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 (500 alleged). The math never gets close.But the stakes here are far greater than any one report. The Census decides how many congressional representatives your state gets and underpins nearly every official number you rely on. When a statistical agency starts producing propaganda, Justin argues, you're on the same road as Argentina, Greece, and Russia — and your trust in every government figure, from inflation to your representation in Congress, is on the line. Subscribe — it's one number around here nobody's fudging:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.comFollow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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 Social Security numbers means guessing who's who. Apply the Census Bureau's own historical false-match rate of 0.146% and you'd "find" about 21,000 apparent noncitizen voters — even if every single person voted legally. Add outdated naturalization records (the report itself flagged and fixed 64,000 such cases) and the whole 24,000 could vanish. It's counting smoke alarms and calling them fires. Trusted government statistics are an essential piece of infrastructure on which American prosperity depends. If the institutions that tell you where poverty is rising or how the economy is doing get bent to serve whoever's in power, you lose the ability to hold that power to account — and that's a cost you pay whether you voted or not. Subscribe — it's a truth-finding institution with a much smaller error rate:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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 language to "tighten the noose" around Cuba. Same playbook, six decades apart. Here's the problem: the CIA studied the Cuba embargo for 20 years and concluded the sanctions "have not met any of their objectives." Castro stayed in power until 2008; the regime is still there today. Broader research is just as sobering — even optimistic studies find sanctions produce political change only about a third of the time, and almost never regime change against an entrenched authoritarian. One study of Iranian influencers found broad sanctions actually increased pro-government sentiment. Why should you care? Because sanctions don't stop at the missile factory. There's no border checkpoint that lets in baby formula but not weapons. When you choke an economy, food, medicine, and family remittances get squeezed too — and every time America uses dollar access as an ultimatum, other countries get one more reason to build a system that doesn't need us, quietly eroding the financial leverage that makes your dollar so powerful in the first place. Subscribe — it's the one economic lifeline we promise never to sever:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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 forget about it. Justin also digs into why your paycheck feels like it's losing the race even when, on average, it isn't. At least half of Americans saw wages beat prices last year — but the gains mostly go to people who switch jobs, and in today's low-hire, low-fire labor market, that door is barely open. So the raise you'd need to keep up is harder to reach right now, which could help explain why a record 71% of Americans expect prices to outrun their incomes (something that almost never actually happens). What the $20 Burrito Debate Gets Wrong About Affordability https://omny.fm/shows/platypus-economics/burrito-gate-and-the-affordability-paradox-diving-in   🔒 Get 20% off DeleteMe by going to https://joindeleteme.com/WOLFERS and use code WOLFERS to protect your privacy! 🙌 Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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 is actually doing, and what it all signals. Two forces are driving yields up — heavy borrowing for the AI buildout, and a federal deficit at post-war highs outside of COVID and the Great Recession, even as the economy is doing okay. Markets are quietly asking whether the government is serious about paying them back. Here's what's at stake for you: when the government crowds the credit line, the rate on your next mortgage, car loan, and credit card goes up, and a bigger interest bill each month means less cash to get by. Then there's Bessent's move to double a bond-buying program from $2 billion to $4 billion a day — routine plumbing, or an attempt to muffle the warning the bond market is sending? Justin's honest answer: right now, nobody knows. Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicsSubscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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 different real-wage measures, the Atlanta Fed's tracker of the same workers over time, and price and wage growth data from 12 countries over 60 years, he shows that when prices rise, your wages almost always catch up — and pretty quickly. But since most people experience wage and price hikes as two separate acts in a psychological drama, it can feel like your raise got stolen. Now, a record 71% of Americans believe their income won’t keep pace with prices. And the bundle of bad policies raising the price of your burrito is making matters worse. Subscribe — it's the one upgrade that won't cost you the guac:on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomicson Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers 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 explore the relationship between rising prices and wages in America and 11 other countries. Click through here: https://platypuseconomics.com/stata/wages_and_inflation_oecd_worksheet.pdf if you'd like to follow along!

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

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

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

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