A history of paper money and inflation in China, from Edward Chancellor's Wall Street Journal review of Jin Xu's Empire of Silver. In these sparse paragraphs is most of monetary (and fiscal!) theory, along with a history I was not aware of.

Much has been written in the last year about families and companies bailing out of high-cost California and the Bay Area in particular.

For many months in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was panic at California’s local grocery stores. While most businesses were closed, government buildings locked up, and schools shut down, our markets never were. Neither were our farms. Our survival depended, as it always has, on food continuing to be grown, picked, and shipped to stores where we could buy it. 

Conventionally, Ronald Reagan is characterized as conservative.