Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

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.
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This is a conversation between Justin and Larry Kotlikoff, fellow economist and host of the Economics Matters podcast. And it was a fun one, in which Larry encouraged Justin to look both backwards and forwards. Backward at some of the work he's most proud of, and forward at the growing challenges we face as an economy and a nation.
In the process, Justin and Larry philosophized over the role of economics and the duty of economists in helping tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time. This was the kind of conversation that reminded Justin why he fell in love with economics: it’s not the models or the math, but the chance to make sense of the lives we actually live.
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Larry's Substack: https://larrykotlikoff.substack.com/
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Justin and Stacey are back for Off the Clock — helping you figure out what economic news to actually worry about, what you can safely ignore, and where to find some silver linings.
This week was a big one for economic news and data. Justin starts by explaining to Stacey why this latest round of tariffs is the dumbest one yet. And Stacey brings in some reporting to highlight how small businesses are struggling under the weight of constant chaos and confusion.
Then they dig into the Fed and why markets reacted so poorly to Handsome Kevin’s press conference. Finally, Justin and Stacey discuss the latest, lackluster GDP numbers and compete in a “Chart vs. Chart” contest that you get to be the judge of.
02:42 More tariff chaos and confusion
23:53 The Fed vs The Market
34:16 A disappointing GDP report
41:05 Chart vs Chart — A Friendly Competition
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Recent changes to SNAP quietly cut food assistance from 4 million Americans — 1.5 million of them children (plus elderly, disabled, and other eligible recipients who were never the intended target). In this follow-up to his earlier video Diving In to SNAP cuts, Justin Wolfers answers follow-up questions and explains how the policy actually plays out for real people.
Justin walks through why administrative burdens do so much damage: when it's harder to apply, appeal, or bring in paperwork, the people who fall off are often the ones who need help the most. He unpacks the state incentives too: tell caseworkers to reduce payment errors but say nothing about wrongful denials, states get cautious and just boot folks off. And because states run balanced budgets, shifting SNAP costs to them breaks its role as an automatic stabilizer — in the next recession, when more people need food, spending will fall exactly when it should rise.
The stakes are personal. That $6-a-day benefit is groceries for a neighbor, a kid at your child's school, a friend going through a divorce whose income just cratered. And Justin's argues that if Americans understood who's losing help and why, they might feel differently about it.
Six Dollars a Day Is Disappearing For Millions: https://omny.fm/shows/platypus-economics/the-biggest-economic-story-nobodys-talking-about-diving-in
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Donald Trump's trade representative Jamison Greer thinks about trade like a litigator: clients, injuries, bad actors, and remedies. Justin Wolfers takes Greer's own words from his recent interview with The Daily and shows why that worldview rests on muddled thinking about what trade actually is — and why it ends up costing you.
In this Diving In episode, Justin lays out the tells and discusses the bottom line. The numbers are blunt: New York Fed research finds roughly 90% of the tariff burden falls on U.S. firms and consumers, and low-income households bear a disproportionate share. Census data shows imports from China fell — but rose nearly one-for-one from the rest of the region. A lot of trade just changed addresses.
By the end you'll have a portable BS detector for any trade argument — from Trump, Vance, Greer, or your uncle at Thanksgiving.
The Daily Episode With Jamieson Greer: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/podcasts/the-daily/more-trump-tariffs-are-coming.html
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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 our trade relationship with China and the eleven members of ASEAN.
Click through here: https://platypuseconomics.com/stata/trading_places_worksheet_6.pdf and you can work through the steps I followed, and build your statistical mastery.
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