April 5, 2023

The Dollar’s Demise? – with EJ Antoni & Peter St Onge – [Ep.163]

The Dollar’s Demise? – with EJ Antoni & Peter St Onge – [Ep.163]

Like most Americans, you may have taken our previously strong dollar for granted. The dominance of the US dollar on the world stage is something that seemed to be permanent. The dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for the last 80 years, but...

Like most Americans, you may have taken our previously strong dollar for granted. The dominance of the US dollar on the world stage is something that seemed to be permanent. The dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for the last 80 years, but things are happening now that threaten the position of dominance. What does it mean to you or to your business? Listen as Linda interviews well-known economists, EJ Antoni and Peter St Onge, to explore the demise of the dollar and the effects on our US economy and on your life.

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Transcript

Linda J. Hansen:  Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101- Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics Online course, the book, the course and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.Com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement and retention, and an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity 101.Com.

Thank you for joining with me today. I recently read an interesting column entitled this Could Be the Final Nail in the Dollar's Coffin written by E. J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge and published by The Daily Caller. Like most Americans, I have often taken our previously strong dollar for granted. The dominance of the US. Dollar on the world stage is something that seemed to be permanent. It's just the way things would always be, right? The dollar has been the world's reserve currency for the last 80 years. But what is happening now that is threatening that position of dominance? And what does it mean to you as an individual or to your business? The authors of that article are with me today to help us all understand the risks associated with a declining dollar. I often have repeat guests, but this is the first time I have featured two guests in the same episode. If you are a regular listener, you're familiar with my first guest, E. J. Antoni, who was most recently featured in Episode 161 entitled Free Money is Never Free Understanding the Banking Crisis. But once I read the article mentioned, I knew I had to contact EJ Right away to do another interview because the information is so important for everyone in America to understand. I also invited his co-author, Peter St. Onge, and was thrilled when he said yes as well.

EJ. Antoni and Peter St. Onge are both research fellows at the Heritage Foundation specializing in Economic and Monetary Policy. For the sake of time in this interview, I will not expand on their respective biographies, but I encourage you to visit Heritage.org to read their full BIOS and examples of their work. Both gentlemen have extensive backgrounds, a wide array of experiences and are highly respected as authors and commentators on economic policy. It's an honor to have them both with me today EJ and Peter. Thank you. Thank you for making time for this interview and for your willingness to share with the listeners the important information regarding our US dollar and the economy overall.

Peter St. Onge: Thanks for having us.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it's a pleasure and I'm just really grateful that you both could join. What a great article you wrote. As far as questions, I think I'll start with you, EJ. In a recent episode, we discussed the banking crisis, as I mentioned, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the chaos that followed. Now we face another crisis that, like the banking crisis, did not just appear unexpectedly, but has slowly been bubbling into what has boiled over into a flood of problems for the American economy. Could you share with the listeners the basic issues surrounding the decline of the dollar and then Peter can also expand on it after you've commented?

E.J Antoni: Certainly, I think the problems with the dollar have been both foreign and domestic. We'll start with the domestic. You're talking about a currency that just lost 15% of its value since Biden took office in such a short amount of time. It's not unheard of, but it's certainly devastating to a currency's reputation. But now you also have pressures from overseas as well, where a lot of countries no longer want to be bothered with the dollar, either because it's not a very stable store of value or because of political considerations. Not, the least of which is how the United States has essentially been trying to wield the dollar like a weapon instead of allowing it to be what it is supposed to be, which is a political measuring stick. Right. Currencies are a way that you measure how much something is worth and as soon as you start to politicize that, you're going to get yourself into trouble because now all of a sudden this is no longer a yardstick, it's becoming something else. And that's really diminishing the dollar's value in the eyes of a lot of countries around the world. And I think people need to understand that there are literally trillions upon trillions of dollars overseas that are used by countries, maybe by a central bank, as a store of value or for international trade. And what's happening is that as those dollars are no longer used for those purposes, the only thing left for them to do is to buy goods and services here in the United States, which means they are all going to come home and they're all going to compete with the dollars you and I have, that is catastrophic.

