Marketplace All-in-One

How big is your carbon footprint? Do you really know? If it was taxed, you’d find out one way or another. Maybe the cost of carbon gets added on like a sales tax, or maybe the producer gets hit with additional taxes and passes the cost onto you, like a tariff. Either way, you’ll learn something. It’s an idea some Democrats have been kicking around. So has the European Union. Ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, which starts this weekend in Glasgow, we’re going to step back and explain the carbon tax. Joining us to help with that is economist Shi-Ling Hsu, a professor at Florida State University College of Law and author of “The Case for a Carbon Tax.”

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Read the transcript here.

Finally: We need your voice memos! Tell us what you think of the show or ask a question for Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood to answer! Here’s how to do it.

As congressional Democrats trim down the social-spending bill, a proposal for paid family leave may be cut from 12 to four weeks. The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that don’t guarantee some paid family leave, and even at four weeks, would still be behind nearly every other country in the world. While such a policy could be vital to working parents, American reluctance to take time off could get in the way. We’ll also discuss corporations’ green pledges, why some companies are hiring leaders to manage remote and hybrid work, and hear about a horror author’s scary house hunt.

The Treasury Department is creating a new program to address inequity in the banking and financial services industries, and it has hired a point person to lead the effort to improve in areas such as equal access to lending. A working paper from researchers at USC and UCLA found that the vaccine-averse aren’t receptive to financial incentives to get vaccinated. In some cases, it might have the opposite effect. Marketplace’s Jennifer Pak drops in to share some details about Goldman Sachs establishing a deeper foothold in China.

New reporting from The New York Times has detailed major glitches in Amazon’s handling of paid and unpaid leave for its workers, which has led to paycheck errors at as many as 179 Amazon sites, mistaken terminations and other issues. We spoke to Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Karen Weise about their findings, and what Amazon plans to do next. Tesla has now become a trillion-dollar company after rental car company Hertz ordered up 100,000 Teslas to add to its fleet.

From the BBC World Service: Janet Yellen had a “frank” conversation about economics and trade with China’s Vice Premier Liu He, who laid bare Chinese concerns over U..S tariffs and treatment of Chinese companies. Plus, Australia – one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters – pledges to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And, with international funds to Afghanistan frozen since the Taliban took over in August, we hear about crippling food shortages and other challenges facing people in the country.

As we often say on this show, the internet is everything. But for many people, the only place to get access to the internet is the library. That’s a problem on some tribal lands, where many of the libraries are excluded from federal broadband subsidies because they don’t technically fit the Federal Communications Commission’s definition of a library. The FCC has proposed expanding its definition and will hear from tribal librarians and other stakeholders at a roundtable coming up on Wednesday. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams talks to fellow Marketplace reporter Savannah Maher, who has been covering this story.

The whistleblower-driven “Facebook Files” investigation at The Wall Street Journal has expanded to include a whole consortium of journalists and a flood of reporting. Oh, and it’s called “The Facebook Papers” now. We’ll talk about the high-level stuff and the company’s response at today’s blockbuster earnings call. Later on, we’ll talk about a disappointing update to the family leave proposal from the White House and hear a spooky song from a listener.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Read the transcript here.

Finally: We need your voice memos! Tell us what you think of the show or ask a question for Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood to answer! Here’s how to do it.

In the early ’90s, New Mexico had 34,000 acres devoted to the production of chiles, the pepper seen on menus across the state. But that number has dwindled, with some 8,000 acres set aside for chile production in recent years, according to the New Mexico Chile Association. The decline in chile production — largely the result of climate change and a labor shortage — may be a threat to businesses and the culture of the region. Also on today’s show: Housing advocates vie for their slice of the reconciliation pie; examining just how ethical ESG investments are; and a festival sign writer crafts a pandemic side hustle.

There’s a program called “E-Rate” that subsidizes broadband data connections for schools and libraries. But libraries on tribal lands were excluded. Also, we’ll get yet another wave of signs about where the economy is headed (and where it’s most recently been) from profit and revenue reports for companies like Apple, Ford and General Electric — as well as the latest calculation of U.S. economic growth for Q3. And, AMC movie theaters are rolling out open captioning for those with hearing loss.

Democrats in Congress are looking for new ways to fund a spending plan for increasing social benefits and fighting climate change. In the face of opposition to raising the corporate tax rate, Democrats are pivoting to a plan that would require billionaires to pay taxes on the increased value of assets such as stocks on an annual basis, regardless of whether they sell those assets. Also today: We look at the argument for why businesses should be interested in a four-day workweek for their employees.