This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution. I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is Professor Richard Epstein. Richards the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at

NYU and he's a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Richard, as we close

out 2021, I thought we could get your scorecard on President Biden's first year in office.

As you note in your column this week, the President's approval ratings, which started in the

mid-50s, are now in the low 40s after just one year.

There's a lot of topics to get through.

I wanted to start with the President's record on the economy and federal spending.

I think you'll recall at the beginning of this year, we started with the, well he started

with the American rescue

plan in March so 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus spending bill increased the

child tax credit extended unemployment assurance new other things and now we're

still debating the build back better bill which has not been passed yet and keeps getting a

degrade a little bit. How would you grade him on his fiscal policy?

Well it's either a D or an F as far as I'm concerned but is There are two ways that you could try to stimulate any economy.

The first of those ways is to put in a series of new spending programs coupled with the system

of tax programs, hoping that the spending gains will more than exceed the losses associated with the tax.

But none of this stuff is actually a zero-sum transfer.

The moment you raise taxes you create an excess burden which reduces output on the production

side.

Then when you spend the money, you're spending it by the federal government,

and there's no guarantee whatsoever that they're going to spend it in a sensible way because they don't monitor the way in which the people who receive it get it.

...