leg, more like a straight leg situation. Here's the back of the pants. Look like they fit really well. Back of the cardigan. Here is the line, not the line drawing, but the illustration of the cardigan. That's what a cardigan looks like. Here's your little knit tank top and then here's your drawstring pan that actually has a really nice slash pocket. These pants actually are quite nice. You've got the little grommet detail, the drawstring and the elastic and then the nice straight leg. I would consider this pattern for sure. Just because I don't have like any really good cardigan patterns, I definitely don't have any good like jogger pant patterns. The tank top is whatever, but yeah. The pants are good. All of you size for stretch knits, such as active wear knits, bamboo, ITY, jersey, modal, rib knit, yeah. Okay, I don't know that I would make all of the patterns in all of these fabrics, but regardless, there's some really great knit fabrics you can buy for home sewing nowadays. For home sewing nowadays, so. Okay, six buttons, elastic, cording eyelets and then optional beads for the cording too. This top takes one yard of fabric. That makes perfect sense to me. It's almost like they use the measurement for the 45 inch fabric for the 60 inch or something. I don't know. The cardigan is like one and a half yards. There's some interfacing. I think probably going up the button band and then the pants are two and three eighths of a yard. The top for the bust measurement for the top is 32 and a half to 47. Cardigan is a little bit looser. So that goes up to 48 and a half. And then the pants hip also goes up to 48 and a half. I don't know about that. I think it probably goes up higher than that. This is probably an error, another copy paste error. All right. Now we have, gosh, there's quite a few patterns. Cute, okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Where are we here? Really cute, Mrs. Knit Top with Scoop, Neck and Slee Variations. So this is another one of those Mrs. and Women's in one. 2XS up to 2XL. It's knit, so again, a little bit forgiving, but look how cute these options are. So everybody has the same bodice, right? Plain bodice, knit, band, neck line finishing. Then you have this cute little gathered shoulder, like bubble sleeve. Here it is from the back. You have this sleeve, plain, simple sleeve. This is the one that she's wearing. And then you also get this sleeve here, which is definitely different. I'm not entirely sure how. Plain sleeve, gathered sleeve, and then I don't know how they're able to do this. I don't know, are those like little pin tucks in there? Not pin tucks, but what's it called? What you do to a bustle? I wasn't gonna say what you do to a wedding gown. I don't like bustles in there or something, something special is happening in there for sure. Here is the envelope. I kind of wish they didn't just throw this version away with a plain sleeve, but let me, okay, fine. And then of course you can do it sleeveless. Of course you can lengthen this. You can add a frill or a ruffle. You can really, okay, fine. You can hack this to do lots of different options. All right. Knits only bamboo, cotton knit blends, interlock, chicard, jersey, and modal. I wish that they showed the, I'm not gonna show the ruler on here, but at least gave us some idea of the knit percentage, the stretch percentage, because if I bought this online and then wanted to go shopping right away, I couldn't. I wouldn't know what to get, but no notions. See, those other patterns, something was up with the yardage estimates for those tops because this is one and a quarter yards and this one has a full on sleeve. So either way, finished measurements for the bust are 30 to 51 and for the hip, it's 28 to 49. Actually not a ton of, there's not a ton of ease in the hip. I mean, they have hers showing that it's not completely fitted, but 49 inch finished for the hip is like just barely a little bit larger than me. Now we have this top, it is top in two lengths. Okay, so we've got a, she looks so familiar. What actress or singer does she look like? I can't maybe do a leap, but I don't know, I can't really pinpoint it. Either way, we've got a rounded neckline with a little notch, drop shoulder into this sleeve with these really pretty pleats. I think this would be a lot more effective if this were narrower opening. And I just don't know what to do about these like baby drop shoulders. Like either drop it like it's hot or don't drop it at all. It's like, when it's in the middle, it just doesn't know. It's hard to tell if it's intentional, you know? But this is a two-nick length. It's got the curved little shirt tail hem. Here's the back, leaving out the yoke. So some, it winks in a nod to like a button down, but not. And then here it is in the shorter length with a little slits on the side. You've got this little sleeve. This is really cute version that would probably be a great stash buster. And then you've got this one with a little bit longer of a sleeve. So there are your three options. Here are the line drawings. This makes sense. Well, it's the same thing. Like maybe it's her shoulder is a little bit, maybe she just has a wide shoulder, right? And if it were a more standard shoulder, it would drop off a little bit more. Maybe that's what's going on. But this looks like it's barely, barely a drop shoulder. Whereas these line drawings make it look like it comes down a good inch or so. So something to check if you're gonna make this pattern. Whoops. Okay. Fabrics are lightweight and drapey, I'm assuming. Shally, chambray, cotton types, gauze, linen types and soft shirtings. All you need is some interfacing. The top is for A with the sleeves and the longer length is one and three quarter yards. Top for B. Is it A? Do they all have the same length? A lot of it said two lengths. Is C shorter? It's too hard