Employers pay up for health care too

Summary

Marketplace Podcast Summary: "Employers Pay Up for Health Care Too"

Release Date: January 31, 2025
Host: Kai Ryssdal

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Economic Landscape: A "Weird" Yet Growing Economy

Heather Long from the Washington Post and Courtney Brown from Axios engage in a comprehensive discussion about the current state of the U.S. economy. Despite a robust Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 2.8% in 2024, the economy presents unusual characteristics that challenge conventional expectations.

Heather Long explains, “[...] there's an anemic hiring rate. Hiring has been very low, particularly, you've probably heard the white collar recession. There's also a bit of a blue collar recession” (02:02). This low hiring rate contributes to a sentiment among Americans of feeling "stuck," especially evident in the housing market where existing home sales dipped to their lowest in 30 years (02:02). Long highlights the dichotomy where those satisfied with their jobs benefit from job stability, whereas those seeking new opportunities find it increasingly difficult to advance or transition.

Federal Reserve’s Uncertainty and Economic Forecasts

Jay Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, maintains that the economy remains strong but emphasizes the inherent uncertainties in economic forecasting. Powell mentions the concept of "fat tails," indicating that extreme economic events are more likely than a normal distribution would suggest (03:51).

Courtney Brown elaborates on this, noting, “Powell is saying the outliers are huge, the unknowns are huge. [...] it's hard to predict how anything will play out in the economy” (03:56). This uncertainty poses challenges for policymakers as unexpected shocks continue to influence economic stability.

Tariffs and Their Implications on Inflation and Growth

President Trump’s announcement of new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China introduces significant concerns regarding inflation and economic growth. Heather Long remarks, “business investment had really tapered off” (06:25), signaling that companies are hesitant to invest amidst the looming threat of supply chain disruptions caused by tariffs.

Long criticizes the selective targeting of tariffs, particularly questioning why Canada is singled out: “...what are we doing with Europe and Canada and Mexico? There just doesn't seem to be a good grand strategy here” (07:58). Both Long and Brown express apprehension about the aggressive trade agenda, rating the economic outlook at a seven out of ten, with potential declines as tariffs take effect (07:26, 07:58).

Rising Employer Costs: Beyond Wages

Matt Levin delves into the rising costs associated with employer-provided benefits. The Employment Cost Index reveals wages and salaries surged by 3.8% in 2024, outpacing the 2.8% inflation rate (09:49). Additionally, employer contributions to health insurance and retirement benefits increased by 3.6% (10:08).

Levin highlights that health care costs, particularly driven by prescription drugs, have consistently outpaced general inflation: “health care costs were 4 to 5% higher than general inflation” (10:31). This trend forces employers to allocate more resources to benefits, often at the expense of salary increases. Neil Mulville from Aon projects a 9% rise in employer health care costs by 2025, indicating significant strain on corporate budgets (11:13).

Supporting Formerly Incarcerated Individuals in Firefighting

A poignant segment features the challenges and successes of formerly incarcerated individuals transitioning into firefighting careers. Anthony Pedro, a former inmate who trained as a firefighter within the prison system, shares his journey of overcoming significant barriers to secure full-time employment (13:12).

Pedro established the Future Fire Academy to assist others in similar situations, addressing obstacles such as costly certification processes and stringent occupational licensing laws. Sarah Lageson from Northeastern University underscores the pervasive impact of criminal records on employment prospects, highlighting systemic barriers that extend beyond immediate qualifications (14:39).

Royal Ramey, a firefighter and founder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, illustrates the legislative strides made with California's AB 2147, which expunges the records of incarcerated firefighters post-release (15:37). These initiatives aim to streamline the rehiring process, yet challenges remain due to the high costs and rigorous certification requirements.

Market Updates: Fluctuations and Corporate Movements

In the financial markets, major indices experienced mixed performances:

• Dow Industrials fell by 337 points (0.75%), ending at 44,004,544 (16:59).
• NASDAQ declined by 54 points (1.3%), closing at 19,627 (16:59).
• S&P 500 decreased by 30 points (0.5%) amidst corporate shifts, with Walgreens Boots Alliance and CVS Health experiencing notable stock drops of 10.3% and 6.10% respectively following dividend announcements (16:59).

Bonds saw a downturn with the 10-year Treasury yield rising to 4.54% (16:59).

