Justin Wolfers

As incomes rise, spending patterns change.⁣ ⁣ People don't keep buying more wheat or endless washing machines. They spend more on health care, education, child care, and aged care.⁣ ⁣ Check out the full analysis here: https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/the-pink-collar-economy-is-here

If men's job growth is lagging, one response is straightforward: move toward the occupations that are growing.⁣ ⁣ Labor markets change. Successful workers and societies adapt to those changes.⁣ ⁣ Check out the full analysis: https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/the-pink-collar-economy-is-here

Care work is often treated as somehow less "real" than making tangible goods. Nonsense. It's physically demanding, emotionally demanding, and often highly skilled. That's real work, mate.⁣ ⁣ Check out the full analysis here: https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/the-pink-collar-economy-is-here⁣

Since Trump returned to office, 86% of net new payroll jobs have gone to women. Women now hold slightly more nonfarm payroll jobs than men — 50.02%.⁣ ⁣ The labor market has shifted. The question is whether our policies and politics have noticed.

A windfall profits tax sounds great as a one-off.⁣ ⁣ But once investors expect it to happen again, it's no longer a windfall tax—it's just a profits tax. And that can discourage the investment you actually want.

“There is no price tag in the economy as tall as gas prices, and that you pass as often.”⁣ ⁣ Visibility matters. Economics isn't just about prices; it's about attention. Gas prices shape how people feel about the economy because they're impossible to ignore.

The problem with a gas tax holiday? Lower gas prices encourage more driving.⁣ ⁣ If the goal is relief, send checks based on last year's gas spending instead. Similar help for households, without increasing demand.

A gas tax holiday talks about 18.4¢ while ignoring the $1.50 problem. That's politics, not policy. And half of it likely goes straight to oil company profits. Congress knows this. Some just hope you don't.

Economists call this diminishing marginal utility. The first dollars change your life. The billionth doesn't. So the argument stops being about consumption and starts being about power.

"If what you want is rate cuts, here's the thing you don't do. You don't go and bomb a country in the Middle East upsetting global energy markets and pushing prices up across the board."

Politicians love visible gestures. Economists ask the annoying follow-up: does it work? ⁣ ⁣ On gas tax holidays, the answer was basically no then, and no now.

Two weeks in, Platypus Economics is doing well. But to really succeed, we need sponsors. It's simple economics, really. Insight: I bet some of my Platypals work in the real world, with real jobs, and advertising budgets. If that's you, reach out: sponsor@platypuseconomics.com

If there’s a water shortage, don’t subsidize showers. If there’s a blackout, don’t make AC cheaper. If there’s an oil shortage, don’t cut gas taxes. Prices are helping signal scarcity. A gas tax holiday weakens that signal right when it matters most.

Even if Middle East tensions ease, futures markets are signaling oil prices will stay elevated for months — maybe years.⁣ ⁣ That's the "Iran tax." And it's not going away anytime soon, regardless of what the White House says about prices coming down.

A 60-year low in sentiment is a big deal because the baseline is already tough: this survey has lived through recessions, inflation, wars, and financial crises. And yet this is worse.⁣ ⁣ Read the full analysis on Substack: https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com/p/consumer-sentiment-hits-a-record

If you remove phones, you haven’t removed boredom, status competition, or conflict. You’ve just changed the setting. That’s why the first-year effects can look messy.

The lesson here isn’t just about phones in schools. It’s about human behavior: Take something away, and people usually replace it with something else.⁣ ⁣ Economists call this substitution.

Short-run discomfort ≠ long-run harm.⁣ ⁣ Phone bans make students feel worse at first — then better. By year two, well-being rebounds above baseline. Turns out kids (like all of us) just needed time to adapt.

Right now, the AI boom mostly shows up as investment: chips, data centers, infrastructure. ⁣ ⁣ The real question is whether those foundations eventually help workers and firms do more with less.

