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We all know the government uses taxes to pay for things. But what about using taxes to control behavior? This week on Summer School, Professor Darrick Hamilton of The New School, helps us explore the true power of the tax code. Can taxes help lift people out of poverty? What about saving the planet?
Get tickets to our August 18th live show and graduation ceremony at The Bell House, in Brooklyn. (Planet Money+ supporters get a 10 percent discount off their tickets. Listen to the July 8th bonus episode to get the discount code!)
The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Eric Mennel. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Emily Crawford and Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez.
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What people might picture when they think of "Made in America" ... might not look like the "Made in America" we have today.
The U.S. does have a domestic manufacturing industry, including a garment manufacturing industry.
In today's episode: We buy a garment made by factory workers in the U.S. – a basic purple sports bra – and learn how many people it took to make it, how much workers got paid to work on it ... and whether garment manufacturing is a job Americans want, or even know how, to do.
Plus: why domestic garment manufacturing exists at all in the U.S., and whether the industry can grow.
Other episodes:
- What "Made in China" actually means
This episode was reported and hosted by Sarah Gonzalez. It was produced by Willa Rubin with production help from Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marianne McCune, and it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez who also helped with research. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
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Government. The Big G. We like to imagine the free market and the invisible hand as being independent from political influence. But Nobel laureate, Simon Johnson, says that influence has been there since the birth of economics. Call it political economy. Call it government and business. Call it our big topic each Wednesday through Labor Day.
We're kicking off another semester of Planet Money Summer School asking the biggest question: Why are some nations rich and others poor? With stories from India, New York City and Peru, we look at the ways in which government bureaucracy can help make or break an economy.
Tickets for Planet Money Live at the Bell House available here. Planet Money+ supporters get a 10 percent discount off their tickets. Go to plus.npr.org to sign up, if you haven't already, and listen to the July 8th bonus episode to get the discount code.
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Planet Money+ supporters get early access to new episodes of Summer School this season! You also get sponsor-free listening, regular bonus episodes, and you'll help support the work of Planet Money.
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If we think about the economic effects of President Donald Trumps big taxing and spending and domestic policy bill, we can roughly sum it up in one line. It goes something like this:
We will make many big tax cuts permanent and pay for those tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and a few other things and also...by borrowing money.
A lot of money.
Even more than we've already been borrowing over the past twenty years. (And that was already a lot, too!)
Today: simple arithmetic with profound ramifications. Tax cuts, spending cuts, and whether they balance out. (Spoiler: no.)
We look under the hood to see how all this is calculated. And we ask: how will a bigger deficit play out for all of us, in our normal, regular lives?
We've covered a bunch more having to do with the big taxing and spending bill and the federal debt recently on Planet Money and our short daily show The Indicator:
- So, how's this No Tax On Tips thing gonna go?
- A thought experiment on how to fix the national debt problem
- The paperwork trap: A sneaky way to cut Medicaid in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill'?
- The debt limit, the origins of the X Date, and why it all matters
- What's a revenge tax?
- Is the federal debt REALLY that bad?
Support Planet Money, get bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening and now Summer School episodes one week early by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
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There's an economic fantasy you sometimes hear in D.C. It often gets trotted out when politicians are trying to add billions or trillions to the national debt. They claim that all the new spending will be worth it in the end because we will supercharge economic growth.
This fantasy recurs again and again, because economic growth is a potent force. Over the next few decades, tiny changes in how fast our economy grows could decide the fate of the federal government — whether we can bring the massive national debt under control or whether we spiral into a fiscal crisis.
Today on the show, we talk to three economists who have been sifting through the latest evidence. They're trying to figure out what the government could actually do to make the economy grow faster. Could we even grow fast enough to outrun our national debt?
For a list of citations, check out our episode page.
This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Ko Takasugi-Czernowin. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
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In 2019, President Trump tweeted: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies." Today, the Trumps are all over crypto.
There are memecoins for Trump and the first lady. They own a stablecoin, a bitcoin mining operation, and a crypto financial services company. And, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, Trump's media group announced they're raising 2.5 billion dollars from investors to buy bitcoin.
At that same conference, speakers included two White House advisors, two sons of the US president, the son of the U.S. Commerce Secretary, and a Trump appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a cryptocurrency built on independence from big government, this was a swerve.
So, what happens when the President of the United States showers his love on the crypto community ... while also becoming a crypto entrepreneur himself? We follow along as Trump Inc.'s Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein spend three days at the Las Vegas conference center where convicts are cheered, oversight and regulation are booed, and the separation of crypto and state no longer applies.
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Econ Battle Zone is back! On today's episode Mary Childs and Kenny Malone enter Econ Battle Stadium to throw down against reigning champion Erika Beras.
Can Mary explain what effect extending the 2017 tax cuts will have on economic growth AND make her entire segment rhyme? Will Erika be able to overcome her fear of singing and craft a country song about the history of Medicaid? Can Kenny put together a piece about what warning signs economists look for to know whether the national debt has grown too large... but as a romantic comedy?
Guest judges Betsey Stevenson and David Kestenbaum face a difficult choice... but only one contestant can claim the coveted Econ Battle Zone Belt.
Artists featured in this episode: Rexx Life Raj (IG: @rexxliferaj); Merle Hazard; Alison Brown; Tristan Scroggins; Matt Coles; and Garry West.
Special thanks to Liz Garton Scanlon, Robin Rudowitz and Sarah Rosenbaum.
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The U.S. has been policing bribery all over the world for nearly half a century using a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But now, President Trump has said that this anti-corruption law is crippling American businesses. Since taking office, his administration has reduced the number of investigators, killed some cases, and changed the rules.
In this episode, we look at the FCPA case against Glencore, a large commodity trading company, found guilty in 2022 for paying cash bribes in exchange for lucrative contracts all over the world.
And we go back to the inception of the law, a time when using bribes to pay off foreign officials was considered "grease in the wheels" - a reasonable (if unethical) way to get business done.
This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Erika Beras. It was produced by Willa Rubin. It was fact-checked by Emily Crawford with help from Willa Rubin. It was edited by Marianne McCune. It was engineered by James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
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Note: A version of this episode first ran in 2023.
Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the country takes on debt. Congress has the power to limit how much debt the U.S. takes on. Once we reach that limit, Congress has a few options so that the government keeps paying its bills: Raise the debt limit, suspend it, or eliminate it entirely.
Which is daunting, because if lawmakers don't figure something out in time, the ramifications for the global economy could be huge.
Shai Akabas, of the Bipartisan Policy Center, has become something of the go-to expert in calculating the exact date America would hit the wall and not be able to pay all its debts. This day is so terrifying it has a special name, the X-Date.
Today's episode is about how Akabas and Jay Powell — long before he became chair of the Federal Reserve — worked to create a system to determine the X-Date with the hope of helping us all never reach it.
We also have an update on this year's looming X-Date, which could arrive as soon as this summer.
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What was it like to work inside Elon Musk's DOGE? The cost-cutting initiative promised transparency, but most of its actions have been shrouded in secrecy.For months, there were reports of software engineers and Trump loyalists entering agencies and accessing sensitive data. DOGE also helped the Trump administration lay off thousands of government workers. NPR reporters have been trying for months to get anyone from DOGE to talk on the record. Now, Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE staffer assigned to the Department of Veteran Affairs, is speaking. Today, what drew Sahil to DOGE and what he learned about the inner workings, in a way we've never heard before.For more on DOGE and the federal workforce: - The last time we shrank the federal workforce - Can... we still trust the monthly jobs report? - Can the Federal Reserve stay independent?This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Bobby Allyn. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Neal Rauch. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
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