Decarbonizing Transportation: Efforts at the Port of Waimee

Giles Pettifor, Director of Sustainability at the Port of Waimee, discusses the port's ambitious plan to eliminate fossil fuel use across its operations by 2030. This includes electrifying cargo handling equipment and transitioning to zero-emission fleets (22:35). Significant investments upwards of $70 million have been made, with future goals contingent on securing additional funding from state and federal sources.

Alex Scott, a supply chain management professor, emphasizes the complexity and cost of retrofitting large ports like LA and Long Beach due to existing infrastructure constraints (22:42). Phuong Wong from the University of Oregon suggests increasing rail transport as a viable strategy to reduce emissions, as rail is significantly less polluting than trucking (23:32).

Entrepreneurial Endeavors: Expanding a Small Business

Leon Thanh, co-owner of Crane Games in Aurora and Thornton, Colorado, shares the challenges of rapidly expanding a business. Opening a second location within a year involved unexpected delays and logistical hurdles, particularly due to international shipping disruptions (25:16). Despite the chaos of managing two stores and a busy family life, Thanh remains optimistic about continued growth and aspires to make Crane Games a household name (27:39).

Historical Reflection: The Ineffectiveness of Tariffs

In a lighter historical note, Matt Levin references the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930, drawing parallels to current tariff discussions. He notes, “It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression” (28:02), underscoring the potential pitfalls of aggressive tariff policies similar to those being considered today.

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Notable Quotes

• Heather Long: “There's an anemic hiring rate... people feel stuck.” (02:02)
• Courtney Brown: “Powell is saying the outliers are huge... it's hard to predict how anything will play out.” (03:56)
• Heather Long: “What are we doing with Europe and Canada and Mexico? There just doesn't seem to be a good grand strategy here.” (07:58)
• Matt Levin: “Health care costs were 4 to 5% higher than general inflation.” (10:31)
• Anthony Pedro: “That was my home.” (13:32)
• Royal Ramey: “Once you complete the course, then you have to go and take a national registry test.” (15:24)

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Conclusion

Kai Ryssdal wraps up the episode by blending insightful economic analysis with heartfelt stories of personal resilience and systemic challenges. From the complexities of today’s economic indicators to the human stories of overcoming barriers in the workforce, this episode of "Marketplace" offers a comprehensive look into how employers are shouldering increased health care costs amidst a multifaceted economic landscape.

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This summary captures the essence of the "Employers Pay Up for Health Care Too" episode, providing listeners with an in-depth understanding of the discussed topics and key takeaways.

Transcript

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[Kai Rysdal]

Honestly, you all decide. Tariffs, inflation, the Fed. What do you want to hear about from American Public Media? This is Marketplace in Los Angeles. I'm Kyle Rysdal. It is Friday, Friday today, mercifully the 31st of January. Good as always to have you along, everybody. All right, here we go. Lots to get to, not lots of time. Courtney Brown's at Axios. Heather Long is at the Washington Post. Hey, you too.

[Heather Long]

Hi, Kai.

[Kai Rysdal]

Hey, Kai. Heather, I would like to begin with you, and I would like to begin with the size and the growth of this economy. Gross domestic product came out this week 2.8% in 2024, which is good. And yet you wrote in the pages of the Washington Post a week or so ago that this economy is we weird. What does that mean and why does it matter?

[Heather Long]

Well, the way I'd say it is there's a lot of great factors. Low unemployment, pretty darn strong growth, as you have pointed out. But what I think is a little bit weird and people are really starting to notice is we have an anemic hiring rate. Hiring has been very low, particularly, you've probably heard the white collar recession. There's also a bit of a blue collar recession. Manufacturing shed jobs in 2024 and people kind of, if I look at it in a big picture, they feel stuck. Like, if you're happy in your job, this is a great scenario because people aren't getting laid off that much, but they're also not getting hired. But if you're someone who's not happy in your job or unemployed right now, it's really hard to find a new path. And of course, as you all have been covering. There's very few people who are moving. You know, this housing market in 2020, 24 was some of the lowest home sales, existing home sales in 30 years. And so when you start, it's just this weird feeling of Americans being stuck. You know, we're a dynamic country. We like to be on the move. We like to be dreaming about that next job. And right now, that's really hard to get.

[Kai Rysdal]

All of that said Courtney Brown. Jay Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said this week that this economy is strong. He said, of course, as he always does, he's waiting for more data before they decide what to do on rates. And then he was asked about sort of the current, and I'm gesturing wildly here, everything going on. And he said this uncertainty is with us all the time. It is human nature, apparently, to underestimate the, how fat the tails are in a way, you know, the possibility. We think of things in a normal distribution. And in the economy, it's not a normal distribution. The tails are very fat, meaning things can happen way out of your expectations. It's never not that way. You were in the room, Courtney, what do you think he meant by that?