Linda J. Hansen: Amazing. Peter, what do you have to add to that?

Peter St. Onge: I think EJ is absolutely right. This administration has been very reckless at sort of a pattern they've been taking, where they take important long standing things and they break them to see what happens. And in this case, partly with inflation, the inability of the Biden administration to control spending that has reached the highest levels in 50 years, and they chose that moment to threaten the validity of the US Dollar as an overseas asset. So these sanctions on Russia crossed a number of lines that had never been crossed before. When they seized Russia's dollars owned by Russia's Sovereign Central Bank. There had always been sort of a gentleman's understanding that that kind of thing was off limits because it was fundamentally in America's interest that other countries, friend or foe, depend on the dollar. They have now broken that and so countries all over the world, including especially China, are watching that very closely and wondering if they have to start worrying about the assets that they've been holding in dollars. Of course, countries all over the world, for going on 80 years have been holding the bulk of their foreign reserves in US Dollars, and quite a few of them appear to be re-evaluating that now.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it really has been a change and even to the non-economic expert onlooker, you can see that something drastic has changed in our American economy, of course, but also as I've watched news reports of these different countries doing business with other forms of currency, and we see the alignment of these foreign nations, and this is just tragic for the American economy. Could one of you explain why these foreign currencies are so detrimental when these governments decide to trade with them? Because I think the average person and probably a lot of my listeners don't really understand why this is so detrimental to our economy.

Peter St. Onge: Right. As you say, this is really driving countries into the arms of countries such as China and Russia who do not have our best interests at heart. Both of those countries have been trying for a very long time to exclude the US from the international system. We had news just yesterday that the Saudis are joining a Chinese led bloc that in many ways is meant to rival NATO and China is they're being very aggressive. They use their foreign aid in Latin America or Asia or Africa to try to sort of bribe countries into their orbit and the problem here is that traditionally we could counter that by saying China is not really a good faith actor. But at this point, the administration is really driving a lot of these countries into that relationship out of our orbit. Once China gets a hold of a lot of those countries, their pattern, if you look at it with Taiwan, for example, has been to slam the door behind them and do everything they can to shut us out.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly and China is really working hard to become the dominant nation, both militarily and economically. EJ, I see you nodding, what do you have to add about that?

E.J Antoni: I think Peter is absolutely right. He's really hitting the nail on the head how this is, again, once you make the dollar a political instrument, there are now political considerations and what China is doing is essentially, again, as Peter said, is wielding its political influence to now have currency influence. And that's just really again going to have absolutely disastrous consequences. I mean, these are things that we actually didn't even have to deal with in the Cold War right back when we just did to Russia what we didn't even do to the USSR and I think that speaks volumes. When we were involved around the world, literally on virtually every single continent, we were involved in proxy wars with the Soviets. But we never took the kind of steps that we've taken against Russia. We never did that to the Soviet Union and now, on top of that, a lot of hay is made about Russia. Frankly, they're not nearly the kind of threat that China is. I mean, last time I checked, Russia's GDP is smaller than Italy's. So they're the threat, China is the threat, militarily, economically, politically and now in terms of currency, and as we have become so hyper focused, I think, on Russia and on Putin, we've forgotten about China. We've forgotten about Xi Jinping, and he is, as former President Trump said, going to eat our lunch.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, I often tell people that when you see a big story in the news, look behind it to see what's the other story that they don't really want you to pay attention to. So we can see the Ukrainian war between Russia and Ukraine. We can see news of indictments and shootings and all kinds of things happening that become the media favorites of the week, the talking points for the week, the things they want you to be fearful of or focusing on, but they don't really let you know what's happening behind the scenes. And as all of these things are going on and they're the shiny squirrels in the trees, not to say that they're not important, not to say that they're not important. But when we're looking at the decline of the US dollar, we're looking at a rising China that is becoming so strong militarily and economically, and we are just setting ourselves up for disaster, and what can be done to prevent this and what can average citizens do to help stop this?

