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Planet Money hosts exchange gifts at a secret remote Christmas party. Not only do they receive gifts they’ll treasure forever, they also learn economics lessons they’ll never forget.
Sam Yellowhos Kessler/NPR
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Sam Yellowhos Kessler/NPR

Planet Money hosts exchange gifts at a secret remote Christmas party. Not only do they receive gifts they’ll treasure forever, they also learn economics lessons they’ll never forget.
Sam Yellowhos Kessler/NPR
There’s a well-known idea in economics that holiday gift shopping is a waste of time and money — an “orgy of wealth destruction,” as economists put it. Joel Waldfogel Someone once said that economic logic tells us that instead of giving them gifts, we should just give them cash so they can buy what they really want. Last year, we tried to spread this message at Planet Money by commissioning a song called “Cash is king“”.
But Planet Money host Jeff Guo believes in the economic value of gift giving. In today’s show, Jeff tries to win the favor of Planet Money’s resident tightwad Kenny Malone, and to do so he sets out on a quest to find the perfect gift. Along the way, they meet the spirits of three Nobel Prize-winning economists whose theories explain why gift giving is actually a good thing. In the end, Kenny’s heart Maybe just Grow three times bigger.
Today’s show was produced by Willa Rubin, with assistance from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and James Sneed. Editing was by Jess Jiang, programming was by Robert Rodriguez, and fact-checking was by Sierra Juarez.
music: “Toy Ballerina“”Strange Christmas“”Merry Christmas to you” and”Playful charm“”.
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