[Courtney Brown]

I always laugh when I hear fat tails. It just sounds kind of funny.

[Kai Rysdal]

Now. I'm going to laugh, too. I like that, too.

[Courtney Brown]

It is actually a serious thing, Right. When you think about the distribution of probabilities you have on both ends, the probability of outliers. And so what Powell is saying is that the outliers are huge, the unknowns are huge. And so it's hard to, for Powell, or quite frankly, anyone to predict how anything will play out in the economy. I mean, we've had a few shocks in recent years that have not been predicted by anyone. So it's hard for him to say what's going to happen next year. It's hard for him to say what's going to happen next month.

[Kai Rysdal]

Do you think, though, just Courtney, between you, me and the fence post and of course, nobody else is listening to this. You know, Powell was asked a number of times about President Trump and what his policies might do and, you know, demand for lower rates and all this jazz and, and Powell said, as we all knew he was going to, I am absolutely not talking about that. You got to believe that there are people in the Fed doing some back of the envelope calculations here on, on what's going to happen with tariffs, which we'll get to in a minute, and immigration policy and all that jazz.

[Courtney Brown]

Yes, yes, that's right. We got a little hint. Not this Fed meeting, but the feeding Fed meeting before in December, Powell did concede that some of the Fed officials were incorporating what they anticipate will happen with inflation and the labor market as a result of different immigration and trade policies. So we know that Fed officials are doing that math. I think what's tricky is something Powell said later in the press conference this week, which is that. Which is just, you know, you can't really use the last Trump administration as an exact template for what will happen this time. The economy's different. It's in a different place. It's recovering from a huge, unprecedented shock. Who knows how the economy will respond to tariffs or aggressive deportation.

[Kai Rysdal]

Right. So, Heather, let's go there. Tariffs. We are told by the President of the United States that they will start tomorrow in Canada and Mexico and China. One cannot know until the piece of paper is signed, I suppose, what happens. But it's worth pointing out here that not only is there an inflation concern with these tariffs. Right. Because tariffs are, of course, import taxes paid by American consumers, no matter what the White House says. There is also a growth challenge for this economy.

[Heather Long]

Yes, Yes, I think so. I mean, we just saw that latest GDP report come out this week, and it was striking that business investment had really tapered off. Obviously, I think that's a sign that a lot of businesses are looking around, how much more should I invest? How much more should I hire? If I'm about to face this terror of shock that might totally re. Have to redo my supply chain, I might not get the parts in tomorrow for the factory that I need to come in. It's huge amounts of uncertainty. And it was really something that we just heard this afternoon. President Trump and the Oval Office say tariffs don't cause inflation, they cause success. And you just have to shake your head. Almost no one wants these tariffs except Donald Trump. And it's just really hard to understand why, why Canada is in the crosshairs here.

[Kai Rysdal]

Let me get in the last minute here, Courtney, you're going to split this with Heather, your general sense of. About this economy scale of 1 to 10.

[Courtney Brown]

Considering policies that are in place now or, well, or policies that could.

[Kai Rysdal]

Be in place tomorrow morning. I mean, you know.

[Courtney Brown]

Okay, I'm going to rate it a seven. I am really nervous about the aggressive trade agenda that President Trump wants to put into place, and so are my sources. Inflation is a huge risk, and it seems like we're on a good, though slower path in beating it. And this could stir up problems all over again.

[Kai Rysdal]

Heather?

[Heather Long]

Yeah. I'd say it's a 7 with the strong possibility of going to a 3 pretty soon as these tariffs come on. And the really hard thing to understand is why are we doing this? You sort of understand the competition against China. I mean, we just had deep seek this week, remember that. But again, again, what are we doing with Europe and Canada and Mexico? There just doesn't seem to be a good grand strategy here.

[Kai Rysdal]

What are we doing? Heather Long at the Washington Post and Courtney Brown at Axios on a Friday afternoon. Thanks you two.

[Heather Long]

Thanks, Kai.

[Courtney Brown]

Thanks, Kai.

