This week on TrendsTalk, Taylor St. Germain break down how different income brackets are handling rising costs in food, housing, and healthcare. While higher earners continue to see spending remain below historical averages, lower and middle-income households are facing mounting affordability challenges. What does this divide mean for consumer spending and long-term economic growth? 

Income Brackets and Spending Challenges

Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and co-creator of Freakonomics—the cultural phenomenon that, over the past 20 years, has grown into a global franchise, changing how millions think, revealing the hidden side of everything, and challenging us to question what we know.

Stephen J. Dubner

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi discusses fossil fuel subsidies with Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor and cofounder of the 2035 Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They talk about how subsidies on goods such as gasoline and diesel lead to lower prices for consumers. However, because these subsidies encourage the use of fossil fuels, reforming such policies is important when promoting the use of renewable energy. Mahdavi explores why many attempts to reform fossil fuel subsidies have failed, and he proposes potential avenues for addressing the weaknesses of reforms which could lead to failure of the subsidies.

References and recommendations:

“Fossil fuel subsidy reforms have become more fragile” by Paasha Mahdavi, Michael L. Ross, and Evelyn Simoni; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02283-4

“Why Do Governments Tax or Subsidize Fossil Fuels?” by Paasha Mahdavi, Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez, and Michael L. Ross; https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/719272

“Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet” by Kate Marvel; https://www.harpercollins.com/products/human-nature-kate-marvel

“Climate Change and National Security” TEDx talk by Josh Busby; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8neK0G0NJ8

Understanding Fossil Fuel Subsidies Around the World, with Paasha Mahdavi

forwhatitsworth (180bpm)

In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, Carl Benedikt Frey argues that progress, throughout history, has not just depended on technological innovations but also on the flexibility of our institutions.

Frey is the associate professor of AI & Work at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Future of Work program. In his new book, he explores how technological progress has unfolded throughout history, from the Qin Dynasty to Silicon Valley. He argues that progress is always fragile, resting on achieving a delicate balance between decentralized innovation and centralized scaling of new technologies.

In his conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses how to achieve institutional flexibility, the hurdles we must overcome to turn AI into progress, and what lessons history holds for business leaders looking to navigate the conundrum of innovating versus scaling.

Key topics discussed: 

[01:15] The fragility of progress
[05:35] The role of decentralization and centralization
[11:24] How to achieve institutional flexibility
[17:29] The hurdles to overcome for turning AI into progress
[21:04] How business leaders can navigate the conundrum of innovating vs. scaling
[25:00] Why progress might not yet end

***

About the BCG Henderson Institute

The BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

How Progress Ends with Carl Benedikt Frey

Welcome to The Weekly Top 3 - our look at the top 3 things on our mind here at Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets - for the week of September 15, 2025.

This week, our top 3 issues are these: 1) we explain why a recent op-ed by Senator Cathy Giessel proposes to make Alaska's fiscal situation even worse than it already is (2:22); 2) we review recent data from the Department of Revenue that is telling us production taxes remain broken even well beyond the current 10-year revenue forecast (19:54); and 3) while the recent headlines are interesting, we explain what information we and other industry observers are really waiting for about the AKLNG project (37:29).

The Weekly Top 3 (9.15.2025)

Bringing nations together to maintain peace and security and raise living standards for all seemed a utopian idea in the early 20th century. Still, geopolitics, economics and vision by world leaders eventually came together to make it a reality. But what happens when the great powers that have been supporting the multilateral system decide it’s not working for them anymore? Danny Quah has studied the increase in global economic tensions and sees the rising East as an important factor. Quah is the Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics at the National University of Singapore. In this podcast, he says that while economics and geopolitics worked together to build the multilateral rules-based system, they are now working together to break it apart.  

Transcript: https://bit.ly/4grrx9n 

Read the article in Finance &amp; Development magazine: IMF.org/fandd

Danny Quah on Rethinking Multilateralism

Why has Donald Trump consistently attacked the Federal Reserve and its chair Jerome Powell? And was the US central bank ever truly "independent"? Geopolitical economist Radhika Desai discusses with economist Michael Hudson.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fcwg6eFGu4

This is part of the program Geopolitical Economy Hour. You can watch other episodes of the show here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP

Radhika's website: https://RadhikaDesai.com
Michael's website: https://Michael-Hudson.com

What does Trump really want from the Federal Reserve?

This week on TrendsTalk, Taylor St. Germain from ITR Economics explains the concept of “profitless prosperity”, a future where businesses see revenue growth but shrinking profit margins due to rising costs. While economic growth is expected through 2028, inflation and cost pressures may limit profitability.

How can your business avoid this trap? Taylor outlines strategies for balancing pricing power with productivity and efficiency, and why developing a three-year plan is critical for protecting margins in an inflationary environment.

Profitless Prosperity: Revenue Growth, Margin Pressure

This is the latest in my series of podcasts explaining how economics works in the credit crunch and now virus pandemic era. This week I give my thoughts on.  On 1 September, 86 MILLION bank accounts will be suspended in Vietnam because their owners have not registered for biometric digital ID, including fingerprints and facial recognition.

