Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Two stories today.

First, as we start to understand post-affirmative action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ended the practice in public universities. It reshaped the makeup of the universities almost instantly. We find out what happened in the decades that followed.

Then, we ask, why does it cost so much for America to build big things, like subways. Compared to other wealthy nations, the costs of infrastructure projects in the U.S. are astronomical. We take a trip to one of the most expensive subway stations in the world to get to the bottom of why American transit is so expensive to build.

This episode was hosted by Adrian Ma and Darian Woods. It was produced by Corey Bridges, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Katherine Silva. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Viet Le is the Indicator's senior producer. And Kate Concannon edits the show. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:06.4	Sometimes when there is a big change taking place, a common response is, we don't know
0:11.2	what's going to happen.
0:13.1	Sometimes though, we can say, hey, we have seen this before.
0:16.7	And something pretty similar has happened somewhere else, and we should pay attention.
0:20.9	Well, last week we got one of those big sudden societal changes.
0:26.4	The Supreme Court ruled against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, saying
0:30.6	race cannot be used as a factor in college admissions, and effectively ending the practice
0:34.9	known as affirmative action.
0:36.8	And so what effect will this decision have on students and schools and even the economy?
0:42.9	Well, for some clues, we can actually see where this has happened before.
0:47.4	We can look at California, which ended affirmative action in public colleges 25 years ago.
0:53.2	What happened there gives us a sense of what's in store for us nationwide after the Supreme
0:57.9	Court's recent decision.
1:00.2	Hello and welcome to Planet Money.
1:02.5	I'm Adrian Ma.
1:03.5	Today on the show, we're featuring two episodes from our short daily podcast, The Indicator
1:07.9	from Planet Money.
1:09.2	In part one, we'll talk about the potential economic effects of the Supreme Court's striking
1:13.7	down affirmative action.
1:15.3	And in part two, we'll talk about infrastructure.
1:18.3	Specifically, why new subways don't get built very much anymore?
	...

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