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Next week, JD Vance and Tim Walz will face off in the only confirmed vice presidential debate ahead of the election. As voters look ahead to what their economic policies might be, we look back to see what they have said and done, and how it turned out. Planet Money's newsletter author Greg Rosalsky has spent some time combing through the economic records of Vance https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/07/23/g-s1-12513/economic-mind-jd-vance and Walz https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/08/13/g-s1-16662/the-economic-mind-of-tim-walz, and has some knowledge to share. Why does Walz support universal free school lunches, and why do some criticize him for it? Why have some called Vance a "Khan-servative?" And, how much do these candidates represent a break from the past? Planet MoneyPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Table saws are extremely dangerous. The government estimates that injuries from table saws send something like 30,000 people to the emergency room every year. 3,000 of those end in amputations. The costs of those injuries are enormous. Are they also avoidable? In 1999, inventor Steve Gass had a realization: Humans conduct electricity pretty well; Wood does not. Could he develop a saw that could tell the difference between the two? Steve invented a saw that can detect a finger and stop the blade in milliseconds. Then, he tried to license it to the big tool companies. He thought it was a slam dunk proposition: It would dramatically reduce the injuries, and the cost of medical treatments and lost wages associated with them. On today's episode: What does it take to make table saws safer? When someone gets hurt by a power tool, there are tons of costs, tons of externalities. We all bear the cost of the injury, in some way. So, it can be in society's best interest to minimize those costs. We follow Steve's quest to save thousands of fingers. It brought him face-to-face with roomfuls of power tool company defense attorneys, made him the anti-hero of the woodworking world, and cost the lives of many, many hot dogs. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
People often say that money can't buy you happiness. Sometimes, if you ask them to tell you more about it, they'll mention a famous 2010 study by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton. That study found that higher household income correlates with greater emotional well-being, but only up to around $75,000 a year. After that, more money didn't seem to matter. This was a famous study by two famous academics. The result stood for over a decade. And it feels good, right? Maybe the rich aren't so much happier than anyone else. But researchers have recently done a complete 180 on this idea. In 2021, psychologist Matt Killingsworth found nearly the opposite: That more money correlate with more happiness. And that the relationship continues well beyond $75,000 per year. Today on the show: Does more money mean problems? Two researchers with totally different takes come together to hammer out a better understanding of the relationship between money and happiness. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Today we have a guest episode from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318. It is about White Castle, the burger chain. Even if you haven't visited, you have tasted its influence because, as we will learn in this episode, White Castle is really the proto-burger chain. Our friends at the excellent podcast bring us the origin story of White Castle and trace its influence on the business of fast food, and on American eating habits. The story is about one man who had an idea for a world where you could get a slider anywhere in the country and get the same tasty, onion-y quality each time. Think of this as a forebear of the modern global economy of sameness. 99 Percent Invisible Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to get inflation under control. One side effect is that taking out a mortgage to buy a home has gotten expensive. That's especially a problem for some homeowners who managed to get a lower mortgage rate years ago. They have a sort of... champagne problem. Or, "golden handcuffs" as it's called. These homeowners may find they are "locked in" to their current home. In order to move to a new home, they have to take out a new mortgage at a much higher rate. It is one of the many problems plaguing the housing market right now. The Fed is expected to start cutting rates next week. Will the golden handcuff mess finally start to unlock? And what does it mean for people looking to buy their first home? On today's episode: We go deep into the golden handcuff problem and why it matters for everyone (including non-homeowners). We have FOMO about a big economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And we contemplate how to pronounce one of the most important interest rates in the economy: The IORB. Planet MoneyPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Are the promises made by AI boosters all hype, or are we actually under-appreciating the transformative potential of AI? Can artificial intelligence make humans more productive, unlock hidden potential and remake work as we know it? Or, should it not even be called intelligence at all, artificial or otherwise. On today's episode, we take sides. Two reporters flip a coin to see who argues which point: is AI overrated or underrated? They bring research, real world examples, expert opinions and warm blooded human insight. You decide who makes the best case. If you're interested in learning more, check out Greg's article https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/08/06/g-s1-15245/10-reasons-why-ai-may-be-overrated-artificial-intelligence. It includes all sorts of reporting we couldn't fit