Peter St. Onge: Yeah, at this point, it's really in the political realm. The administration has to get more serious about these things. EJ was mentioning that the challenge here is China, It is not Russia, Russia. There's sort of a line about Russia, that it's Mexico with nukes, and that's completely accurate. The wealth level of Russia, the scale, the ability to project power, they are grinding down in the Ukraine, which is one of the poorest countries, one of the most mismanaged countries in the world, and they're not managing to wrap that up. They are not a serious threat, they are a shambolic, and they’re halfway falling apart. On the other hand, China, China is a serious threat. And by getting distracted, we are completely falling into a trap, I think, here. And if we look across the board so with Saudis shifting over and sort of reorienting towards the Chinese orbit. The last time that Biden was over there hanging out with the Saudis, he was talking about treating them like a pariah state. This is one of the traditional, closest allies of the United States, is one of the most important. Obviously, given the economic ties and the influence on the oil market, you should not be talking like that and it was almost just a random hey, off the cuff, It's really irresponsible. And this is absolutely playing into the hands of a China that is run by extremely competent, extremely disciplined regime that is indeed taking every single opportunity. When Biden goofs up, the Chinese will rush right in. He needs to get much more serious about how he conducts our relationship with the rest of the world.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely and you said when he goofs up, I've watched as the world stage has changed so drastically in the last three to four years, especially since COVID and our elections and our dominance in the world has declined so greatly. Not only our economic dominance, but even just our presence, our sense of strength and leadership has declined and when we have those types of things happening, it also just opens the door for all these other things to come in, because other leaders know we're weak. And so those that have been just waiting to pounce like an animal after its prey, they are just waiting for us to open the door. And there's been so many things over the past several years that have totally opened the door to the weakness in America. EJ, do you have something to add about that?

E.J Antoni: Yeah, I think the latest mistake that we just saw by the Biden administration was him reneging on his promise to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Right. I mean, the Saudis were under the impression that the administration was going to begin buying oil because oil prices have fallen so much that the administration would begin buying oil to refill the reserve. And that would therefore help put upward pressure back on prices, which obviously the Saudis want, since that's their main and really only export. And the Biden administration said, oh, no, just kidding, actually, we're not going to refill it. In fact, we're going to actually keep draining it a little bit longer and as a consequence of that, the Saudis said, well, fine, if you're not going to give us any kind of help in terms of putting upward pressure on prices, then we're going to do it ourselves. And so now we have OPEC production cuts on top of that, which, again, is going to drive up the price of oil, which is going to help Putin's war, quite frankly, because he also relies on money from oil and natural gas exports. So we are not helping ourselves by any means. We are helping our enemies. And they tried, for example, various nations who are all allied against Russia in the name of the Ukraine. They have essentially said, look, we're not going to pay more than I think its $60 a barrel for Russian oil. Well, Japan just turned around and had to buy oil from Russia for more than $60 because that was the market rate. And you know what? You don't get to tell somebody else what they're going to sell their product for and if you don't want to buy it, then good luck finding it somewhere else.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. And the Biden administration just destroyed our energy dominance, our energy independence, and our energy dominance and you mentioned the strategic petroleum reserves. That's really our national security as well. I mean, when we have a strong energy policy, we're dominant in the energy world. We are strong militarily, stronger economically, it’s a matter of national security and with the declining dollar now, too, there are so many threats to America. Do you have something to add about the energy issue, Peter?