Perhaps you could talk about that on Friday. It does seem odd that countries like the PIGS have lower or similar bond yields Vs much higher rated France.

Even 
@SkyNews
 are saying the 
@bankofengland
 sale of gilts, which they announced on the EVE of the Mini-Budget, had a huge impact.

And the BOE themselves admitted that two-thirds of the market spike in 2022 was down to their failure to regulate pensions.

Morgan Stanley ‘Fletcher’ CIO suggest portfolio 60 Equities 40 Bonds is changing to 60,20,20 bonds % lowered as other assets Gold, BTC included.
Bad for Gilts.
Q: Budget The ‘Torsten’ Bell Tolls for all, do you see Reeves  increase starting tax band to 21p even 22p?




I was scapegoated for the BOE's failings - but the media don't want to acknowledge it as it exposes the false narrative they pushed.





Notayesmanspodcast346

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi discusses subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) with Sheila Olmstead, a professor at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and a senior faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Olmstead evaluates the complicated nature of the 45Q policy, a federal subsidy available to firms that implement CCS. While CCS subsidy programs promote the reduction of carbon emissions, Olmstead identifies these subsidies as having the potential to financially burden the federal government, discourage clean energy projects, and motivate more pollution.

References and recommendations:

“How to design better incentives for carbon capture and storage in the United States” by Sheila M. Olmstead, Benjamin D. Leibowicz, Charles F. Mason, Andrew R. Waxman, Emily Grubert, HR Huber-Rodriguez, and Joseph Stemmler; https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2404677122

“Night Watch” by Jayne Anne Phillips; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/540650/night-watch-pulitzer-prize-winner-by-jayne-anne-phillips/

Airing New Concerns with US Carbon Capture Policies, with Sheila Olmstead

Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.
 
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.
 
In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.
 
Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.

The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981 (Sample)

Welcome to The Weekly Top 3 - our look at the top 3 things on our mind here at Alaskans for Sustainable Budgets - for the week of September 22, 2025.

This week, our top 3 issues are these: 1) we explain why we think the Alaska media has completely whiffed on this year's real PFD story (2:10); 2) we explain why the North Slope renaissance isn't producing the benefits for Alaskans they were led to expect (16:31); and 3) we discuss what the termination of the Santos/ADNOC deal likely means for Santos' Alaska Pikka project (35:50).

The Weekly Top 3 (9.22.2025)

hangman

INTRODUCING METALLECON:
an American, genre-defying metal band with a twist: they turn the world of economics into face-melting riffs and growls. METALLECON delivers a unique education—Policy Economics 101 meets Hybrid Metal 201. Their songs tackle everything from supply and demand to market crashes, making the most intimidating graphs & charts feel like an international mosh anthem.
------
LYRICS:
------
Why Coffee Beans Be Double?  
Listen close, I’ve got a story to tell,  
About a little bean we know so well.  
It fuels our mornings
Our late-night schemes,  
But the price keeps climbing
Or so it seems.  

The world is shifting, the weather’s strange,  
And yet we pay, we bend, we change.  
So let’s take a moment, cup in hand,  
To learn the lesson, to understand.  

To learn the lesson, to understand.  

We grow no beans, we import the dream,  
Every morning addicted to sacred caffeine.  
The heat is rising, the harvest is thin,  
The climate is breaking, 
The taste wearing thin.  

Demand climbs higher, like a wildfire,  
Everyone chasing that daily wire,  
The fields are failing
The crops run dry,  
But the price keeps soaring 
To the open sky.  

WHY COFFEE BEANS BE DOUBLE?!  
WHY COFFEE BEANS BE DOUBLE?!  
Madman plan, the head of the table,  
We drink, we shake, 
We’re broke, unstable!  

Step one: the people who sell it pay.  
Step two: the people who move it pay.  
Step three: the people who buy it pay.  
Step four: everyone loses in the fray.  

By the time it hits my hand,  
That cup is four times 
What it should have been.  
This isn’t growth — 
It’s chains on our wrists,  
Policy written with an iron fist.  

TAX IT! STACK IT! 
BREAK OUR BACKS WITH IT!  
FOUR TIMES THE PRICE 
FOR A BEAN IN A BAG!  

Madman smiles with the pen in his grip,  
We scream, we burn, but we still sip!  

You don’t study it, you repeat it.  
You don’t fight it, you eat it.  
And you’ll pay double for the privilege!  

WHY COFFEE BEANS BE DOUBLE?!  
WHY COFFEE BEANS BE DOUBLE?!  
Madman plan at the head of the table,  
We drink, we shake, 
We’re broke, unstable!  

Class is ending, 
The story’s told,  
You listened, maybe, 
You’ll remember, or not hold.  
The price keeps climbing, 
It's all the same,  
Double, triple, quadruple — the game.  

Step by step, cup in hand,  
Lesson learned, try to understand.  
Coffee economics, madness by design,  
Now go pay the price, and call it fine.

Go pay the price 
And call it fine.

----------------------------









METALLECON | WHY COFFEE BEANS BE DOUBLE?

