Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

Platypus Economics
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From world events to everyday decisions, economics explains it all. Platypus Economics makes it clear, useful, and actually fun.

  1. 1d ago

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

    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 80,000, and earlier months got revised down too.  Then Stacey talks to Justin about how lab-grown diamonds have absolutely crushed prices in this luxury industry (a $6,000 stone now sells for $10 at Walmart). This prompted a fascinating discussion on the diamond-water paradox, thinking at the margin, and why the AI shock to "cognitive work" may be the labor market's version of the same thing.  Finally, Justin and Stacey cap off the episode with another round of Chart versus Chart. Be sure to vote for your favorite on the channel homepage for Platypus Economics. Subscribe on YouTube https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics Subscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfersFollow Stacey @svankesmith See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  2. 2d ago

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

    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 intellectual culture across the developed world. Justin also unpacks monopsony power — what happens to your wages when only a handful of employers are hiring near you — with the classic example of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Then he gets to what we can actually do about it: stronger, more constructive unions, Australia's superannuation system that turns workers into owners of the stock market, and the "MeganBot 2000" thought experiment that shows why AI could either be utopia or dystopia depending on one very important thing — ownership. Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  3. 3d ago

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

    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 is real and still stands. Then he sizes what it means for you: a five-point drop in labor's share works out to about $10,000 a year in lost wages for the average worker — while the gains flow overwhelmingly to the very top, where the richest households collect over half of all capital income. Why is this happening? Giant firms that grow sales faster than payroll, weaker worker bargaining power, and globalization that lets your job move elsewhere. And now AI could either make you more productive and better paid — or automate your job and hand the upside to owners. How we slice that pie is up to us. Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers Cited Research:The Rise of Pass-Throughs and the Decline of the Labor Share: https://zidar.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf3371/files/syzz2022.pdfNot a Typical Firm: Capital–Labor Substitution and Firms’ Labor Shares: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/HubmerRestrepo_NotTypicalFirm_Oct2023.pdfAutomation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor: https://shapingwork.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/acemoglu-restrepo-2019-automation-and-new-tasks-how-technology-displaces-and-reinstates-labor.pdf One more thing: When I create these videos, I often crunch a few numbers in Stata, with whom I’ve got a paid partnership. Today, I used it to compare labor's share of income with and without depreciation. You can follow along with me here: https://platypuseconomics.com/stata/labor_share_worksheet.pdf See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  4. 3d ago

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

    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 confirmation: prices are still rising quickly, just about the way everyone thought they would. Here's what it means for you. Prices are outpacing wages, so real (inflation-adjusted) pay has fallen over the past year — the average paycheck buys less than it did twelve months ago. Energy is the main culprit: gas is up 25% over the year, diesel 39%, and airfares have shot up on the back of it. If you're flying anytime soon, that ticket is a whole lot pricier. Justin also digs into the tariff story, the burrito discourse, a record 16% drop in lettuce prices, and the Fed's tough spot between stubborn inflation and slowing employment growth. Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  5. Aug 8

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

    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 cordswainer disappeared; the factory foreman, machinist, and riveter arrived. In our moment, that's the translator seeing wages fall and the "prompt engineer" rising in their place. The good news: a bigger pie usually means bigger servings for workers — China's incomes rose more than tenfold as it industrialized. The catch is pace. If AI really replaces half of white-collar work in five years, as some tech CEOs claim, that's a disruption bigger than COVID or the financial crisis. ustin's plain advice: become the most AI-savvy person in your workplace, keep your skills broad rather than narrow, and double down on the basics — because AI will not take your job, but someone using AI might.  Link to Hillary Vipond's original research: https://github.com/HillaryVipond/JMP/blob/main/Technological_Unemployment_in_Victorian_Britain_VipondH.pdf Subscribe — it's a broad, diversified skill set for your feed, and it never gets automated away:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  6. Aug 7

    The July Jobs Report Should Worry You | Diving In

    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 news once you look at labor force participation. Justin also digs into a wonkier puzzle — why the payroll and household surveys are telling two different stories about American employment — and compare the US to Canada, where job growth has been roughly four times faster despite a tariff war hitting them harder. Plus: what this all means for the Fed's next move, and why (despite what you may have heard) these numbers are not being faked. Subscribe — it's one hire we'll never have to revise down:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  7. Aug 6

    How Early Access to Trump’s Truths Will Drain Ordinary Investors | Diving In

    Justin unpacks the new $100,000-a-year Truth Social API—a special "pipe" that will allow the president's posts to hit Wall Street computers a second or so before the rest of us see them. In this episode of Diving In, he explains why one second is an eternity for a high-frequency trading computer: it can read a post announcing a strike on Iran, figure out what it means for markets, and sell before the news reaches your phone. Justin lays out three problems. It's bad for democracy — a decision your taxes paid for gets sold to whoever writes a six-figure check, to a company in which President Trump is a major shareholder. It's corrupt on its face — the president is monetizing information he holds only because he works for you. And it's bad economics: once you know some traders have paid for an edge (remember teleprompter guy?), you stop wanting to trade at all, and markets that run on trust start to wither. At the end of the day, those Wall Street firms will get rich, and that money has to come from somewhere. And if you're not the one with the early feed, it's probably coming from your retirement account. (A confession: I think that I said that users pay the President's company $100,000 per year. I've subsequently read the price is $100,000 per month. So it's still a problem, but 12 times larger.) Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  8. Aug 5

    What Victorian Bootmakers Can Teach Us About The Future of Work | Diving In

    When the CEO of Anthropic warns AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, it's easy to picture the destruction. Justin Wolfers wants you to picture the other half of the story. In this episode of Diving In, he uses a carefully researched study of Victorian bootmaking — where a labor-saving sewing machine let each worker make four times as many boots — to show how a technology can completely remake an industry while total employment barely moves. The numbers are almost eerie: about 220,000 bootmakers in 1851, and 213,000 in 1911. Yet beneath that calm surface, nearly everything changed. Cheaper boots meant more boots (that's Jevons paradox), old craft occupations vanished, and an almost identical number of new factory jobs appeared — in new places, done by the next generation. The incumbents mostly got to retire in their old trade. None of this predicts what AI will do to your job. But it widens the range of outcomes you should take seriously, and it flags the one thing that may matter most: the pace of change. If AI moves slowly, the creative side of creative destruction has time to arrive. If it moves fast, that gentler adjustment gets much harder. Either way, it’s important to also ask what gets created, not just what gets destroyed. Link to Hillary Vipond's original research: https://github.com/HillaryVipond/JMP/blob/main/Technological_Unemployment_in_Victorian_Britain_VipondH.pdf Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From world events to everyday decisions, economics explains it all. Platypus Economics makes it clear, useful, and actually fun.

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  • Creator
    Platypus Economics
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    98
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    2026 iHeartMedia, Inc. © Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from iHeartMedia
  • Show Website
    Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

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