into the episode. And while you're there, subscribe to the https://www.npr.org/newsletter/money?utm_campaign=Digital+to+PM&utm_medium=bitly&utm_source=NPRorg+Story+Page. IndicatorIndicatorPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Summer camp is a classic rite of passage in the U.S. It's a place of self-discovery, where kids come to make new friends and take on new challenges. But what if it were ALSO a place where children came to learn how to survive in a free market economy? That's part of the idea behind a summer camp at JA BizTown, in Portland, Oregon. Kids at the camp run tiny fake businesses in a tiny fake town. There are retail stores and restaurants, insurance companies and power utilities. As camp begins, a gaggle of child CEOs take out business loans from their peers in the tiny fake banking industry – and they spend the day racing to run their businesses profitably enough to get out of debt before pickup time. On today's show, Planet Money takes a romp through capitalism summer camp. Will the children of BizTown be able to make ends meet and pay back their loans to the banks? Or will a string of defaults send this dollhouse economy into financial collapse? It's Shark Tank meets Lord of the Flies. Planet MoneyPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Campaigns can be a jargony slog. And this year, we are seeing a lot of economic terms being thrown around, many of which... aren't entirely straightforward. In this episode, we try to make the mess of words that accompany a presidential campaign into something a little less exhausting: A game of bingo. Follow along as we dig into five terms that we expect to hear in the upcoming presidential debate, along with some others we hope to hear. You can play along, too, at npr.org/bingo http://npr.org/bingo. Play online or print cards to play with friends on debate night! Planet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
When Cody Fischer decided to get into real estate development, he had a vision. He wanted to build affordable, energy efficient apartments in Minneapolis, not far from where he grew up. His vision was well-timed because, in 2019, Minneapolis's city council passed one of the most ambitious housing plans in the nation. One aim of that plan was to alleviate the city's housing shortage by encouraging developers like Cody to build, build, build. But when Cody tried to build, he ran into problems. The kinds of problems that arise all over the country when cities confront a short supply of housing, and try to build their way out. Today on the show, NIMBYism, YIMBYism and why it's so hard to fix the housing shortage. Told through the story of two apartment buildings in Minneapolis. Planet Money'sPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma! http://npr.org/g-s1-19625 Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here http://npr.org/g-s1-19625. And past seasons here http://npr.org/g-s1-19625. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School http://npr.org/g-s1-19625. We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll hear from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and some surprising guests as they teach us a little bit more economics, and offer a lot of life advice. But first, we have to wrap up our (somewhat) complete economic history of the world. We'll catch up on the last fifty years or so of human achievement and ask ourselves, has economics made life better for us all? http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3gTkQlR https://n.pr/3Bkb17W https://n.pr/3h92GwS https://n.pr/3FqLuws https://n.pr/3sGZdrq https://n.pr/3zrFvUB Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
When David Rashid took over US autoparts maker Plews and Edelmann, the company was losing business to its Chinese rival, Qingdao Sunsong. Both companies make power steering hoses, but Sunsong was offering its hoses to retailers at a much lower price. Then, in 2018, the Trump administration threw companies like Rashid's a lifeline, by announcing tariffs on a range of Chinese goods, including some autoparts. Rashid thought the tariffs would finally force Sunsong to raise its prices, but, somehow, the company never did. It was a mystery. And it led Rashid to take on a new role – amateur trade fraud investigator. How could his competitor, Sunsong, absorb that 25% tax without changing its prices? And why had all of Sunsong's steering hoses stopped coming from China and started coming from Thailand? On today's episode, the wide gulf between how tariffs work in theory... and how they actually work in practice. And David Rashid's quest to figure out what, if anything, he could do about it. It's a quest that will involve international detectives, forensic chemists, and a friendship founded on a shared love for hummus. Planet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Find all the episodes from this season here https://open.spotify.com/show/2naS9Y5nWSli9vi9bOvGxp. And past seasons here https://www.npr.org/series/1015448333/planet-money-summer-school. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history, it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel like they had the economic situation all figured out. Flash forward a decade or so, and the financial picture was still looking pretty good as America emerged from the first World War. But then, everything came crashing down with the stock market collapse of 1929. Businesses closed, banks collapsed, one in four people was unemployed, families couldn't make rent, the economy was broken. And this was happening all over the world. Today we'll look at how leaders around the globe intervened to turn the international economy around, and in the process, how the Great Depression rapidly transformed the relationship between government and business forever. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3gTkQlR https://n.pr/3Bkb17W https://n.pr/3h92GwS https://n.pr/3FqLuws https://n.pr/3sGZdrq https://n.pr/3zrFvUB Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