"The big story right now is oil. The next story is food." ⁣ ⁣ That's the transmission channel people miss: if fertilizer is "caught on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz," food prices can be next.

The key distinction is between nominal wages and real wages. Nominal wages are the dollars on your paycheck. Real wages are what those dollars can actually buy.⁣ ⁣ If prices rise faster than pay, you’re going backwards.

Think of an oil shock like a stone tossed in a pond. First splash: gasoline. Then the ripples: airfares, delivery costs, packaging, groceries, construction materials.⁣ ⁣ The ripples are real. Just give them a moment to spread.

Pete Hegseth’s focused on the cost of the bomb. I’m more interested in the size of the economic crater.⁣ ⁣ And that crater may be 10 to 100 times larger.⁣ ⁣ For many families, that translates into thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of dollars.

"If we don't have immigration and population growth, the number of people who can pay off that debt just went down." That's the key mechanism.

AI doubles your productivity—go to the beach or make twice as much. As an economist, I love it.⁣ ⁣ But then I talked to my kids. They didn't ask for this. And honestly? I get that now too.

“He failed to understand the interconnectedness of the world economy.” ⁣ ⁣ That was true in the trade war, and it’s true now.

Consumer sentiment is near a 75-year low.⁣ ⁣ But increasingly, these surveys may be measuring partisanship as much as economics.⁣ ⁣ In other words, they may be asking “Do you like the president?” as much as “Do you like the economy?”

I am a very serious economist with very serious thoughts about the future of the United States.

"You can't say the cost of a puppy is $200 because that was the adoption fee." The Pentagon's $25B price tag does exactly that — it ignores veterans' care, disability payments, and decades of interest. The true cost of war shows up long after the fighting stops.

Kevin Warsh once argued for rates that were too high for the economy, and he now seems politically reluctant to contradict Trump. That's a worrying combo.⁣ ⁣ We'll find out soon enough which one shows up to work.

Why oil? Because worsening war news tends to threaten energy supply. That pushes oil prices up. So rising oil isn’t just about petrol; it’s a signal about geopolitical risk hitting the global economy.

Opportunity cost is Econ 101 with real stakes: the cost of a choice is not just dollars spent, but what you gave up. For war, that means not only destruction, but all the prosperity that never gets a chance to exist.

A lot of AI debate gets stuck on whether the technology is “real.” The more useful question is economic: if it works, who benefits, how fast, and under what rules?

Courts saying “go to Congress” is not courts banning tariffs. It’s courts saying the Constitution still exists. That matters for markets too: the rule of law lowers uncertainty; arbitrary power raises it.

Two things can be true at once: the U.S. is more energy independent than in the 1970s, and an energy shock can still raise inflation. Independence isn’t immunity.

Some simple economics of the Met Gala: $42 million raised sounds enormous. It is. But economics is about compared with what? If the Met Gala creates far more value for fashion brands than for the museum, then the ticket price is probably too low.

The striking claim here isn’t just that AI is useful. It’s that it may be ‘industrial revolution’ scale. If that’s even half right, the issue isn’t one occupation. It’s how work gets reorganized across the economy.

Debt by itself is a lousy guide. A $500,000 mortgage can be manageable or terrifying depending on salary, rates, and future earnings. Same with countries: the real question isn’t “how much debt?” but “can they carry it?”

Deficits aren’t automatically virtuous or villainous. They’re a tool. The sensible question isn’t “deficit: good or bad?” It’s “what problem is it solving?” Econ is annoyingly context-dependent like that.

Huge thanks to Brian O'Keefe and @nytimes.com for taking this seriously. To my team at Initial Digital. To @betseystevenson.bsky.social, who is willing to bet the family savings on a dream. And to YOU, for coming along for this adventure.

The platypus has a sixth sense — it picks up signals invisible to everyone else. That's what good economics gives you. The promise: see clearly in murky waters.

