Slate Money - The Dire Costs of the LA Fires
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week: Los Angeles continues to try and fight back its most devastating wildfire ever. Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers discuss the fires raging in Los Angles and how they highlight the growing problem with disaster insurance as well as the complex issues around prison labor. Then, Meta is walking back their content moderation, giving hate speech more of a chance to thrive on their platforms. The hosts debate what this will mean for advertisers and Meta employees alike. And finally, New York City has at last implemented its congestion pricing. And while it’s too early to know the effects, the hosts look to London to see what the future could hold for the city’s commuters.
In the Slate Plus episode: Wirkin Bag Economics
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Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello! |
| 0:11.0 | Welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. |
| 0:18.1 | I'm Felix Salmon of Axios with Elizabeth Spires, an expert on all things |
| 0:23.1 | ad sales. Hello. I'm here with Emily Peck, an expert on all things low wage labor. |
| 0:32.3 | Hi. So let's talk about ad sales and low wage labor this week. We are going to talk about the |
| 0:38.4 | fires in Los Angeles and there is a low wage labor, very, very, very low wage labor angle to |
| 0:45.9 | that story that we will explore. We're going to talk about the big moderation and content |
| 0:50.9 | changes happening at Facebook, which Elizabeth has opinions about. |
| 0:56.0 | We are also going to talk about congestion pricing because it is a thing now in New York, |
| 1:01.6 | and we all live in New York, and we all have opinions. |
| 1:04.3 | We have a Slate Plus segment on Birkin bags, wherein I will tell you, if you need to know, how to easily tell the |
| 1:13.1 | difference between the Birken bag and a Kelly bag. |
| 1:15.6 | This is all podcasting information that is useful and important. |
| 1:20.5 | So stay tuned. |
| 1:22.5 | It's all coming up on Slate Money. on slate money. |
| 1:43.7 | So obviously the big news of this week is that Los Angeles is burning down. |
| 1:53.0 | And last I saw there was, you know, 50, 60 billion dollars worth of houses that burned down and damages had been caused. |
| 1:57.5 | There's going to be at least $15 billion of insured damages. |
| 2:02.0 | This is going to really cause massive problems with the insurance industry. |
| 2:07.1 | And in fact, there might just not be any more fire insurance, like private fire insurance in California anymore after this. Emily, just how bad is this? Well, Felix, we're talking on Friday |
| 2:14.1 | morning. Right now, at least 10 people have been killed by this fire. It hasn't been |
| 2:19.2 | contained yet. The winds are making it worse. The celebrities' homes are burning down. The homes of |
... |
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