[Kai Rysdal]

Traders on Wall street had some thoughts about tariffs today, none of which are repeatable on a family radio broadcast. We will have the cleaned up details when we do the number we got the Federal Reserve's favorite number on inflation today, the PCE price index, 2.8% year on year at a core. And we were also provided some more granular numbers on the big input to the prices that we're seeing on store shelves. That, of course, would be the cost of our labor. The aptly named employment cost index says wages and salaries went up 3.8% over the course of 2024. Which, doing a little math here, 3.8 minus 2.8 wages and salaries outpaced inflation, which means workers did okay according to that same employment cost index. Employer benefit costs, your health insurance and your retirement benefits, those employee assistance helplines, Those went up 3.6% over the course of last year, also outpacing inflation, which means I'm going to let Matt Levin tell you what that means.

[Matt Levin]

There are two broad categories of employer benefits, and one is pretty directly tied to how tight or lax the labor market is.

[Kai Rysdal]

Retirement benefits, 401k benefits. As wages increase, which is directly determined to the cost of maintaining employees, they go up. And so there's a correlation.

[Matt Levin]

Sue Toronto is a consulting actuary for Milliman. But the bigger employee benefit cost, about 8% of total compensation, is health insurance. And in 2024, the premiums your employer paid went up faster than most other things except eggs.

[Kai Rysdal]

So health care costs were 4 to 5% higher than general inflation.

[Matt Levin]

A big chunk of that is driven by prescription drugs. The Fed may have some influence on the labor market and by extension wages, but it can't control when Ozempic and other expensive weight loss drugs get put on health plans. Formularies. Chairman Jay Powell also can't tell big unions not to go on strike and force employers to offer higher benefits. And that's happened a good amount the past few years. Dockworkers, the uaw. Linda Barrington is at Cornell's Institute for Compensation Studies. There were a number of contracts that.

[Kai Rysdal]

Came due, and all of that bargaining is now starting to show up in these numbers.

[Matt Levin]

Health care inflation has typically outpaced regular inflation for decades now. And health care cost increases are actually a bit lower than they used to be. But Neil Mulville at the benefits consulting company Aon says rising premiums will impact other parts of the corporate budget. So it's actually leaving employers in a really uncomfortable position of being held hostage by what's happening in health care.

[Kai Rysdal]

And as we know, a dollar spent.

[Giles Pettifor]

On health care essentially means a dollar.

[Matt Levin]

Not spent on a salary increase. Aon is projecting a 9% increase in employer health care costs in 2025. I'm Matt Levin. For.

[Kai Rysdal]

Every time there's a major wildfire out here in California, this state is reminded of a perennial problem. It doesn't have enough firefighters. There are more than a thousand people in California state prisons who fight fires, though. And once those people who are trained in firefighting are released, they are looking for work in a state that needs firefighters. Supply, meet demand? Yes. Well, yes, except no, because it's not that easy. Getting certified to work as a firefighter can cost thousands of dollars and take years less than ideal for somebody who's just out of prison. Marketplace's Kaylee Wells spoke with a couple of firefighters who managed to make that leap from a prison fire camp to a firehouse and who are now trying to make the transition easier for the people coming up behind them.

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To become a firefighter, an incarcerated person in California needs to demonstrate good behavior and fit into the prison system's lowest security category. Anthony Pedro managed to meet those standards and spent three years of his sentence as a firefighter in one of the state's fire camps. And when he got released, he got dropped off at the local fire department.

[Matt Levin]

Because I didn't have transportation and just knocked on the door.

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By a stroke of sheer luck, a fire chief who believed in second chances was working that day and gave him an internship. Pedro worked his way up as a seasonal firefighter. In the off season, he slept in his car and volunteered for the local fire department where he got his start.

[Matt Levin]

So that volunteer department was my way to like shower and wash clothes and things like that. That was my home.

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But in order to land a full time job as a firefighter, Pedro had to pay for training and certification tests. In prison. He learned how to run hose lines and actually extinguish flames. But there's a lot more to the job that he had to learn and get Certified for.

[Kai Rysdal]

You gotta be able to drive the.

[Matt Levin]

Engine, but when you get to the scene, you gotta know how to pump the water. And then also the emt, that's a huge part.

[Sponsor Announcer]

The whole process cost him thousands of dollars and took two years before he finally landed the full time job he wanted. Pedro says he realizes he's one of the lucky ones who actually made it through the whole process. He started a nonprofit called the Future Fire Academy to help aspiring firefighters figure out what they need to do and fund their training courses. Helpful. But there are more roadblocks for formerly incarcerated aspiring firefighters. Sarah Lageson teaches in Northeastern University's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She says once you've got a criminal record, it shows up everywhere, sometimes where it doesn't belong.

[Matt Levin]

Your charges might be very serious, but then they're reduced when you make a plea bargain or you enter into a diversion program and that record is later dismissed. But because these companies are grabbing data from different places at different points in time, they're not always refreshing their data.

