Guest(s): Wayne Crews

By some estimates, the cost of government regulation in the U.S. exceeds $2 trillion. An amazing number. And while we’re paying a fortune for existing regulations, major new ones are coming out at the rate of 3,000 per year, so fast that the White House can only do a cost-benefit analysis on less than one half of one percent of them.

Guest(s): Stefan Halper, James Stark

China is a mass of contradictions. Intellectual property thief. America’s largest trading partner. Home to 476 billionaires. Choked with air and water pollution. A rapidly aging population. And leadership eager to project its national will.

Guest(s): Steve Moore

Ronald Reagan was a winner who believed in the boundless potential of America. Sound familiar? It’s one of the reasons Donald Trump is succeeding despite the relentless criticism. He “has a finger on the pulse of millions and millions and millions of Americans.” He beat 17 other candidates to get elected and then outsmarted Congress and his own advisers to get a much better tax bill. Learn how Trump gets what he wants on “The Bill Walton Show” with guest Steve Moore.

Guest(s): Oren Cass

I believe that growth can benefit all Americans, yet while our GDP has tripled in size from 1975 to 2015, average wages have barely risen. The response from both political parties has been to double down on policies that have failed to address this reality Maybe they’re missing something crucial in their economic calculations. A focus on work. Author and scholar Oren Cass explains on my new podcast. www.cgtv.us

People look to the government to prevent future financial crises and too many trust that politicians and economic experts can create policies to protect us and our 401(k) plans. We shouldn’t rely on them. These experts are smart, mostly well-intentioned people but they can’t prevent the next crisis. No one can. Why is that? And why is a future crisis inevitable? I discuss these and many other questions with “Finance and Philosophy” author Alex Pollock.

Guest(s): Peter Wallison

Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, progressives have kept claiming that government bureaucrats know better than the rest of us. But putting more power into the hands of administrative agencies instead of our elected representatives leads government by the people to the road to extinction. American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison and I explain why this is such a huge problem on my new podcast.

Guest(s): Klon Kitchen, Dean Cheng

Over the past forty years, since Deng Xiaoping began his policy of “Reform and Opening,” the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has evolved from a less developed country to the second largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world. Over the past 25 years, it has also steadily transformed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a force that is capable of influencing regional, and increasingly global, security environments.

Guest(s): Stella Morabito

“Any rational observer of the Democrats’ non-stop character assassination machine can see that something is seriously sick in our republic. Instead of allowing Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were permitted to use trumped-up, hip-pocketed charges to stage a show trial more in tune with a totalitarian system.” Stella Morabito – The Federalist

Guest(s): John Tamny, Ralph Benko

Lower taxes and less regulation are great for business, but some are thriving in high-tax states like New York and California. On my new podcast, Ralph Benko explains the “Tamny Axiom”. Hint: there’s something more valuable in those states than low taxes.

Guest(s): David Nammo, Ralph Benko

Why do 53 percent of millennials prefer socialism to capitalism? Probably because they don’t know what socialism is and neither does Bernie Sanders and others who embrace it. But how bad can it get? Democrats might be moving further to the left but it’s absurd to compare them to Marxists, right? My podcast guest, Ralph Benko, says you might be surprised at how similar their beliefs really are.

Guest(s): Haven Pell

The next time you feel the urge to join a major protest to condemn the elite, powerful forces who are supposedly making your lives worse, don’t bother. The event is most likely organized by elite, powerful forces who are getting rich off your activism while you don’t make a dime or a dime’s worth of difference.

Guest(s): Jim Agresti

The next time you feel the urge to join a major protest to condemn the elite, powerful forces who are supposedly making your lives worse, don’t bother. The event is most likely organized by elite, powerful forces who are getting rich off your activism while you don’t make a dime or a dime’s worth of difference.

Guest(s): Bryan Caplan

It’s long seemed obvious that if we want to truly fix education, actually make it work for the 21st century, we need to kill a stockyard full of our sacred cows. And we had just the man for the job on The Bill Walton Show this week. Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University and author of “The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is Waste of Time and Money,” described the findings in his book and provided some stark recommendations based on them. First, he said, we need to understand what we’re doing in school. There is the romantic version, he said – you go, learn skills employers are interested in, then get jobs with those employers performing those skills. More likely is what he calls the “signaling school of education.” You mostly go to school to get certification, “a bunch of seals of approval saying, ‘Grade A worker’ or ‘Grade B worker.’” But, regardless of the grade, you need a seal.

Guest(s): Herman Pirchner

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Guest(s): Bob Poole

Famed economist Milton Friedman called America’s highway system a “socialist enterprise” and he was right. America’s roads are in desperate need of repair and the federal government is clearly incapable of maintaining them efficiently. Drivers pay tens of billions of dollars in gasoline taxes every year and our infrastructure problems only seem to get worse.

Guest(s): Bob Poole

Did you know when you text someone that you’ve landed at the airport, you’re using far more advanced technology than your plane’s air traffic controller?

Guest(s): Jeanne Allen, Sarah Walton

America’s K-12 education system and institutions were designed in a different era for a different society, and we are at grave risk today from this obsolete system, which fails to prepare all children to succeed as adults. In fact, the system we have now was never designed or intended to reach all children.

Guest(s): Pat Mulloy, Stefan Halper

Just this year, the Chinese Communist Party held an election in the Great Hall of the People where Xi Jinping was voted “President for Life.” The vote was 2,958 for and six against. With this vote they proclaimed that China is now realizing its dream of national rejuvenation, and it’s grand strategy to restore its Empire.

Guest(s): Anne Rathbone Bradley

My guest, Dr. Anne Rathbone Bradley, the free market economist and moral philosopher, wants to sit down with Bernie Sanders over a cup of coffee to talk about how to achieve the goals he proclaims. There’s a right way and a wrong way, and he’s not going to get there the way he’s going.

Guest(s): Pat Mulloy, Stefan Halper

You’re looking at a country which is the most radical actor on the global stage since the French Revolution.

Guest(s): Arnold Kling, Yuval Levin

Every day, we’re confronted by headlines that reveal the ever-widening chasm between left and right in America. What’s driving this hyper-polarization? And are there any solutions? Thanks to a stimulating conversation with National Affairs Editor Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and independent scholar and economist Arnold Kling, I’m learning that there are some pretty fundamental cultural trends that we need to understand if we want to get at the roots of our frustrations. In part, they lie in what Yuval calls the “politics of nostalgia.” For Arnold, the author of The Three Languages of Politics, our speech is exacerbating America’s political divide.

Guest(s): Riley Walters, Herman Pirchner

How would you react if the government put facial recognition cameras everywhere and kept tabs on your every move – right down to to how many squares of toilet paper you are using? It’s happening in China, as the communist government there clamps down on freedom and ramps up its economic and territorial ambitions in its quest to become the dominant player on the world stage.

Guest(s): John Tamny, Terry Miller

This will go down in history as the episode of the Bill Walton Show where John Tamny referred to views I presented as utter nonsense and I called his naïve.

Guest(s): Leigh Wilson Smiley

It was the 21st episode of The Bill Walton Show, but there were a lot of firsts. For the first time, we warmed up for a show. It was not the cacophony of listening to an orchestra prepare to perform, although the difference between the sounds made during the warmup and the actual performance were almost as dramatic. Instead, there was deep breathing, sighs big enough to be felt in every bone in the body, and burbling. Yes, burbling.

Guest(s): Peter Wallison

The American Enterprise Institute Fellow discusses the growth, and the threat of, the Administrative State.