The Biden administration is finally wrapping up its review of President Donald Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports. It will keep those tariffs, and add more on things like electric vehicles.
The consumer website WalletHub compared 182 cities based upon professional opportunities and quality of life. Atlanta also ranked high for growth rates in median household income.
Georgia tax collections continued their downward spiral last month, falling 5.4% from April of last year, the state Department of Revenue reported Friday.
The U.S. Treasury ran a surplus last month, thanks in part to the April 15th tax deadline. But the federal government is still expected to end the year more than $1.5 trillion in the red.
Karen MacDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she sees something odd outside of her window: A group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard tells her that her home no longer belongs to her. It didn't matter that she'd been paying her mortgage for 17 years, and was current on it. She was a nurse with a good job and had raised her kids here. But this was a foreclosure sale, and she was going to lose her house.
Karen had fallen victim to what's called a zombie second mortgage. Homeowners think these loans are long dead. But then the loans come back to life because they get bought up, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, by debt collectors who then move to collect and foreclose on people's homes.
On today's episode: An NPR investigation reveals the practice to be widespread. Also, what are zombie mortgages? Is all this legal? And is there any way for homeowners to fight the zombies?
This episode was hosted by Chris Arnold and Robert Smith. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang with help from Bob Little. And it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez with an assist from Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
According to a government report released this week, Congress has until 2033 to fix Social Security before retirees receive an automatic benefit cut of about 21%. This is a more optimistic estimate from a previous report that stated the Social Security Trust Fund would run dry sooner, but it still paints a grim picture for a program that millions of retirees rely on.
Today, NPR's Chief Economics Correspondent joins the show to explain what exactly lawmakers can do to fix Social Security and why proposed solutions might be easier said than done.
Related episodes: What would it take to fix retirement? (Apple / Spotify)
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
The lead federal administrator for the nation's rail lines said Georgia needs to politically rally around passenger rail to get trains as fast as neighboring states.
Why do video game workers offer labor at a discount? How can you design a video game for blind and sighted players? Does that design have lessons for other industries?
These and other questions about the business of video games answered in todays episode. The Indicator just wrapped a weeklong series decoding the economics of the video game industry, we're excerpting some highlights.
First, we meet some of the workers who are struggling with the heavy demands placed on them in their booming industry, and how they are fighting back.
Then, we check in on how game developers are pulling in new audiences by creatively designing for people who couldn't always play. How has accessibility become an increasingly important priority for game developers? And, how can more players join in the fun?
You can hear the rest of our weeklong series on the gaming industry at this link, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode was hosted by Wailin Wong, Darian Woods, and Adrian Ma. Corey Bridges produced this episode with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Kate Concannon, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez with help from Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
Back in 2019, The Indicator started checking in on with a Venezuelan economist Gabriela Saade. The economy was in freefall. The country was suffering from hyperinflation and a huge jump in poverty. Today, the U.S. faces a spike in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, many from Venezuela. So we check back in with Gabriela. Venezuela is due to go to the polls in July. We ask Gabriela and two other Venezuelans: what are economic conditions like at the moment? How has life changed since the pandemic? Some of the answers surprised us.
Social Security's finances have improved slightly in the last year. But the popular retirement program still faces big challenges including the threat of automatic benefit cuts in less than a decade.
What happens when small town politics collide with the climate crisis? And how do hazard maps—maps that show which homes in your neighborhood are at risk of getting destroyed or damaged by a natural disaster—come into play? On today's episode, how some people—from Indiana to Oregon to Alaska—are facing some very real concerns about insurance and the ability to sell their houses.
In Western Colorado, towns and farms are banding together to pay a hundred million dollars for water they don't intend to use. Today on the show, how scarcity, climate change and a first-dibs system of water management is forcing towns, farms and rural residents to get spendy.
