You're listening to me for free right now, and that's awesome because more and more things aren't free right now.

I mean, think about all the things you're paying for daily, monthly yearly.

Well, here's something that won't add to that list, the free iHeartRadio app, podcasts, streaming music, digital radio.

All free, it's the future of audio and unlike almost everything else in your life right now,

except maybe air, it doesn't cost a dollar.

So take advantage of this, listen to everything you love on the iHeartRadio app for free.

iHeartRadio

This is the Tom Harbin program.

On the line with us is Professor Richard Wolfe, the economist, co-founder of Democracy at Work.info,

the author of numerous books. Most recently, The Sickness is the system when capitalism fails to

save us from pandemics or itself. Democracy.work.info, Prof. Wolfe on Twitter, Democracy at WRK on Twitter as well.

Professor Wolfe, welcome back to the program.

Thank you.

Thank you. Everything I know about the gold standard is this or at least what I think I know about the

gold standard. There's all these, you know, I have to read right-wing message boards as part of my

job and and there's like all this talk about, oh, inflation, oh my god, this wouldn't have happened

if we were still on the gold standard. We need to go back to the gold standard, quick, quick, quick.

My understanding is that with the gold standard, the amount of money that you can

issue is equal to the amount of gold you have and if your economy grows, you have to get more

gold to keep your dollar from increasing in value, deflating essentially. Actually in the 70s,

that became unviable. Am I understanding that correctly? Can you explain to us what the gold

standard is, how it worked, and why we got rid of it? Sure. First of all, though, a comment on

...