You might have seen ads for online banking services that seem to offer a lot of great stuff — accounts you can open in minutes and without a minimum balance or monthly fees. The ads seem to say: "These aren't your parents' boring old banks." But the truth is: Even though they might resemble banks, they aren't. These "bank-like" companies are a type of "fintech" or financial technology company. And this is a story about the potential risks of putting your money into these apps. Banks go through a whole regulatory gauntlet in order to exist. But, in the past several years, there has been a rise in fintechs that skirt regulations. And many of these pose a real threat to even the most savvy of depositors. When a little known tech company filed for bankruptcy a few months ago, thousands of people couldn't access the millions of dollars they saved. On today's show, we meet some of the people affected and learn what the fintech industry reveals about banking regulation. Planet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here https://open.spotify.com/show/2naS9Y5nWSli9vi9bOvGxp. And past seasons here https://www.npr.org/series/1015448333/planet-money-summer-school. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and Korea were rebuilding after their own wars. And then in the later half of the twentieth century, they started their comeback. The governments made some explicit choices that unleashed the power of individual incentives and free market forces and lifted millions of people out of poverty. We focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time, when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. Why then? Why there? Can other nations copy that? We'll try to find out. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
For some sports, picking the winner is simple: It's the athlete who crosses the finish line first, or the side that scores the most goals. But for the new Olympic sport of breaking (if you want to be cool, don't call it breakdancing), the criteria aren't quite that straightforward. How do you judge an event whose core values are dopeness, freshness, and breaking the rules? That was the challenge for Storm and Renegade, two legendary b-boys who set out to create a fair and objective scoring system for a dance they say is more of an art than a sport. Over the years, their journey to define the soul of breaking led them to meetings with Olympics bigwigs, debates over the science of dopeness, and a battle with a question many sports — from figure skating to gymnastics — have tried to answer: Can art and sport coexist? Planet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here https://open.spotify.com/show/2naS9Y5nWSli9vi9bOvGxp. And past seasons here https://www.npr.org/series/1015448333/planet-money-summer-school. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. Trade has come up in all of the episodes of Summer School so far. An early use of money was to make trade easier. Trade was responsible for the birth of companies and the stock market. And trade was the lifeblood of the early United States. Today's episode covers 250 years of trade history in three chapters. We start with one of the founding texts of economics, in which Adam Smith argues a country's true value is not measured in gold and silver, but by its people's ability to buy things that enhance their standard of living. Then we'll watch American politicians completely ignore that argument in favor of protecting domestic industries – until one congressman makes a passionate case for free trade as the means to world peace. And finally we'll follow the trade debate up to the modern day, where the tides of American politics have turned toward regulation. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Maybe you got a boring slip of paper in the mail. Maybe you got a spammy-looking email promising you money. Surprise! You're in a class action. If you've done any commerce in the last decade, there's a good chance that someone somewhere was suing on your behalf and you have real money coming your way... if you know what to do. Class action settlements are on the rise. And, on today's show, we're helping decipher the class action from the perspective of the average class member. How do class actions work? Why are these notices sometimes undecipherable? And, what do you stand to gain (or lose) by responding? Planet MoneyPlanet Money Planet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here https://open.spotify.com/show/2naS9Y5nWSli9vi9bOvGxp. And past seasons here https://www.npr.org/series/1015448333/planet-money-summer-school. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. Planet Money Summer School has arrived at the birth of the United States and the chance to set up a whole new economy from scratch. Should there be a centralized bank? Should there be a single currency? We'll travel to two moments in the country's early history when the founders said "nope" to these questions and see what happened. First we'll witness one of the great economic battles in U.S. history – the president of the United States versus the president of the of the United States – and see how the outcome ushered in an age of financial panics. Then we'll drop in on a time before the U.S. dollar existed as we know it, when you could buy things using one of about 8,000 forms of money circulating in the country. We watch as the Civil War leads to the first standard currency. Along the way, we'll learn why the cycle of economic booms and busts persists to today despite efforts to centralize America's economy throughout history. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here https://open.spotify.com/show/2naS9Y5nWSli9vi9bOvGxp. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. Once upon a time, every business was a small business. It was run by the owner, maybe the spouse and the kids. Maybe they borrowed money from friends and relatives, but there was only so big it could get. Then came what can only be described as the big bang of economics. Over the span of a few decades, people figured out a way for businesses to sell ownership shares – otherwise known as stocks – and let people trade those shares. There was suddenly money to buy machines and expand. Today, we head to the Netherlands around the year 1600. First, we'll visit the bridge in Amsterdam where some of the first stock trading took place. Then we track down the Dutch water company that's the source of the oldest "living" bond. It's the origin of stocks and bonds and the stock market and it leads directly to many of the financial innovations that we still have today. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Last weekend we were all thrown for a loop when President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris for the nomination. Just like everyone else, we are trying to quickly wrap our heads around what it means now that Harris is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee for president. We expect to see the Harris campaign come out with some official policy proposals in the coming weeks and months. But for now, all we've got are clues, little breadcrumbs that she has dropped throughout her career that might lead us to a rough idea of what economic policies she might support. Today on the show, we're going to visit three key moments from Harris' political career that might give us an idea of how her economic agenda might look. First, the 2019 presidential primary debates, where she laid out her own economic policies. Next, a vote in her Senate years that shows where she might fall on future trade agreements. And finally, a fight with some of the country's biggest banks from her very first year as Attorney General of California. Planet Money's http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, were gone. Who had taken the colors away? The story of what happened begins with one company, Pantone. Pantone is known for their Color of the Year forecasts, but they actually make the bulk of their money from selling color reference guides. These guides are the standard for how designers pretty much anywhere talk about color. On today's show, how did Pantone come to control the language of the rainbow? We look back at the history of Pantone, beginning with the man who made Pantone into the industry standard. And, we hear from Stuart, who tried to break the color monopoly. https://forms.gle/5ZqsnQFdP9SEyYF97 http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Who has the power? Workers or bosses? It changes through the ages, though it's usually the bosses. Today, we look at two key moments when the power of labor shifted, for better and worse, and we ask why then? What does history have to say about labor power right now? We travel to Sicily, Italy in the year 1347, where the bubonic plague is about to strike. The horror known as the Black Death will remake European society in countless ways, but we'll focus on one silver lining: how economic conditions shifted for workers. Then we head about 500 years into the future, to an English factory at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, where textile workers take up arms against the machines taking their jobs and show how rapidly labor supply and demand can change. This is the famed tale of the Luddites, now a byword for knee jerk anti-technology, but the true story has nuance and a desperate but rational violent rebellion. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills have just about disappeared, and it's great for the planet. But thousands and thousands of people are really disappointed with what they've been sold. Their panels are more expensive than they should be, and they say it is hard to get someone to come fix them when they break. It turns out this sometimes crummy customer experience is no accident. It ties back to how big, national solar companies built their businesses in the first place. To entice people to install expensive solar panels, companies developed new financing models which cut upfront costs for customers. And they deployed lots and lots of salespeople to grow their businesses. But in the drive to get more households installing solar panels, consumer costs went up and the focus seemed to shift away from making sure those panels actually worked. All of this left some consumers feeling like they've been sold a lie. On today's episode, we look into how the residential solar business model has turned some people sour on solar. And we'll try to figure out where the industry could go from here. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
Planet Money Summer School is back for eight weeks. Join as we travel back in time to find the origins of our economic way of life. Today we ask surprisingly hard question: What is money? And where did it come from? We travel to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean for the answer. Then we'll visit France in the year 1714, where a man on the lam tries to revolutionize the country's entire monetary system, and comes impressively close to the modern economy we have today, before it all falls apart. Check out our Summer School video cheat sheet on the origins of money at the Planet Money TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney/video/7390045174518254891. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