[Sponsor Announcer]

And then there are more barriers that come with occupational licensing.

[Heather Long]

There are hundreds and hundreds of laws.

[Matt Levin]

On the books that limit the ability to access a license for all sorts of jobs, ranging from working in a funeral home or cutting hair. And also for things like health care, emergency services.

[Sponsor Announcer]

You know who provides emergency health care? Firefighters. Formerly incarcerated. Firefighter Royal Ramey says the EMT test is perhaps one of the biggest problems.

[Matt Levin]

Once you complete the course, then you have to go and take a national registry test.

[Sponsor Announcer]

And in order for you to take.

[Matt Levin]

The test, you can't have two or more felonies. It'll automatically disqualify you.

[Sponsor Announcer]

That happened to Ramey himself. And since most firefighter calls are medical, not runaway wildfires, lots of firefighter jobs require an EMT certification. Since Ramey was released, the state of California has tried to make the job hiring process easier for formerly incarcerated people.

[Matt Levin]

Gavin Newsom passed that bill called AB 2147, that expunges the records of incarcerated firefighters once they come home.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Ramey also founded a nonprofit called the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, which trains formerly incarcerated firefighters and helps them apply for jobs.

[Matt Levin]

We wanted to, you know, give people opportunities so they can be able to thrive and have a family winning career.

[Sponsor Announcer]

There are fewer people coming out of fire camps vying for jobs now. During the pandemic, California released some prisoners to curb Covid spread. So the nearly 2,800 incarcerated firefighters in 2019 has dwindled to fewer than 1900 today. I'm Kayleigh Wells for Marketplace.

[Co-Host]

Coming up, juggling two new stores, all under like a year old.

[Kai Rysdal]

It's the business version of having a couple of newborns right? First though, let's do the numbers. The Dow Industrials off 337 today. That's points. The percentage is 3/4 of 1%. Ended at 44,004 544 the NASDAQ down 54 points. 3. 10% 19,627. The S&P 500 gave back 30 points, about a half percent. Six thousand and forty there, six thousand and forty for the five days gone by, the Dow up 3. 10%. The NASDAQ went the other way, down 1.2%. Sorry, 1 1/2%. S&P 500 eased about 1%. Walgreens Boots alliance dropped 10.3% today after announcing it would suspend its quarterly cash dividend. Rival CVS Health slid about 610 of 1%. Bonds down. Yield on the 10 year T note rose to 4.54%. You're listening to Marketplace.

[Matt Levin]

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[Kai Rysdal]

Remarkable.com this is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rysdal. Transportation accounts for, give or take, about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in this economy. That's according to the Environmental Protection agency as of 2024, and it includes plan trains, trucks and ships. In 2023, the federal government rolled out a plan to eliminate almost all of those emissions over the next couple of decades. And whatever the future of that plan might be, now some parts of the transportation sector are trying to decarbonize their slice of the supply chain. Marketplace's Justin Ho got a sense of how that might work.

[Giles Pettifor]

I'm standing on a loading dock at the Port of Waimee, about 65 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Right now, workers are offloading a container ship full of bananas. We receive bananas from Del Monte Chiquita, and they come up here, are offloaded and then distributed out to 13 Western US states and some western Canadian provinces. That's Giles Pettifor, the Port of Waenimi's director of sustainability. He's showing me the entire unloading process. Huge cranes lift refrigerated containers full of bananas off the ship. Forklifts put those onto trailer chassis, and then trucks move those to the other side of the port, where workers will plug the containers in so the bananas can stay cold. The next step in the process will be a truck that will connect to that chassis and pull that container off of the port. And that truck will take it out to a processing center, a warehouse, a cold storage facility for further distribution into the supply chain. Pettifor says every step of this process is almost entirely powered by fossil fuels. Over the last few years, the port's been working on overhauling its entire operation so that almost everything that happens within its gates can run on electricity. That includes shore power for the large vessels. That includes full zero emission electrification of all the cargo handling equipment and all of the light duty fleets that operate on port. Pettiforce says the port's already invested upwards of $70 million in this project and is in the process of lining up hundreds of millions of state, federal and private funding. Electrifying much bigger ports like those in LA and Long beach would be a much bigger undertaking, says Alex Scott, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee.

[Kai Rysdal]

They have thousands and thousands of containers sitting around yards, a lot of different cranes and terminals, and there's all this.

[Giles Pettifor]

Existing infrastructure that how are you going.