to tell whenever they do two rows like this. But either way, B is one and three quarters of a yard as well and C is one and a half yards. Finish garment measurements for the bust, 39 and a half to 55. Pretty roomy there though, you can see. Okay. Next, we have a knit top and two links. This one's fun. So you've got your basic knit top, almost the same bodice as the other one, except at the high hip you've got this little seam with a slit and this asymmetrical one patch pocket. That's just cute. I like this. You've got your sleeve with a cuff. The sleeve opening is a little bit big still but not nearly as egregious as some of the other ones we've seen. Here is like a full view. It's cool and different, right? I can see it out of like a mid-weight jersey or a lightweight Ponty and you can even see here. I can't zoom in anymore but there is a little slit here on the sleeve cuff. So that's cute detail that kind of mimics what's happening here. Oh, there's also princess seams. So you have a decent amount of like shaping and fitting going on. This is the same but without the sleeve cuff and this is the same with a short sleeve and then you just substitute the little fancy band for a plain one. Here is everyone together. This is cool, right? I like this. I like this. Not a lot going in the back. Not a lot going on in the back. Yeah, I think you would just need to double check where this hits. Make sure that it is truly at your high hip or short waisted, long waisted, whatever it is. Make sure this is hitting at your high hip and I think you have a cute little top. Okay, so they are recommending cotton interlock, cotton linen blends. Cotton linen blends, that's not a knit. Jersey and Ponty. Yeah, I would stay away from like the too much lightweight drapey, like rayon jerseys for this one too. You need some structure for this little detail. Okay, one and three quarters of a yard for A, one and five eighths for B, and one and a half for C. Finish bust measurement, pretty fitted in the bust, 37 to 51 and a half inches there. Cute. Now we have vintage jeans, uh-oh, with front buttons or a zipper. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. Giving all of the indies a run for their money. Look how good these look. Okay, so traditional jean details with the waistband and the belt carriers and the fly front with the top stitching. You've got your little curved pocket ankle length hem. Here's the back with the back pocket. You've got the yoke and then still with all of the top stitching. Five pocket, there's a little coin pocket there. And then I think this is gonna be the zip front, yep. The zip front option there. So yeah, there's only two versions. There's the one she's wearing, which is the same as this. And then there's the zipper front. Everything else about them is the same.  Here's the line drawing.  Let's see what they recommend for fabric.  Cotton blends, linen blends, stretch denim. They don't say how much stretch though, or what weight, but they also have stretch woven, which would be like a cotton satin, stretch satin, something like that. And then they have twill, which doesn't have any stretching at all, huh. Okay, thread, denim needles, jeans buttons, or a zipper. Up to two and a quarter of a yard of your fashion and fabric, you need some cotton lining for the pockets and some interfacing. The finished hips go from 35 and a half up to 53. It's definitely worth me maybe checking it out because it is the women's block, because it is the women's sizing. I wonder if I would have better luck with this than I have with some of the straight sizing from the indies, I don't know. I don't know, I'm nervous about the fabric requirements. Maybe I could peek into the envelope and see if they give any deeper insight into fabric requirements, but they look great on her. If I could make jeans that look like this, I would be like over the moon, over the moon. Yeah, 10 to 18 in one and then 20 to 28 in the other envelope. So cool jeans, wow, good for them. Okay, now we've got this skirt. Okay, so hear me out. I know these skirts feel a little dated, but these are everywhere.  They're definitely happening. So they are on trend with this. I like them best in super lightweight, drapey fabrics, but you can go a little bit heavier weight. Looks like they might've chosen a sear sucker maybe. And I can't tell if that's a separate waistband or not. I think it is, yeah, because then there's some pleats that come out of here and then you've got your button band. And pockets, like little slash pockets with a nice detail. You've got the pleats in the back and a center back seam. Here it is, maybe a longer length. Then you've also got these top stitching details, which are really nice too. Yep, yep. Okay, so three links that we've got. She's wearing A, the longest one. I wouldn't go shorter than B.  Yeah, they're all the same, just three different lengths. Let's see what they recommend for fabric. Shambre, cotton denim, poplin, rayon, and sear sucker. So they're going a little bit heavier weight with the fabric recommendations, but like I said, you can go lightweight. You can do the rayons. You can do like the real drapey fabrics, the silky fabrics, all of that kind of stuff. Thread, and then some buttons, fusible interfacing, two and three eighths for the longer version, and only one and three eighths for the shorter one. And then your hip measurement, which I wish they would give in the waist instead of the hip here, because the hip is so roomy, but 38 and a half up to 55 on this. Okay, cute little button front skirt. We're gonna skip the scrubs. I don't know how scrubs are supposed to fit or look. We've got some fashion face covers. Oh, this is interesting. This is right off the runways. A lot of designers were like rethinking the mask and how to make it like also cute. So here's one with the scarf. This one just kind of like is like a gator kind of. Here's one with like a handkerchief scarf. So, okay. Did they have to put the Middle Eastern looking girl though? I mean, did they have to be so literal with that? Whatever. Then we've got unisex tops. This is, like it reminds me of like Columbia, like the brand Columbia, like those kind of like outdoorsy types of stuff. I don't know, gosh. You can tell I spent a lot of time outdoors. But it has like the big patch pocket, like the utility. You know, it's got this pocket with the zipper here, half zip. They put her in and him in some kind of neck piece. Oh, I think that's like a scarf slash face mask. But then it's got these really cute sleeves too. And then you have the drawstring that pulls this in. Let's see. Oh, here she has a little water bottle, okay.  