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Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Friday November 19th 2021.

I'm John Pothore. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me is always executive editor a greenwald hi a hi John senior writer Christine Rosalind

Christine hi John associate editor Noah Rothman hi Noah hi John and joining us today our old friend head of the bonson group author of the DC today.com and dividend cafe.com newsletters and the author of the new book.

There's no free lunch which we'll be getting to in a minute David bonson hi David. Well hello John and hello everyone thank you for having me.

Pleasure to have you your your your up early on the west coast and and then probably live in live in the life I'm like some of us although even I were.

I'm honored to have attended the book party for there's no free lunch here in New York.

Last week and I had several delicious diacokes and a a seem to be enjoying the join the martinis.

It was a very lively and fun event and more cyber it a than a person who was written a daily a work that the intends to be something of a daily devotional dedicated to free enterprise one would have thought that this would have been a more a sober more sober event but many people were enjoying the great I would say at your party.

Well I can assure you that the author of the book was not enjoying the great and so I suppose if there's no free lunch to me as well I've been free booze for everybody else but there was a bill associated with the bar tab.

I'm very judged about my martinis now by the way your martinis you were you were I will I will say that it it was a really startling thing to be in a room of people again.

With people in their cups like one of the things one hasn't seen in in the last couple of years is kind of like the elementary experience of being at a party where some people are like I mean I just I love you I just love you so much you know like that like it was one of those people of obviously have just as there is pent up demand chasing too few goods there is pent up demand for having social experiences that are lubricated.

Are lubricated by by fermentation so anyway thank you.

I strongly suspect that the people who have felt that pent up demand we're finding other ways to meet their supply need throughout the pandemic.

So we heard and of course the the relaxation on the ability to order such goods by mail i'm sure contributed heartily to their to their enjoyment anyway to move on to more pressing matters or more immediate matters I guess as we are speaking.

The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on the build back better bill which appears now we now have settled on a price tag in the media of around two trillion dollars I want to repeat that number two trillion dollars because.

A couple of weeks ago excuse me a couple of weeks ago somehow it had mystically become 1.75 trillion dollars and now apparently it's two trillion dollars.

Everybody will remember I hope that since March senator Joe mansion was of course not voting on this version of the bill because this is only the house said he's not willing to go above above 1.5 trillion.

The house bill is two trillion.

So not quite clear what they're doing because they're apparently passing a bill that will die in the senate which is I guess what a lot of us expect anyway.

But it's just interesting politics because there's going to be this vote and and it's actually maybe fundamentally going to be meaningless except laying the groundwork for the republican campaign against the democrats in 2022 which is very convenient they've been handed a very convenient set of of of policy issues that they can attack democrats on for their fecklessness and and.

So we're going to be a good example of that.

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