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?
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After the fires
The fires in Los Angeles are almost out. Residents are starting to trickle back into their burned-out neighborhoods. When they get to their houses, they face a series of almost impossible questions: Do we want…
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Tariffs, grocery prices and other listener questions
Donald Trump is just about to begin his second presidency. And it may be safe to say that every single person in America has at least one question about what’s to come in the next…
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The Land of the Duty Free (classic)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2018.) Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of them alike? In the 1940s, if you were flying from…
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The case for Fed Independence in the Nixon Tapes
You know Watergate, but do you know Fedgate? The more subtle scandal with more monetary policy and, arguably, much higher stakes. In today’s episode, we listen back through the Nixon White House tapes to search…
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ZIP Codes!
The ZIP code is less like a cold, clinical, ordered list of numbers, and more like a weird overgrown number garden. It started as a way to organize mail after WWII, but now it pops…
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The potato-shaped loophole in free trade
Ever since free trade opened up between the US and Mexico in the 1990s, trillions of dollars of goods have been going back and forth between the two countries, from cars to strawberries to MRI…
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If AI is so good, why are there still so many jobs for translators?
If you believe the hype, translators will all soon be out of work. Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of the language learning app Duolingo, doesn’t think AI is quite there… yet. In this interview,…
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The Rest of the Story, 2024
After the gift exchange comes another great holiday tradition: returns season. Once again, we are joining the fun in our own Planet Money way. We are returning to stories from years past to see what’s…
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The Indicators of this year and next
This year, there was some economic good news to go around. Inflation generally ticked down. Unemployment more or less held around 4-percent. Heck, the Fed even cut interest rates three times. But for a lot…
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The habitat banker
Our planet is in serious trouble. There are a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction, and the biggest cause is companies destroying their habitats to farm food, mine minerals, and otherwise…