Hiding inside each price tag is a messy tangle of information. How much did this cost to make? How much will someone pay to have it? What else can they buy with that money? What did it cost last year?
We bring you three stories untangling a price tag, three stories of setting a value on something when it isn't so easy to slap on a price tag.
We try to figure out what $1 trillion means, because that's what Donald Trump says he wants to spend on infrastructure. We'll tell you what $1 trillion can buy, and two caveats about Trump's plan.
We pause to appreciate the dollar value of an Oxford comma, which may just be worth $10 million in a lawsuit about overtime.
And we venture into tooth fairy economics. The amount left under kids' pillows is an overlooked economic indicator. We bring you the hard numbers, and the story of when a meeting of the White House economics team helped settle on the right price per tooth.
Music: "Checkerboard Kicks," "Everyday A Mistake," "Searching For Clues," and "Everything's Big." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.
Subscribe to our show on iTunes or PocketCast.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
