Caleb O. Brown hosted the Cato Daily Podcast for nearly 18 years, producing well over 4000 episodes. He has gone on to head Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute. This is one among the best episodes produced in his tenure, selected by the host and listeners.
The world lost the great civil libertarian, journalist, and Cato scholar Nat Hentoff last week. Scott Bullock comments on his several legacies.
For four decades, the US has maintained a consistent policy position: money should be fairly free to come and go in and out of the country. That's changing.
Two sections in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add friction. First is a 3.5% tax on immigrants sending money home, commonly known as remittances. Second is what's known as Section 899 or, colloquially, the 'revenge tax'. This one is making Wall Street wary. It would slap extra taxes on people and businesses investing in the U.S. if their home countries were deemed to tax Americans unfairly.
We explain these two taxes that could mark a shift in our free-flowing money era.
Related episodes: The long view of economics and immigration (Two Indicators) (Apple / Spotify) The "chilling effect" of deportations (Apple / Spotify)
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Caleb O. Brown hosted the Cato Daily Podcast for nearly 18 years, producing well over 4000 episodes. He has gone on to head Kentucky’s Bluegrass Institute. This is one among the best episodes produced in his tenure, selected by the host and listeners.
What should the U.S. do to adjust to China’s rise? Tariffs and shattering the global trading system aren’t the answer, according to Scott Lincicome.
A debate has been raging over universal health care in the U.S. since the 1940s. Back then, a formidable opponent emerged to dump a lot of money into ensuring it wouldn't happen. That opponent was doctors. Today on the show, Sally Helm, a Planet Money reporter, comes to us in her capacity as the host of HISTORY This Week to detail how doctors helped tank single pay healthcare back then and the role communism played in the fight.
A longer version of this episode is available at HISTORY This Week from the History Channel.
Related episodes: Why do hospitals keep running out of generic drugs? (Apple / Spotify) Socialism 101
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Exactly how many people live on our planet is one of those difficult-to-answer questions. The UN estimates is 8.2 billion, but that’s largely based on census data, which is certainly not a perfect measure.
So when a recent study from Finland found that rural populations around the world had been underestimated by 50 to over 80%, the media got quite excited. This would be a big error - a 50% underestimate would mean the actual number of people in an area is double the number they thought there were.
One newspaper in Spain - El Mundo - did its own sums and said this meant there were potentially 2 billion more people in the world than we currently think there are.
But is it what the researchers in Finland actually meant?
“Absolutely not,” says Josias Lang-Ritter, a researcher from University in Finland and a co-author of the study.
Tim Harford speaks to Josias to figure out the right way of understanding the study.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Caroline Bayley
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown
Sound mix: Nigel Appleton
Editor: Richard Vadon
For the last couple of years, U.S. labor productivity has been on the rise. And economists don't know exactly why. So today on the show, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago plays economic detective and helps us investigate some different theories about why U.S. workers seem to be more productive than in prior decades.
Related episodes: What keeps a Fed president up at night (Apple / Spotify) Productivity and workforce whiplash (Apple / Spotify)
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.