From student testing to social structure, China’s education system influences far more than college admissions. In this episode of China of Tomorrow, Liqian Ren sits down with co-authors Hongbin Li, Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, and Ruixue Jia, Professor of Economics at the University of California to discuss The Highest Exam, their new book exploring how the Gaokao (college entry exam) system helps explain China’s growth model, inequality, and policy challenges. 

 
Learn more: https://www.wisdomtree.com/investments/multimedia/china-of-tomorrow-podcasts  

 
Please see the WisdomTree Glossary for Definitions of terms and indexes: https://www.wisdomtree.com/glossary

The System That Shapes China

This week's episode of the Business Brief podcast examines how stars like Taylor Swift have highlighted the role of women in the economy. Then, an expert discusses how the trucking industry is navigating economic challenges.

Economic agency in the 'Swiftie' era

This is the latest in my series of podcasts explaining how economics works in the credit crunch and now virus pandemic era. This week I give my thoughts on.  Reform plans for the Bank of England. Why has the Gold price risen so much? Why do people think the price of gas drives UK electricity costs? Where do I think interest-rates and inflation are going?

Notayesmanspodcast347

In Episode 35 of the Sustainability Uncovered podcast, we delve into why banks are leaving net-zero coalitions and recap on World Green Building Week 2025.

Your edie co-hosts are Sarah George (content editor) and Sidhi Mittal (senior reporter). 

Our expert guests this episode are:
- Triodos Bank’s chief economist, Hans Stegeman
- The Building Research Establishment’s (BRE) head of responsible business, Kaie Small-Warner.

Sustainability Uncovered explores and recaps some of the most inspiring and insightful sustainability and climate action stories from across the globe. The show features leader interviews, need-to-know round-ups, listener quizzes and more – all wrapped up into monthly episodes.

Whether you’re a business leader, climate expert, environmental professional, youth activist, or just have a passion for all things green – this podcast is for you!

Say hello: podcast@fav-house.com

Episode 35: Designing greener buildings and navigating banking’s net-zero backlash

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
not a big fan of the government
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
-
-
-
from the visionary minds of 
@7aerys & @faeble-online

Listen to IMF economists and other experts discuss key economic and financial issues of the day.

Missouri Business Alert’s Business Brief is a podcast covering business news and issues shaping the state.

Geopolitical Economy Report is an independent news outlet that provides original journalism and analysis to understand the changing world.

Design Matters by Debbie Millman features interviews with designers, artists and cultural leaders, including Lawrence Weiner, Barbara Kruger, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Kandel, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Michael Arad, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Paula Scher, Steven Heller, Jonah Lehrer, among others.

In 2011, Design Matters received the People’s Design Award from the prestigious Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards.

Subscribe to Design Matters for free on iTunes, where new episodes are uploaded weekly: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

This is my series of podcasts explaining how economics works in the credit crunch era.

Resources Radio is a weekly podcast by Resources for the Future. Each week we talk to leading experts about climate change, electricity, ecosystems, and more, making the latest research accessible to everyone.

Inspiring and thought-provoking conversations with leading thinkers about influential ideas on business, technology, economics, and science. Hosted by Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, and Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Global Chief Economist of BCG.

For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Our mission: We provide the best economic intelligence to reduce risk and drive practical and profitable business decisions.

SINCERE IMPOSTER writes, performs and/or produces a curious mixture of New Wave, Dance, EDM, Folk Rock, Metal, Art Pop, Electro, Dreamwave & Experimental World Pop. Collectively, it's a genre known as QUIRKPOP --- Music that makes you say, "What the hell is this?"

The band currently consists of two members, both living within the same body, sharing a similar existence. They identify as Danielle & Dave. They are both psychologically and musically confused. However, both are extremely and unapologetically sincere. 

Influences include Weird Al, Nathan Fielder, David Lynch, Rosalia, Monatik, Atarashii Gakko!, Rammstein, T-Pain and T-Swift. Their favorite inventions are the vacuum and the peach pitter. Their father is simply known as Vessel... who may be an entity or a god.



Welcome to the China of Tomorrow podcast, hosted by WisdomTree's Director of Modern Alpha, Liqian Ren. Tune-in now to discover our on-the-ground insights and high level analysis on emerging markets from China to India and Beyond.

Investing involves risks including loss of principal. This material represents the opinions of the participants at a specific time and is not intended to forecast future events or guarantee future results and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Liquian Ren is a registered rep of Foreside Fund Services, LLC.

What are the climate stories that really matter? What breakthrough innovations and ambitious business initiatives could genuinely accelerate the transition to a net-zero, circular economy? And who’ll take home the coveted Big Fat Sustainability Uncovered Quiz of the Year trophy? Join the edie team for this long-running show which makes the big climate issues bite-sized.

Sustainability Uncovered uncovers some of most inspiring and insightful sustainability and climate action stories from across the globe. The show features live in-the-studio guests, leader interviews, need-to-know round-ups, listener quizzes and more – all wrapped up into monthly episodes.

Whether you’re a business leader, climate expert, environmental professional, youth activist, or just someone with a passion for all things sustainability and climate action – this podcast is for you!

For edie's 1:1 interviews with leaders and special audio features, search 'edie Extra'.

New tracks tagged #ECONOMICS