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This is Planet Money from NPR.

Welcome back class to Planet Money Summer School.

The only economics degree you can get just by listening.

No tuition, no textbooks, no frustrating group projects, am I right?

I'm Robert Smith, and this season we are tackling power and money.

The profound ways that the government influences business and the economy.

This is class number three.

You are what you pay for.

Last week, we talked taxes, how the government raises money.

This week, we get to decide what to spend it on.

Woo!

Government shopping spree.

But reality check, although it seems like the government can spend an endless amount of money,

it cannot do all the things it wants to do.

So the big question in this week's lesson is, how do we decide? Why does the government spend so much money on some

things and not other things? And honestly, is there any limit? The United States is at,

let me check here, more than $36 trillion in debt. Is that too much? It kind of feels like too much.

Every week we have a couple of case studies and a guest professor to teach us the big lessons.

Welcome today to Aviva Aaron Dine, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.

What exactly does the Hamilton Project do? It's not based on the

musical, right? It's not based on the musical, though it's funny. It gets its name from sort of the

...