Slate Money | The Federal Employee ‘Buyout’ Makes No Sense

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week: The Trump administration offered a resignation deal to millions of federal employees. Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers discuss why this plan seems like a bad idea – for everyone. Then, Invidia’s stock dropped this week when Deepseek proved AI can be done cheaper. But is this just steam engines and Jevons paradox all over again? Finally, the bookstore is back. The hosts discuss the recent success of Barnes & Noble and why they, and other bookstores, are the unexpected winners of the digital media age. In the Slate Plus episode: CVS has a new way of locking up their stuff. Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to sleep money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week.
0:18.5	I'm Felix Hammond of Axios. Emily Peck joins me. You
0:22.9	also get a paycheck from Axios. It's true. Hello. I'm here also with Elizabeth Spires,
0:28.9	who gets paychecks from all manner of places, but not as far as I know, the federal government.
0:33.9	Hello. We are going to talk about the 2.3 million people who do get paid by the federal government
0:41.6	and this crazy email they just received this week saying,
0:46.0	just hit, reply to this email and we'll pay you through September and you don't need to do any work.
0:50.6	Is this too good to be true?
0:52.6	Spoilerlet, yes, it probably is.
0:54.9	We are also going to talk about
0:57.3	Nvidia, AI, Deepseek,
1:00.1	and what's going on in the markets and the whole world of AI.
1:03.6	We are going to talk about bookstores
1:06.0	and how they are still researching.
1:12.2	Some good news for a change.
1:16.9	We have a whole amazing special segment on the price of eggs,
1:22.0	which is probably the greatest innovation in podcasting for the past decade.
1:23.4	Is it egg-solent?
1:24.7	Emily.
1:32.0	It's all coming up on sleep money.
1:42.5	There are days when you're hungry for McDonald's.
1:47.0	Then there are days when you're big arch hungry for McDonald's. You'll get to know the difference.
	...

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