We often hear that air travel is worse than it's ever been. Gone are the days when airplanes touted piano bars and meat carving stations — or even free meals. Instead we're crammed into tiny seats and fighting for overhead space. How did we get here? Most of the inconveniences we think about when we fly can be traced back to the period of time just after the federal government deregulated the airlines. When commercial air travel took off in the 1940s, the government regulated how many national airlines were allowed to exist, where they were allowed to fly, and how much they could charge for tickets. But the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 swept all these restrictions aside – and stopped providing subsidies for the air carriers. Airlines had to compete on ticket prices. That competition led to a more bare-bones flying experience, but it also made air travel a lot more affordable. In this episode, we trace the evolution of air travel over the past century to discover whether flying really is worse today — or if it's actually better than ever. We'll board a plane from the "golden age" of air travel, hear the history of one of the original budget airlines and meet feuding airline CEOs. Along the way, we'll see how economic forces have shaped the airline industry into what it is today, and what role we, as consumers, have played. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
At the core of most of the electronics we use today are some very tiny, very powerful chips. Semiconductor chips. And they are mighty: they help power our phones, laptops, and cars. They enable advances in healthcare, military systems, transportation, and clean energy. And they're also critical for artificial intelligence, providing the hardware needed to train complex machine learning. On today's episode, we're bringing you two stories from our daily show , diving into the two most important semiconductor chip companies, which have transformed the industry over the past 40 years. First, we trace NVIDIA's journey from making niche graphics cards for gaming to making the most advanced chips in the world — and briefly becoming the world's biggest company. Next, we see how the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's decision to manufacture chips for its competition instead of itself flipped the entire industry on its head, and moved the vast majority of the world's advanced chip production to Taiwan. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3gTkQlR https://n.pr/3Bkb17W https://n.pr/3h92GwS https://n.pr/3FqLuws https://n.pr/3sGZdrq https://n.pr/3zrFvUB Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take away jobs from the people who already live and work there? Does a surge of immigration hurt their wages? The debate within the field of economics often centers on Nobel-prize winner David Card's ground-breaking paper, "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market." Today on the show: the fight over that paper, and what it tells us about the debate over immigration. More Listening: - When The Boats Arrive https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/22/516691582/episode-654-when-the-boats-arrive - The Men on the Roof https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149875059/the-men-on-the-roof Planet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2019 https://www.npr.org/2019/09/12/760148148/episode-956-the-carriage-tax.) In 1794, George Washington decided to raise money for the federal government by taxing the rich. He did it by putting a tax on horse-drawn carriages. The carriage tax could be considered the first federal wealth tax of the United States. It led to a huge fight over the power to tax in the U.S. Constitution, a fight that continues today. Listen back to our 2019 episode: "Could A Wealth Tax Work?" https://www.npr.org/2019/07/24/744962126/episode-929-could-a-wealth-tax-work Listen to The Indicator's 2023 episode: "Could SCOTUS outlaw wealth taxes?" https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1197958576/could-scotus-outlaw-wealth-taxes http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
When the vape brand Juul first hit the market back in 2015, e-cigarettes were in a kind of regulatory limbo. At the time, the rules that governed tobacco cigarettes did not explicitly apply to e-cigarettes. Then Juul blew up, fueled a public health crisis over teen vaping, and inspired a regulatory crackdown. But when the government finally stepped in to solve the problem of youth vaping, it may have actually made things worse. Today's episode is a collaboration with the new podcast series "Backfired: the Vaping Wars." You can listen to the full series at audible.com/Backfired http://www.audible.com/Backfired. Planet MoneyPlanet MoneyPlanet Money http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
We've lived amongst Elon Musk headlines for so long now that it's easy to forget just how much he sounds like a sci-fi character. He runs a space company and wants to colonize mars. He also runs a company that just implanted a computer chip into a human brain. And he believes there's a pretty high probability everything is a simulation and we are living inside of it. But the latest Elon Musk headline-grabbing drama is less something out of sci-fi, and more something pulled from HBO's "Succession." Elon Musk helped take Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest companies in the world. And his compensation for that was an unprecedentedly large pay package that turned him into the richest person on Earth. But a judge made a decision about that pay package that set off a chain of events resulting in quite possibly the most expensive, highest stakes vote in publicly traded company history. The ensuing battle over Musk's compensation is not just another wild Elon tale. It's a lesson in how to motivate the people running the biggest companies that – like it or not – are shaping our world. It's a classic economics problem with a very 2024 twist. http://n.pr/PM-digital https://n.pr/3HlREPz Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy
