#spoils-system — Wealth & Means

Episodes tagged #spoils-system on Wealth & Means.

Nobody Prices the Doorway — 2026-08-15
Every threshold in life has a number posted on it, and that number is almost never the real one. The down payment isn't the cost of the house. The poverty line isn't the line between comfortable and not. An election result isn't the same thing as governing. And the price of copper depends on which side of a border it's sitting on when you ask. This episode is built around entry costs — eleven stories from the week, a Fed decision to read between the lines, a Knowledge Bomb on cash-to-close math, a Humor Me about America's many words for broke, Jackson versus Roosevelt on who actually governs, and a patient chemist in Illinois who spent three years and two hundred failed compounds making it less brutal to fall asleep.

#spoils-system — Wealth & Means

Episodes tagged #spoils-system on Wealth & Means.

Nobody Prices the Doorway — 2026-08-15
Every threshold in life has a number posted on it, and that number is almost never the real one. The down payment isn't the cost of the house. The poverty line isn't the line between comfortable and not. An election result isn't the same thing as governing. And the price of copper depends on which side of a border it's sitting on when you ask. This episode is built around entry costs — eleven stories from the week, a Fed decision to read between the lines, a Knowledge Bomb on cash-to-close math, a Humor Me about America's many words for broke, Jackson versus Roosevelt on who actually governs, and a patient chemist in Illinois who spent three years and two hundred failed compounds making it less brutal to fall asleep.