Missing taxes, spiking copper and Napster's re-re-rebirth

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0:11This is the Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. I'm joined today by our very own producer, Angel Carreras. Welcome, Angel. Hello, Darian. And we also have Planet Money host, Keith Romer. I'm ready to indicate. So you guys are joining me for... Indicators of the Week! Yippee! Woo! This is our weekly look into the most insightful numbers from the news. Today we're looking at what's making an enormous hole in government's finances this tax season, the gigantic price rise of copper, and the miraculous rebirth of Napster.

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2:26Darian, what's yours? So my indicator is roughly$500 billion. That is the drop in tax revenue that the IRS is expecting this year compared to last year. Half trillion dollars. That seems like a lot. It is, even for the government. And it appears to be at least partly because of cuts to the IRS itself. So recently, Congress took away$20 billion from the IRS operating budget, and the Washington Post reported that the IRS has stopped investigating some corporations and wealthy taxpayers because it needs to conserve its resources now. I am also going to be conserving my resources for the remainder of the podcast.

3:04Okay. And some of the other reasons for this is that there is this general sense from taxpayers that they're expecting less enforcement of tax rules. The Department of Government Efficiency asked the IRS commissioner to cut more than 20 % of staff over the next couple of months. The biggest area with layoffs will be in the tax compliance department, and there might be more cuts to come. So the signal to would-be tax evaders is they're less likely to get caught now. I think that's fair to say. With a lot fewer people on the job, some tax crimes will fall between the cracks. according to three anonymous sources who spoke with the Washington Post, they say the IRS is actually measuring the frequency of online conversations where people are publicly saying they're not going to pay taxes or claim deductions they're not entitled to.

3:52And where is this? We're not sure, but presumably online platforms like Reddit or Facebook. Definitely Reddit. There's a whole subreddit about this, I guarantee it. Now, the Treasury Department is the overarching department where the IRS sits, and it is denying everything in the Washington Post article. We did not lose$500 billion. Yes, the black hole is not there. You can't see it. There are also some other reasons for the drop, like the LA wildfires and other natural disasters. Or as we reported this week, a lot of people are feeling uncertain about their financial situation. So they could be delaying their taxes.

4:28Also, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently in discussions with the IRS about sharing names and addresses for people without legal status. So that is likely to make fewer of them want to file taxes. But those factors alone should not add up to this gigantic$500 billion hole. I mean, it's worth at least pointing out the irony that some of these doge cuts, right, might actually be putting the government further into the hole. Yes, and$500 billion would be a lot more than any savings found so far. All right. So the IRS to the periodic table. Keith, what do you have for us for your indicator?

5:06Okay. So this is a, I'm doing an indicator of the week throwback. Last week, you talked about the price of gold. I want to keep the show, as you say, elementally focused. I'm going to stay in group 11 on the periodic table. Silver? No. Rent-genium? Solid pull, Darian, but no again. I am here to talk about - What is that? What is ronginium? It's right below gold on the periodic table, folks. This is why I'm a producer. I don't know what that is. Neither silver nor ronginium. I am here to talk about copper. Copper, right? Hugely important to the economy. You need it for pipes. It's also a great conductor.

5:47So you need it for electrical cables. Can't build all those giant AI data centers without a lot of electrical cables. No, Darian, you cannot. And copper prices have been doing things. On Tuesday, copper futures hit a record high,$5.37 a pound, and that is my indicator. So with gold, part of the big jump in prices was about people wanting to buy something that feels like it will stay valuable even when the rest of the economy is in chaos. So say the end of the world comes, the apocalypse is upon us. I mean, you could sew gold into the lining of your clothes and use it to buy fresh water from our water lords, correct?

6:24Exactly. That is a standard argument for gold, Angel. But with copper, this jump in price is a reaction to, I guess you could say, a narrower kind of chaos. Like the tariffs? Correct. President Trump has talked about imposing a 25 % tariff on copper. Last month, he asked the Commerce Department to investigate whether copper imports posed a risk to national security, which is one of the legal justifications for imposing a tariff. The timeline for one of these investigations can be like nine months, but there is reporting out there that suggests this investigation might wrap up pretty quickly. So people in the U.S.

7:03are trying to buy copper now before those tariffs kick in. So a lot of demand, which is pushing up prices. Right. Most of our copper imports come from Chile, with smaller amounts from Canada and Peru. Copper prices have increased around 30 % since the beginning of the year. Some of that, just that ongoing increase in demand. You got to build all those data centers. But this recent big jump seems to be about people trying to get copper before tariff start. And copper gets even more expensive. Speaking of interconnected data centers, we're going to have a throwback to Napster. Hit us, Angel. Darian, I love being interconnected with you.

7:40Yes. My indicator of the week is 207 million buckaroos. because, baby, that's how much a certain peer-to-peer file sharing app is somehow worth in the year of our Lord 2025. Does anyone care to gander a guess as to what this app may be? I know this. Darian said it in the intro to the section. I bet it's Napster. You know, it really could have not have been Napster, but, you know, great job, Keith. Yes, the company that had a comet-like existence arriving in 1999 to shake up how we consume music at the turn of the millennium. It is still in our zeitgeist and still getting several leases on life.

8:17It was sold to a metaverse, remember that, startup company Infinite Reality this past week. They went to, quote, reimagine what's possible with music streaming. Okay, so let's do a quick recap of what Napster was doing all this time. Yeah, so you see kids and listeners who are decent law-abiding people. In the olden days, we'd buy full-fledged albums at something called a record store. Napster allowed people to, you know, just download and share MP3s of songs and full albums, too, with just about anyone. That sounds great, but they were often pirated, a.k.a. stolen. Sorry, I sound like such a narc on my debut here.

8:53And that angered record labels and, perhaps more terrifyingly, the band Metallica. You don't have to be terrified of them. They did the whole, they went through therapy, they did the whole documentary about it. Metallica's nice now. These days they're less cease and desist, more cease and chill. I wonder what their attachment style was to having their music stolen. Anyways, so Napster took a dirt nap of sorts in the early 2000s after getting sued into oblivion by said record labels and James Hetfield's Metallica. It's informative years in front of a 28.8k modem downloading Rammstein, do I admit that?

9:26You just did. Do Haas derby. Indeed. And so let's catch up with what happened after that. Clearly the brand didn't go away. Yeah, you're right. Well, you know, Napster's been sticking around for a couple decades because they've been hot potatoed a bunch, you know? They went bankrupt, then they got sold to a software company, then they became a subscription model type thing, then they got sold to Best Buy, and then sold again to a streaming service, and then bought by a VR company, and then bought by a couple of blockchain firms. And this week, finally, Infinite Reality bought the vestiges of the Napster brand.

10:02It's like all of late capitalism in one company. Yeah. And Infinite Reality wants to build on Napster's old brand recognition and dive into new media to do, you know, I guess, among other things, create virtual 3D spaces that will allow fans to attend concerts. I guess that you preclude someone from getting sweaty next to someone else. So I don't know. That sounds kind of good, I guess. Darren, you can go see Rammstein and the metaverse. The misanthropest dream. Hey Indicator listeners, before we go, about a year ago we rebranded the show and we introduced a new mascot, Indie the Indigator. We launched merch to go along with it for Planet Money Plus subscribers and now we're opening it up to everybody.

10:45So go to shop.npr.org slash Indicator to find t-shirts, mugs and our plushie mascot. And also you can show your support for the show. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Jimmy Keely was fact-checked by Cooper Katzmuckim Kate Kincannon is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR