This is data from the Census Bureau, which, by the way, the Census Bureau is a vertical trove of information about this economy and society. Just cannot stress enough how much good stuff the Census Bureau has. They are out with a report today on median household income. It is. So get this number, which kind of blew me away. Inflation adjusted median household income, which is half above half below in 2023, $80,610. That's up 4% from 2022. First gains since the 2019 fall off that happened with the pandemic in 2020. And it's a very, very positive sign. Why is it a positive sign? It's a positive sign because consumers spending or spending on behalf of consumers drives 70% of everything that happens in this economy. So with price levels still elevated, but wage gains increasing, an increase in median household income is a good thing for the future of this economy. That's what I got.

Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to have a little bit of good news. It'll be interesting to see how at the debate tonight, how these various points of economic data get deployed and dismissed. It will indeed. I'm going to be going to a watch party, of course, because this is what we do in DC. We watch debates at bars. But going to try to keep track of just the little economic data points that get brought up. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow. And just sort of how they get used and abused.

What do you got?

Um, I'm just so sad about this whole story that's been playing out online over the last week or so. Are you familiar at all with this Chase Bank glitch story? I am

indeed. So,

for people who are not very online, there was this trend going on social media, particularly TikTok, that Chase Bank was having a glitch, as they called it, that you could deposit a check for any amount of money and immediately withdraw that money out. And there was a trend of people saying that this is a glitch and this is a hack and you can get this money, and then if you close your account, you can just keep the money. Now, anyone who has a decent amount of financial awareness is going to not do this because it is check fraud. It is check fraud, and it is illegal. And Chase very quickly fixed this glitch. But there were thousands, potentially tens of thousands of people who, we don't know yet the full extent, took a, air quote, advantage of this glitch, pulled out lots of money, and now are seeing themselves with negative balances, closed accounts. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Chase is basically referring all these people to the authorities. Now folks are seeing like their wages being their direct deposits being taken away because like their Chase is trying to pay down these balances that people have. And it just, you know, there's all these videos online kind of mocking these people for being so dumb as to think that you could just get free money from one of the biggest banks in America. And what it really says to me is just like how bad the state of financial literacy is in this country that so many people thought this was going to work and that they were going to be fine. And now folks are online because they've posted videos of themselves doing this in some cases, so it's easy to prosecute them, not to mention the fact that when you open a bank account, they've got enough information on you to track you down and cameras at the ATMs and everything. But there's all these videos mocking people for being so stupid. And yes, it's a crime. And clearly people were doing something that they knew was ethically wrong. But it also, to me, just kind of hurts to see so many people thinking that they found a get-rich scheme and now are potentially going to go to jail. Definitely will have their financial lives ruined. I had a little moment yesterday watching some of these videos, you know, as a financial journalist of thinking like, what do we have to do to reach the people who fell for this? You know, like, what can we be doing differently to not allow people to get caught up in these things? Because Axios has a really interesting article that one of the reasons it was a bit easy for folks to fall victim to this was because so few people are familiar with how checks work and the fact that there's been just like this big decline in the use of checks and that contributed to it. But I couldn't help but notice that a lot of the folks in these videos were, you know, black and brown people, many of them seem to be coming from lower income communities who probably don't have access to a lot of financial education and got caught up in this. And it just made me really, really sad because a lot of these folks are going to jail for check fraud and it's going to ruin their lives. And they don't believe everything you hear on the internet, man.

That and there is no such thing as free money. That too. Unless

you're already wealthy. Yes.

Yes. Let's do the mailbag. Hi,

Kimber Kai or Kyber Lee. This is Bernadette from Atlanta, Georgia. Dan

from Boulder, Colorado. I

have a bunch of questions. I love the show and y'all are awesome and nerd it out. So last week I talked about a New York Times article about the logistical headache that pennies have caused the government. Basically, people get pennies as change but never use them. So, we keep having to mitt more and more pennies. And by the way, you asked me if I had any pennies, and it turns out I do. I have six of them. I found them in my little jar. Really? Yes, I have a little jar of change and I have six pennies in it. I looked. Anyway, we got this message about the article.

Hello, this is Kim from Davis, California. The reporter said if, quote, even a modest portion of these dormant pennies were to return to circulation, the resulting backflow would be logistically unmanageable. It got me wondering what a grassroots campaign to convince the federal government

to fix the problem would look like. What if we all ran to coin star with our pennies and return them? Would that be enough pressure to make Congress care?

Amen. Amen. Let's flood the government with pennies. I'm firmly in the let us get rid of pennies, please camp and and whatever we can do. Do

you have like a giant jar of pennies?

something? I have probably, let's see, one, two, three, one in my office, two in my office, probably spread throughout my house in my office, five or six quart glass milk jars full of coins, most of which are pennies. I

am so curious if there's like a gendered component of this because everybody who's I've talked to about the story who has stored containers of pennies is is a man.

Yeah, well, none of the women seem to.

Right, same for my wife. My wife is like, what are you doing? So let's go back in the days when we used to actually carry change on our pockets, which very very few of us do anymore. I come home at the end of the day and I would empty my pockets and my wallet would go on the shelf and my keys go on the shelf and then I'd empty my spare change and I would just put it in this jar. My wife would keep it somewhere accessible near her like car keys and stuff so the next time she went out to go to the store or whatever she would grab her change and spend the change. Yeah. Yeah. And look, that's why she's in charge of all the money in her house. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So anyway, there you go.. We got this too from Carl in Palo Alto talking about a recent round of this or that where we had to pick between traveling by flying or traveling by road trip. But Kimberly's answer that depends was the right one. There are some places this can't be experienced. Otherwise, take a look at Southern Utah from the Nevada border, just west of Diane, all the way across through Bryce and Grand Staircase, Estolante and to the Colorado border. If you want something drop down gorgeous, you have to see it from a vehicle. That is true. I have no rebuttal to that.

Have you been that route?

My wife and I drove out there probably 25 or 30 years ago, but I've not, as I think we talked about, I've never driven across the country.

I have not been there, but I've definitely done a lot of road trips, but not as many as I would like out west. I should do more of that. Anyway, before we go, we're going to leave you with this week's answer to the Make Me Smart question, which is, what is something you thought you knew, but later found out you were wrong about.

Hi, this is Roy from Tempe, Arizona. One thing that I thought I knew but realized I didn't was the definition of the word turbidity. I thought it was, you know, like when you mix a cocktail and you want to make sure there's enough ice in there so that it mixes well. But my wife, let me know that it is really just the clarity of

an object. Thank you. Love the show. Props to your

wife. Yeah. wife.