So, because you're walking past people. I don't know. Here's the back. I don't, is this her back too? Oh gosh, look, you can put a whole water bottle in the back. That's amazing. I wonder if Honey would fit in the back. And then hers has the same. She just zipped it closed. It's kind of cool, very practical, you know? It's definitely something that you might need like one of in your wardrobe. You never know. Kind of like the windbreaker that I made, but without a hood, which has its own place. Here's his in the back a little bit longer. And then you've got this version. It's more like a shirt that doesn't have the drawstring on the bottom. Or I guess is that his version? I don't know. Then this one, they put in a snake print. That's an interesting choice to be out in the outdoors and be mistaken for a snake. Am I right? The pants are also included, which I didn't realize. And I actually liked these pants a lot more than the ones that came with the so-along windbreaker that I did. So these are a maybe. Let me go back and look at her pants. Are these, oh, these are sweatpants.  Interesting. And then you also get the pattern for the little neck scarf thing. Which I think is like just a very small infinity scarf. Okay. And then he's got on A, C, D, A, C, and D. Okay. So this longer version without the elastic is what they're calling the men's version. But obviously a woman can do that too. I don't know about a dude wearing a drawstring elastic at the waist, but to each his own. So, but they are like pinning this one, the women's version. And then man and a woman both wear these sweatpants and the same neck tie. This is interesting. This is a little bit, I don't know. This is a little bit like, I guess, unique. Which is great. I don't see a lot of patterns calling to this demographic, this lifestyle. So that's pretty cool. I like that. Sizes are alphanumeric, extra small to medium, and then large to two X. Where was the this? This is what I'm looking for. Okay, so for the, okay, so, okay. Fabrics, they're saying, cotton type sweatshirtings, nylons, ripstop, poplin, denim, or twill. So they're saying you can do the pants and the jacket in the same, but they did them in different. So, I don't know about that. Then the neck piece, they use knits for sure on. And then you need a whole bunch of notions. Just two and a quarter, two and a half yards for the jacket, three yards for the pants, and then the neck piece, the neck piece takes more than a yard of fabric.  Something's not right here with that. I'm calling BS on that. Finished garment measurements. So for the jacket, man or woman, 39 and a half to 59 and a half, and then the hip for the pants, 35 and a half to 55 and a half. I guess if you're gonna make it, I mean, sweatshirting isn't super stretchy, so I can see why they included that in there, maybe.  I gotta find out where I would wear it first, though. All right, we're skipping the men's shirt, skipping the children's dresses. I think this is gonna take us to the end. Yep, that's probably it, you guys. That's simplicity spring. Look at these cute bags. You can put this one on your walker. This one has a fun little vintage detail. Definitely worth coming over here and checking out some of these other patterns that we just, I just don't review for the first impression Friday because I mean, what am I gonna say about appliance covers? You know what I'm saying? Super cute, but like, I don't really know how to review those. Same thing with like men's and children's and all that. It's cute. All I would say over and over again is oh, how cute. Oh, how cute. Not much, not much like critical thinking going on there. But anyways, that is gonna do it, you guys. I think that my kind of, my wrap up here is that simplicity is still sticking with their guns with the simple, simple stuff. Outside of a couple of exceptions, they're still doing the solid fabrics. They're still doing very few style lines. There are few outliers here, but for the most part, all the silhouettes are pretty much the same. Which may be a problem to you, but it also maybe works for you. I mean, if that's a silhouette that you like, obviously you're gonna like a lot of these patterns. There are some hidden gems in here. I love this, love this. I love the, there was a, oh, the shirt dress is okay. This is very on trend. I like the neckline of that one a lot. So there's some pieces I can pick it out. The jeans are gonna be with me for a minute. I'm gonna have to think about that. And I've got to find a skirt like this. I don't know if it's gonna be this one or something similar, but having that kind of skirt got to be in addition to my wardrobe this year. Oh, and maybe this too. I don't know, maybe I actually like more of it than I realized. So let me know what you think. Let me know what you'll be adding to your cart, what you'll be paying up at the next big Joann sale. It looks like those are regular and frequent all over again. So I would love to know what you guys think. Leave a comment, let me know. Otherwise I will see you guys very soon. Bye.