Announcing: Platypus Economics — a Substack, YouTube channel, and podcast built around one idea: Economics is one of the most useful, surprising, and weirdly beautiful subjects in the world. It belongs to everyone — not just the people who happened to take it in college. 🧵

One more sleep until I can tell you what I've been working on. Can't wait.

This isn’t just about who gets a tax cut. It’s about who bears the long-run burden. Higher prices for basics plus temporary relief is a rotten deal for working households.

When politicians zoom in from the whole economy to one carton of eggs, that's not a macro forecast. That's culinary cherry-picking.

"Stocks just had a great month because they previously had a terrible month." That’s not a boom; that’s a rebound from a scare.

AI is booming. The broader economy, not so much. That matters because workers and small businesses don’t all live inside one tech boom.

Higher oil prices are like your worst group project partner: they show up late, make everything more expensive, and then leave the central bank to clean up the mess.

"Every time the president leans into belligerence... the stock market falls." Markets can’t vote, but they can mark down the price of risk.

Why do economists obsess over uncertainty? Because waiting is easy. If the news might clear soon, firms delay big irreversible decisions. Multiply that across the economy and growth softens.

For families and firms, this isn’t academic. If the people steering monetary policy are chosen for cable-news combat rather than analytic clarity, the cost shows up in jobs, prices, and uncertainty.

Wall Street is basically my mum with a report card: expected a D, got a C, called it progress.

Private credit now wants retail money: because apparently the lesson from finance was, 'What if we made shadow banking available in family size?'

Social Security isn't a lockbox problem — it's a demographics problem. Fewer young workers, more retirees. That's the math. Simple, but not easy to fix.

I regret to inform the junior coders that I, an economist with Wi-Fi, have gone on a Claude code bender. Great for productivity. Slightly less great if you’re the young worker trying to get a foot in the door.

The important macroeconomic question isn't: Have charges against Powell been dropped? It's this: Can the next Fed chair make an unpopular decision without fear of jail? The President has made no promises he won't jail the next guy, so no, the Fed isn't independent.

Fed chair: one of the rare jobs where a bad call can echo through the entire world economy. So yes, I am old-fashioned enough to think boyish good looks and "no regrets" might be underqualified.

If the job interview is "Will you do my bidding?" the answer isn't central bank independence. It's central bank karaoke: the chair just sings the president's tune.

A B+ economy with a recession-sized deficit is like showing up to a Sunday barbecue in full scuba gear. Technically you’re dressed, but something doesn't add up.

Two things can be true at once: private credit isn't identical to 2008-era shadow banking, and some of the same vulnerabilities may be creeping back. Similar enough to inspect closely.

A terrific sign for business confidence is when "not wiping civilizations off the map" counts as good news. Low bar. Somehow still doing limbo under it.

Private credit is like plumbing behind the drywall — the water still flows, but you lose the gauges. You might not notice the slow leak until the ceiling stains appear. That's the trade-off worth understanding.

AI isn’t the whole story, but it matters. Some sectors are still doing very well, and markets are weighted toward firms whose profits may hold up or improve. The economy is broader than one headline.

Bottom line: the issue isn't only what Iran can do. It's that everyone now knows what Iran can do. Revealed vulnerability changes bargaining power.

Private credit is the bit of finance that’s not banks and not public bond markets, but is now big enough to matter for everyone else. Translation: a lot of business lending migrated somewhere less visible.

Sen. Warren: "Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?" Handsome Kevin: "ummm... errr... " His response raises real questions about whether Warsh is independent of the President and if he has the courage to tell hard truths.

Optimism is not a policy tool. If there’s no clear timeline for resolution, energy markets will price in uncertainty. And uncertainty is costly because firms can’t plan and households can’t budget.

Optimism is not a policy tool. If there’s no clear timeline for resolution, energy markets will price in uncertainty. And uncertainty is costly because firms can’t plan and households can’t budget.