What if you got to choose where your tax dollars went?

Marketplace Morning Report

American Public Media

News, Business

4.5 • 808 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Americans don’t often have a direct say in how their tax dollars get spent; those decisions are generally left to elected officials. But some places have engaged in “participatory budgeting,” where residents propose projects, then vote on which ones get public funding. Today, we head to Nashville to learn how the process played out. But first: economics at the center of G20 discussions and what Thanksgiving travel plans are looking like.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What if you got to pick how taxpayer money gets spent? I'm David Bruncaccio in Los Angeles. First,
0:08.4	the Group of 20 Summit has just wrapped up in South Africa. The U.S. wasn't there with the Trump
0:13.6	administration making claims. South Africa persecutes its white minority. Economics is at the
0:19.6	center of G20 discussions. Marketplaces Nancy
0:21.9	Marshall-Genzor reports on that. The wealthier nations at the summit, like EU members, Russia and
0:27.5	China, invited 20 smaller countries as guests. The G20 members signed a declaration meant to help
0:33.8	them. The declaration urges development banks and international financial institutions
0:38.7	to address recovery and reconstruction after disasters, along with disaster preparedness. It noted
0:45.2	that more than 600 million Africans don't have access to electricity and supported efforts
0:50.7	to triple renewable energy capacity globally. But the declaration is non-binding,
0:56.1	and it doesn't say anything about creating a new panel on wealth inequality, which South Africa
1:01.6	had called for. I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace. More than 31 million passengers
1:08.5	are expected to fly for this week's holiday, an all-time high, using numbers from a trade association called Airlines for America.
1:15.9	Some of that may be rebound from the recent government shutdown. The Automobile Association predicts 73 million are traveling by car for Thanksgiving. Marketplaces Carla Javier has more.
1:26.3	Many passengers set out on their Thanksgiving trips on Friday and may stay longer than they used to, says analyst Henry Hardavilt of Atmospheric Research Group.
1:36.4	It's a function of people flying on days where the airfares may be less expensive.
1:41.9	And it also reflects that a lot of air travelers have the ability to work
1:45.7	remotely. He says consumers are feeling squeezed, so people who usually fly might decide they can't
1:52.0	afford to this year. I think that the people who are going to be getting on airplanes this Thanksgiving
1:56.4	will reflect a much more well-to-do base of customers than we have seen in the past, even, by the way, if they're sitting in a standard coach seat.
2:06.5	The consulting firm Deloitte surveyed holiday travelers.
2:10.0	Many said they are driving instead of flying in order to save money.
	...

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