Peter St. Onge: Definitely. If we look back at the trend that was going on under Trump, under what? Just over two years of Biden, it looks like we've lost about one third of our domestic oil production compared to that trend under Trump, the administration has done everything possible. They've threatened oil company executives with being arrested for their climate crimes. If you were literally trying to wipe out our domestic base, you would do everything they did. They've shut down pipelines. Canada has a ton of oil stuck in Alberta because they have their own greens who stop them from exporting it. That was a free gift that we could get all of this cheap Canadian oil, but this administration is too stupid to take advantage of it. Of course, that also means North Dakota Oil is stranded. We have a lot of oil production across a number of states, but in order to serve the green activists who brought him to the dance, Biden is shutting these things down. About 16 million acres of federal land now that he's taken out of exploration for new oil. So in a sense, they're running down the seed corn. Right. We are destroying our own ability to continue providing for our energy needs and then meanwhile, of course, the sort of insurance policy that we had since the 1970s, the strategic Petroleum Reserve, that's being run down at absolutely historic rates in just two years, he's run that down by half. It is now down to 1983 levels. There will come a point where we don't have a buffer anymore. Right. The point of that petroleum reserve is to give us freedom of action so that no country can threaten us, so that we don't fear any country we don't fear being blackmailed by energy. Biden is throwing that away.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, it's just opening us up to be blackmailed by energy, in a sense. And you mentioned the Green energy movement, and for listeners who maybe aren't familiar with a lot of my episodes, energy is something I cover quite frequently. And there are several issues or several episodes related to energy, and especially kind of working through the green energy arguments. Is it really cheaper to have solar or wind? Is it really more cost efficient to have solar and wind? Is it really better for the environment to have electric vehicles? And if we really look under the hood of that electric vehicle, so to speak, we find out that the costs are exorbitant. And it can be worse for the environment in many ways because of the way we process the batteries, the mining of the batteries, everything. And then people don't think about the cost of recycling any of these solar and wind items and it just goes on and on. If we really look at the long term cost, it's more expensive to use all these renewables as a main source of energy. Whereas if we really would focus on our fossil fuels, on nuclear things, and then use the renewables as an additional source, then we would really have a strong energy grid and a strong energy policy and a stronger energy economical landscape. Correct.

Peter St. Onge: Generally, I would just drop the renewables. Honestly, if an energy source needs government subsidies, it is not ready for prime time. I have no doubt that in 2040, solar will be ready. It is not ready today. It belongs in the lab. It does not belong as a siphon out of trillions of dollars out of taxpayers’ pockets. The green lobby has just absolutely been massive. The amount of money they throw at this functionally bribing academics, Bribing media outlets. If you look up, if you try to figure out how much more expensive solar is, there's this break where solar was bumping along about 50 times more expensive than coal and then all of a sudden, the bad signal went out. And now if you look online, you'll see all these studies from prestigious universities who are paid to study this question, and they all conclude, lo and behold, it's all but free. We are being gas lighted.

Linda J. Hansen: Definitely. And that's an energy term, but it is. We are being gas lighted. So, EJ, do you have something to add about that? I know you and I have talked some about energy on our episodes before, but this is such an important issue and a big piece of not only our energy landscape, our national security landscape, our economic strength as a nation, but as we look forward, our manufacturing base, our business, our commerce, everything depends on reliable energy. And when we're looking to these non-reliable sources and saying that they're the best thing since sliced bread, that it's not really wise.

Peter ST. Onge: Sure.

E.J Antoni: And we're seeing this cause problems everywhere, whether it's in manufacturing, like you just mentioned, or any other part of the economy, even in finance, it was not a small ingredient that brought down SVB being all of these, you know, green energy deals that, that they were involved in. And furthermore, part of the reason why the regulators were so asleep at the switch. It wasn't the only reason, but one of the big reasons was because they were all just tickled pink by the fact that this bank was so heavily invested in wind and solar, and so it largely could do No Wrong. And just anytime, I mean really, genuinely anytime you allow this kind of political ideology to overcome market forces which naturally, of their own accord are going to allocate resources efficiently as soon as you allow political ideology into the mix things are going to go south and in a hurry. And again, bringing it back to what we were talking about earlier, it's exactly what we've seen with the United States Dollar and that's a great point.

Peter St. Onge: The regulators have really drawn such a bright line between ideologies we like and ideologies we don't. I think regular Americans, they look at Bud Light or Coke getting into social issues. They ask just make the beer man, why are you getting involved in these? And I think EJ put his finger on it, which is that this is a way for companies to buy political protection money almost. It's like bribing the policeman. So if they get involved in every single left wing cause then they can hope that the regulators are going to turn a blind eye. We saw that with FTX, with the biggest fraud in 15 years in this country. Billions of dollars stolen by this joker, Sam Bankman Fried and he was hanging out with top regulators all over the country. It was over at the White House. Why was he getting such a pass? Why was this happening right under their nose? Well, he was on about what was it effective altruism about all of the stolen customer money that they were going to be routing to the left wing causes and to politicians. That did the trick, didn't it?

