This week’s SNAP crisis is just a preview. Tucked inside the giant tax-cut and spending bill signed by President Donald Trump this summer are enormous cuts to SNAP: Who qualifies, how much they get, and who foots the bill for the program. That last part is a huge change.
For the entire history of the food stamp program, the federal government has paid for all the benefits that go out. States pay part of the cost of administering it, but the food stamp money has come entirely from federal taxpayers. This bill shifts part of the costs to states.
How much will states have to pay? It depends. The law ties the amount to a statistic called the Payment Error Rate -- the official measure of accuracy -- whether states are giving recipients either too much, or too little, in food stamp money.
On today’s show, we go to Oregon to meet the bureaucrats on the front lines of getting that error rate down -- and ask Governor Tina Kotek what’s going to happen if they can’t.
This episode was hosted by Nick Fountain and Jeff Guo. It was produced by James Sneed and Willa Rubin, edited by Marianne McCune and Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Debbie Daughtry and Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
For decades, the U.S. has been the single biggest source of remittances worldwide. A remittance is a transfer of money, typically from an immigrant to their family in their country of origin. But we are in the middle of a big, loud and very public immigration crackdown on those who are here without legal status. And that crackdown is disrupting the global remittance market.
People who have come to the U.S. from a handful of countries — especially some Central American countries — have been sending more money back to their countries of origin. And it’s a bit of a puzzle because … you might think the opposite would be the case.
As immigration plummets, we try to figure out why remittances are surging in some countries, and not others. And we learn why a surge in money sent home inspires joy — but also fear.
This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Greg Rosalsky. It was produced by Luis Gallo with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune with fact-checking help from Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Nina Bandelj delivers a keynote lecture at the 2023 Markets & Society conference on the social life of money for children. Drawing on research about what she calls the “parenting economy,” she shows that parents increasingly treat children as human capital investments, using savings plans, loans, and educational spending to secure their futures. Bandelj argues that the financialization of family life reflects parental pressures and social inequality, calling for children to be seen as a shared public responsibility rather than private investments.
Dr. Nina Bandelj is Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine and the President of the Sociological Research Association. Her articles have been published in top discipline and specialty journals such as the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Theory and Society, and Socio-Economic Review. She has published various books, including Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works (Princeton University Press, 2017) coauthored with Frederick Wherry and Viviana Zelizer), and Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged: Eastern Europe and China, 1989-2009 (Oxford university Press, 2012) coedited with Dorothy Solinger.
**This lecture was recorded October 22, 2023 at the second annual Markets & Society conference.
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The U.S. Constitution famously outlaws “cruel and unusual punishments.” But there's another, far more obscure part of the Constitution called the Excessive Fines Clause, which basically says that the fine has to fit the crime. So far, the Supreme Court has been pretty mysterious about what that means. But for Ken Jouppi, the fate of his $95,000 plane hinges on it.
Ken is a bush pilot. He used to run an air taxi service in Fairbanks, Alaska. In 2012, police caught one of Ken’s passengers with a six-pack of Budweiser in her luggage. Over that six-pack, Ken was convicted of bootlegging. As punishment, he was ordered to forfeit his $95,000 Cessna.
The Supreme Court is now considering whether to take Ken’s case. And what’s at stake here is more than just a plane. Hanging in the balance is an increasingly popular — and controversial — business model for criminal justice.
Today’s episode was produced by James Sneed and Sam Yellowhorse Kesler with help from Luis Gallo. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Ko Tagasugi Chernovin with help from Robert Rodriguez. Planet Money's executive producer is Alex Goldmark.
When TikTok videos started to go viral on Instagram and Reddit, TikTok turned to professional sound designers to protect their content.
More and more companies are paying to develop a “sonic identity” – a series of sounds, songs, and micro-jingles to help maintain a unified brand.
In this episode, in conjunction with the sound design podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, we hear the backstory to possibly the most successful audio branding campaigns in history. It’s a tale of guerilla marketing and the power of sonic suggestion.
This adapted episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Dallas Taylor. It was produced by Casey Emmerling and James Sneed. The episode was edited by Jess Jiang. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer.
Every year, thousands of products are recalled from store shelves. How does the process work — and who foots the bill? Zachary Crockett gets a refund on his frozen shrimp.
Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup works as a maritime pilot in the straits of Denmark. That means he’s used to seeing oil tankers. But after the start of the war in Ukraine, the tankers started getting weird. They were flying flags he’d never seen before. They were old, very old, though many had taken on new names. Something was off.
He’d stumbled on a shadow fleet of hundreds of tankers ferrying sanctioned oil out of Russia … with near impunity.
Today on the show, how those ships are transforming the global oil market and fueling the war in Ukraine. And why this all might be a financial and environmental disaster waiting to happen.
This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Daniel Ackerman. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Kwesi Lee and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
