Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

21:11

Hidden Ways the Government Manipulates Data | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/09

How the government can rig official statistics without ever faking a single number. A few sentences vanished from a Commerce Department directive — and almost no one noticed. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers walks you through what changed on August 19, when the department quietly scrapped its ban on political interference in the science behind America's official statistics. No fabricated numbers required: a report can be delayed, buried, reworded, or stripped of its uncertainty, and

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26:57

The U.S. Canada Trade War Casts a Much Longer Shadow...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/08

Canada just retaliated against President Trump's latest tariffs, and everyone wants to know how big the hit will be. Economist Justin Wolfers walks you through the whole U.S. Canada trade war, and lands on a surprising answer.By the end, you'll understand why this trade war is small on paper, larger in reality, and what Justin would tell both Trump and Carney to do about it.Subscribe — it's the one thing crossing your feed with zero tariffs attached:on YouTube 👉

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22:58

Why Tariffs Can't Rebuild American Manufacturing |...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/05

Why did Trump's tariffs fail? It's a competence problem, not just a trade-theory problem.Economist Justin Wolfers answers your questions about why the Trump administration's tariffs earned straight F's on their own stated goals. His argument: the problem isn't only the economics of tariffs — it's chaotic, incoherent implementation. When a policy exists on Monday, is gone by Tuesday, and gets thrown out by a court on Thursday, you'd be crazy to build a 50-year factory around it. Across-the-board

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13:47

The Jobs Report Beat Expectations. Will The Fed Care?

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/04

The economy added 162,000 jobs in August — far above the 50,000 to 60,000 Wall Street expected — and Justin Wolfers is smiling, because this is genuinely good news. Unemployment sits at a low 4.1%, and we've now had six straight months of job growth, which is what a normal, healthy labor market looks like.But Justin walks you through the asterisks that matter to your paycheck. Nominal wage growth has slipped to 3.1%, the lowest in years, which almost certainly means your real wages are falling as

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13:08

The Bond Sell-Off Isn’t the Scary Part | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/02

Everyone's talking about the bond market, and Justin Wolfers is here to explain what's actually going on — without the panic. In this episode of Diving In, he strips the fancy words away: the bond market is just supply and demand for loans, and right now a lot of people want to borrow. When demand for loans goes up, the price of loans — the interest rate — goes up too.Justin walks through the three forces pushing long-term interest rates higher.Subscribe — it's the one rate that won't rise no matter

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23:05

Who Actually Paid for the Trade War? | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/02

Trump’s tariffs were supposed to do five things. So how did they actually score? Justin Wolfers grades the tariff agenda against the administration’s own goals. Did tariffs create leverage? Did the trade deficit fall? Did factories come home? Did America get safer? Did the revenue deliver? The answers: America’s trading partners already charged us around 3% on average before any of this started, so the “ripping us off” story was mostly imaginary. The celebrated Korea deal claimed credit for market

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20:44

Can You Sanction a Country That's Already Cut Off? |...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/09/01

In this episode of the Professor Is In, Justin answers your questions about "Operation Economic Outcast," the White House plan to squeeze Iran by threatening its trading partners with sanctions and loss of dollar access. The catch: the US already has roughly 6,000 sanctions on Iran and a naval blockade, so most of the country is severed already. New pressure only bites if third countries actually fall in line — and the biggest one, China, buys most of Iran's oil. Justin calls China the Andre the

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62:58

The Fed Chair Won't Talk (But Markets Listened...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/29

On this Fed-heavy episode of Off the Clock, Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith dig into new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's argument for a quieter, less transparent central bank — and why it doesn't hold up. Warsh defended saying less, insisting markets should take their cues from the economy instead of the Fed. Then his speech pushed expected interest rates sharply higher anyway.Justin's point is simple: whether or not the Fed means to guide you, you're listening either way — so it's better

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27:00

Why the BLS Guardrails Held — and the Census Bureau's...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/28

In this episode of the Professor Is In, Justin answers your questions from his earlier episode debunking the Census Bureau’s claim that 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 election.He starts by addressing the elephant in the room: even if the faulty claim were true – it couldn’t have swung anything. Biden won the popular vote by seven million. As for the decisive states: he won Arizona by 10,000 (the report alleges 1,100 fraudulent votes), Georgia by 12,000 (400 alleged), and Wisconsin by 21,000

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27:27

How To Fake a Voting Scandal | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/26

The Census Bureau just published a report claiming 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in the 2020 election. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers takes the report apart and shows why it reads less like statistics and more like propaganda. The document has no author, no report number, and no named reviewers — a flashing red light that career statisticians have refused to sign their names to it.Justin also does the math: matching 128 million voter records to citizenship files without