Linda J. Hansen: You brought up such a good point about how we can follow the money on a lot of these things and EJ, I'm glad you brought up the whole political mindset. We have talked about ESG on this podcast quite a bit and the environmental social governance that is driving so much of this insanity. I would say in terms of policies in corporations and things. Because when you take away the efficiency of the marketplace or the efficiency of the manufacturing process or the efficiency and excellence of those who are doing the work such as airline pilots or bus drivers or nuclear energy operators, when you're hiring based on social factors instead of competence, you run into a problem with delivering quality. But it also affects the bottom line of the corporations which trickles into affecting the economy and all of us pay a higher price. We all pay a higher price and we see it in the supply chain, we see it in bottom lines of businesses and their balance sheets and we see it in our home economies, our home finances.

E.J Antoni: You see it in lives too. I mean, look at how many government officials in this administration have been chosen specifically because of immutable characteristics. And so they're making horrendous decisions that are directly affecting people's lives and sometimes costing them their lives. I mean, this is how you end up with the nation's chief nuclear energy regulator running around airports and stealing women's luggage.

Linda J. Hansen: Good point and we've lost the plot. When my kids were teenagers they used to use that phrase “lost the plot”, it’s like we've lost the plot.

Peter St. Onge: That's a good summary of this administration. Yes, absolutely.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, and people say that they're incompetent and I would say, well, we could say that, but that depends on thinking that they want what we want for America. But they have an entirely different agenda for America than those of us who love freedom. And so they are actually not losing their plot. They are executing on a strategy. And so far they're actually doing a good job of destroying our nation, destroying our economy.

Peter St. Onge: Yeah. In the old days, the media had some role as a watchdog, It was an extremely friendly watchdog for Democrats, but anyway, it took some of that seriously. It did every so often go after Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter if they really screwed things up. And again, there was some coordinated if we try to specify, it looks like around the time that Obama came into office and certainly once they got surprised by Trump, they flipped over to where it was almost like communist youth. Now you have got to recite the party line and setting aside the unfairness of that, the danger of it is that this administration appears to operate as if it does not care what it breaks, it does not fear crises because I would guess it's confident that the left wing media is going to ignore it. It's going to give it a pass, use its reality distortion field to try to gaslight Americans into thinking it's not even happening.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, gas lighting Americans is something they do quite well and they have mainstream media to help them. And that's why the work that both of you do and I hope that what I do, can help to educate American citizens and help to see beyond the headlines as we see these things changing so rapidly every day. I mean, I remember when Joe Biden first came into office, it was almost like those first 30 days you woke up every day thinking what freedom is he eliminating today? Take away the pen, right? And now we've kind of become used to this fast pace. I know. I've heard some people say things are accelerating at an accelerating pace and it just seems like it. And they are really bent on changing the entire fabric of America. They don't care about the Constitution the way we do. They don't care about the rule of law the way we do and so it's up to us. It's up to us as citizens. It's up to us as freedom loving Americans to stand up for that. And so, again, I thank you so much for the work that both of you do and the work of the Heritage Foundation because it provides so much educational material for citizens not only in America, but really all over the world. Before we close, do you have any closing comments you'd like to share with the listeners?

Peter St. Onge: Yeah, no, easy.

E.J Antoni: I think in the same way, again, bringing it back to what we started the discussion with, what they've done with the dollar, it's remarkably similar. And the fact of the matter is that, just, like, they don't view the constitution the way we do, they view it as a roadblock, whereas we view it as a protective barricade, something to be upheld, not something to be torn down. And I think they look at the dollar not as something that should be, quite frankly, sacred, right? Because it is a protector of your property rights. That's one of the roles of currency. Instead, they look at it as a means to an end and a method of future control and that's why they're pushing so hard, for example, to get us to a central bank digital currency, which actually, Elizabeth Warren literally was just the other day talking about how we need a central bank digital currency and we need to squash alternatives like Bitcoin, for example. Not that I'm advocating for Bitcoin. I'm just simply pointing out that something like Bitcoin does stand in the way of a central bank digital currency, which is a kind of, frankly, control and surveillance that I don't even think George Orwell could have dreamed of.