[Kai Rysdal]

To change that existing infrastruct? Very, very expensive and hard to do.

[Giles Pettifor]

Scott says there are things that bigger ports can focus on to meaningfully reduce emissions. For instance, he says, they can upgrade one of the dirtiest links in any supply chain trucks, because those not only.

[Kai Rysdal]

Emit higher rates of CO2, but they.

[Giles Pettifor]

Also have the local pollutants at vastly higher rates, meaning soot and nitrogen oxides.

[Kai Rysdal]

And trucks have made massive advances over the last 10 years by federal regulation on all of those metrics.

[Giles Pettifor]

For the last few years, the ports of LA and Long beach have required that any new trucks that service the port be less than 10 years old. Another solution is to cut trucks out of the equation as much as possible. Won Phuong Wong, a professor at the University of Oregon, says one way to do that is to move more goods by rail.

[Courtney Brown]

Rail is less polluting because trucks emit.

[Kai Rysdal]

Eight times more carbon dioxide for the.

[Courtney Brown]

Same ton of goods going the same mile compared to rail.

[Giles Pettifor]

Huang recently found that ports can encourage companies to use more rail by making themselves more efficient. For instance, adding a new crane that makes it quicker and cheaper to load containers on the freight trains at the port of Wainimi, Giles Pettifor, the director of sustainability, says making the port's entire operation more efficient is a big part of its decarbonization plan. Just a few hundred feet from where workers are unloading bananas, a construction crew is tearing up what used to be a cold storage warehouse. For about a year and a half now, we have been working on making the port ready to have more open, working cargo spaces. This kind of work isn't as flashy as buying a new fleet of electric cranes or forklifts, but Petit Force says it's aligned with the same goal of eliminating emissions. We have an opportunity to cut holes in the wharf and put in new charging facilities or align traffic to take a different route around the port in a manner that is more efficient. The port's goal is to eliminate fossil fuels from most of its operations by 2030. But Pettifor says the port doesn't have the resources to do it on its own. So reaching the goal will depend on getting money from Washington. And if that's not forthcoming, he says the port will do its best to make the changes it can with the resources it has. I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.

[Kai Rysdal]

Opening a business is hard. Opening a second business within a year of opening that first one. Harder but not impossible. Leon Thanh is the co owner of Crane Games in Aurora and now Thornton, Colorado.

[Co-Host]

We just opened our second location in Thornton, Colorado. The grand opening was on January 11th. So leading up to the grand opening you would think after the first location we'd kind of have some type of formula going into the second, but it's was still just as messy. We build and ship our claw machines from overseas and the country that we get them from had a holiday that shut down the entire country for two weeks. By the time we actually received it in the United States, it was maybe a month, like a month and a half delayed from when we originally expected the package. It wasn't as smooth sailing as I had hoped, but it still turned out really well. It's been so busy. I don't know how else to explain this busy chaos. Juggling two new stores all under like a year old and you know, four kids. I've been running around, you know, doing drop offs at school and then going to one location to just ensure everything's okay there, then going to the second location. It's just a lot of driving. My kids asked me to open a location for each one of them. So that means that's two more locations and I, I just want, I just want to go on vacation by myself really. That's, that's my outlook. But you know, my, for my business I just wanted to have an upwards trajectory. I just want to be almost like a household name. After the second location I, I want to slow down a little bit but you know, again, who knows?

[Kai Rysdal]

Leah Anton owner, co owner rather of Crane Games in Aurora in Thornton, Colorado. This final note on the way out today, just because it's been a really long week in this economy we are going to go out on the lighter side.

[Matt Levin]

In 1930 the Republican controlled House of Representatives in an effort to alleviate the effects of the.

[Kai Rysdal]

Anyone?

[Matt Levin]

Anyone? The Great Depression passed the. Anyone? Anyone? A tariff bill, the Hawley Smoot Tariff act which anyone raised or lowered raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.

[Kai Rysdal]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986, an all time classic. We are not, repeat not even remotely near a recession, let alone anything worse. But pretty spot on otherwise, no. Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargoli. Donna Tam is the executive editor. Neil Scarborough is vice president and general manager and I'm Kai Rysdal. Have yourselves a great weekend everybody. We will see you again on Monday. All right. This is apm.

[Matt Levin]

Hi, this is Mayumi from Long Beach, California. I love Marketplace and Kai. He really does a great job delivering important content that I benefit from. So I donated because it just seems like the natural thing to do. Join me by making a gift Marketplace [e-mail] donate.