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16:19

America Is Reusing Cuba’s Sanctions Strategy on Iran...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/24

Do sanctions on Iran actually work? Sixty years of the Cuba embargo say probably not. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just announced what he's calling an "economic D-Day" against Iran — a threat aimed not just at Tehran but at every foreign firm, bank, trader, and shipper that does business with it: choose Iran, or choose access to the U.S. dollar. Justin Wolfers walks you through what was actually announced and then rewinds to 1963, where the Kennedy administration used almost identical

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29:43

The Economics of Feeling Ripped Off | The Professor...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/22

Politicians keep promising to bring prices down. In this episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers explains why that's a terrible idea — and why it's not the same thing as slowing inflation. He walks through what actually happens if you force the price level down: wages have to fall too, stores go unprofitable, and the only reliable way to make it happen is to engineer a recession — possibly a depression. The sensible target isn't zero prices, but inflation low enough that you can

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18:34

What the Heck is Going On In the Bond Market? |...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/19

Bond yields have jumped from a little over 1% just after COVID to more than 5%, and Justin Wolfers walks you through why that matters at your kitchen table. The short version: the U.S. government is borrowing an enormous amount of money, lining up at the bank ahead of you and me, and that pushes the price of borrowing — the interest rate — up for everyone. Justin sorts the story into three parts: why everyone's suddenly talking about the bond market, what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

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18:41

What the $20 Burrito Debate Gets Wrong About...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/19

A college student said a burrito shouldn't cost $20, and suddenly everyone seemed to be arguing about affordability. In this latest installment of Diving In, Justin Wolfers uses that burrito as a metaphor to untangle a real puzzle: 95% of Americans think there's an affordability crisis, two-thirds say groceries are unaffordable — yet by early 2026, every measure of real pay is above where it stood before the 2022 inflation burst. Both things can be true, and Justin shows you how. Using five

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63:07

How Lab-Grown Diamonds Broke the Market | Off the Clock

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/15

Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith pick through a week of confusing economic news on the latest episode of Off the Clock. First up, inflation. Inflation came in at 3.4% — not great, not terrible — but here's the part that stings: prices are still rising faster than wages and the average American paycheck buys less than it did a year ago. They also dig into the July jobs report and why it was a real jolt: the economy lost 23,000 jobs when forecasters expected a gain of

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24:26

If AI Does Your Job, Who Gets Paid? | The Professor...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/14

Justin Wolfers sits down for The Professor Is In to answer your follow-up questions about labor's declining share of income — the reason a soaring market can coexist with wages that feel stuck. He explains that this isn't just an American story: across industrialized countries, workers have been getting a smaller cut of the pie for decades, which points less to any one country's politics and more at shared forces — bigger "superstar" firms, weaker union bargaining power, and a shared

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20:34

No, the K-shaped Economy Isn't Over | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/13

The stock market keeps breaking records, but your paycheck doesn't feel like it. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers explains that disconnect with one number: labor's share of income has fallen to 54.4 cents on the dollar, the lowest share on record. And it’s significantly less than the two-thirds that was common for most of the last century. Justin fires up the actual data to stress-test the claim — accounting for depreciation and tax-driven accounting tricks. But the decline

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11:53

Inflation Is Still High. Just As We Thought. | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/12

The newest inflation report is out, and Justin Wolfers walks you through what actually matters. Annual inflation is running at 3.4% — well above what the Fed wants, and high enough to explain why the checkout line still feels uncomfortable. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy to predict where prices are headed, sits at a better — but still high — 2.5%. July's monthly numbers came in almost exactly as economists expected, which is why the report is less "news" than

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35:14

AI's Biggest Problem May Be Its Pace | The Professor...

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/08

In this bonus-sized episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers uses a strange, wonderful case study — the collapse of artisanal bootmaking in 1850s England — to think through what AI will do to your work, your wages, and maybe even where you live. Economic historian Hillary Vipond found that even though a new technology let each worker produce four times as much, total bootmaking jobs barely budged. But two-thirds of the old occupations vanished and were replaced by new ones. The

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17:12

The July Jobs Report Should Worry You | Diving In

Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers ·

2026/08/07

The July jobs report just dropped, and it's time to worry. Markets expected around 80,000 new jobs — instead, the economy lost 23,000, and revisions to the prior two months erased another 100,000 we thought we had. In this video, Justin Wolfers break down what's really going on beneath the headline: the drop in government jobs might be statistical noise, essentially all private-sector job growth is coming from healthcare and social assistance, and the falling unemployment rate is actually bad

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