Linda J. Hansen: I'm so glad you brought up the central bank digital currency in this. I'm glad we brought it into the conversation because it's such a big piece of this. The powers that be that would like to change the whole fabric of America and especially bring in a globalist government would like nothing more than to have us all at their tether to decide what we can buy or sell, where we can travel, what we can do. And that digital currency and the digital IDs, I mean, these are dangerous and very harmful in terms of our freedoms. Like, if we have that, our freedom is gone, in my opinion. Do you agree, Peter?

Peter St. Onge: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And they've been working towards this even before a CBDC became technologically possible. They've been working for this sort of social control over really everything you do. I think that's really what motivates the sort of green obsession, is that you can notice that bad things have carbon footprints. Good things, they don't. They get a pass if you're burning a city that has how could you even talk about such mundane things, right? This is about justice. On the other hand, if you're having a tailgating party, literally, the environmentalists put out articles complaining about the carbon footprint of a tailgating party.

E.J Antoni: Why?

Peter St. Onge: Because their people don't do it. Everything that you like they will attack. They use carbon footprint as their standard attack vector. But the point here is that they have spent more than 50 years now trying to implement some sort of system. Whether it's carbon or in the case of a CBDC, it would be just push button of some bureaucrat. They want to control everything they do. When it comes to a CBDC, you've got two big elements there, right? One of them is surveillance and the structure of a CBDC means that the government would know every last thing you do and then the second is control. So whoever is controlling that could then, they could stop you from eating too much meat because of the carbon footprint. Mind you, it's really a tool for absolute, totalitarian control and heaven help you in a CBDC, If you'd like to donate to Jan six prisoners, you're right up on the radar and bright flashing lights and you've got to hope that this administration stays honest enough, which I think a lot of people have trouble with at this point.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, you brought up a good point about not being able to donate to causes we believe in or spending money on things that we feel are important and so many scientific studies have shown the green energy logic is flawed. And those of us who enjoy freedom, we care about the environment. We care about making sure that America and the world are a great place for our children and our grandchildren to grow up in. For our great grandchildren, we want to pass on the torch of freedom. And by watching this happen and not doing anything, we can be participating in the demise of our beloved country. So to everyone listening, I want to encourage you to contact your elected officials. We are still in charge of this government. They may act like we are not, but we are and one of the problems that has happened over the time in America, over especially as the more comfortable years in America, is that citizens have become complacent and we have not shared our voice with elected officials about things that are important to us. But not only that, we have not educated our young people about these issues. So that's part of why I do Prosperity 101, I want to help build that bridge, basically, between people who never had this basic economic and civics education, they've never had it. And now they're in the workplace, they're in the marketplace, and they're voting for people who will put them out of their job. They're voting for people who will destroy their freedom and they don't know and that's why I started Prosperity 101 to help people understand these basic things and how it affects their daily lives, their paycheck. And that's why I first wrote the book, developed the course, have the podcast to help everyone understand these issues. So hopefully we can educate others and work together to take back our country. So thank you both so much. Listeners, I want to encourage you to go to Heritage.org and you can find their full BIOS that I did not share in this episode. You can also find many of the articles that they've written, but then watch for Peter ST. Onge and EJ and Toni, watch for them in the media, watch for them in interviews, and be sure and share this podcast episode with others who you feel may benefit from the information. So thank you both for joining with me today. I just appreciate the time and I appreciate your expertise.

Peter St. Onge: Thank you Linda, for having us.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101 Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course. You can also receive the free e-book, 10 Tips for Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks. Freedom is never free. Understanding the foundations of prosperity and the policies of prosperity will help you to protect prosperity as you become informed, involved, and impactful. I give special thanks to our sponsors Matthews Archery, Inc. and Wisconsin Stamping & Manufacturing. Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.