New shows, new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully, over at pop culture happy hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see that?
You can say, yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's pop culture happy hour wherever you get your podcasts. This is Planet Money from NPR. Asher Spear is preparing for the biggest job interview of his life, and he's feeling pretty nervous about it.
There are potentially dozens of other qualified candidates in the running, and Asher hasn't had a job in a very long time. How long have you been unemployed? 11 years. And why is that?
I can't have a job. Yeah, we should mention, Asher hasn't worked for 11 years because he is in fact only 11 years old. I mean, I can do stuff like mowing people's lawns and stuff. But his dang law has prevented me from a real pain job.
Dang you, child labor laws. Dang you. Asher cannot wait to get his first W-2. So this summer, when he and his parents were looking into potential fun camps, they decided to send him to a place where he can pretend to join the workforce.
Where in the world are we right now? We are the very nice, beautiful, Biztown. We are at J.A. Biztown Summer Camp.
We happen all over the country, this one is in Portland, Oregon. What does it look like in here? Um, slight chaos. I mean, it is about 80, 90 days, so.
This is not the kind of camp where you go canoeing or pop on a horse. Can we do not see a child make a single friendship, or something? No, no. J.A.
Biztown is a camp where kids between 10 and 14 years old learn to fill out paperwork or open a check and account. Let's talk about debit cards. They learn how to track their personal spending. Should you give your pen test money?
No. No. Definitely not. And how to calculate the interest on a loan.
You know what Excel spreadsheet is? It's a alert. For lots of things. In a lot of ways, Biztown is about giving kids a glimpse into adulthood.
All of these lessons lead up to the centerpiece of camp. A day-long, simulated economy inside of a fake little town. Biztown. And Biztown runs on child labor.
The kids there take on jobs. They can be a CEO or a chief financial officer or a regular worker bee. One of the most coveted jobs is anchor at the fake TV station, BZTV. A lot of people also want to run for mayor.
As for Asher Spear. Um, I'm very much hoping that I get CEO of United to KeyBank. Asher is looking to be at the center of the financial action. He wants to be the CEO at one of the two banks that fuel this whole miniature economy.
Technically, one's a bank and one's a credit union. Why do you want me to not just work? Um, because the CEO is going to manage all the loans and I want to manage business loans. Asher and the other kids here pick their top three jobs.
They fill out an application. And then it is time for their job interviews. We catch up with Asher and a line of other kids, all nervously clutching their paper application forms. How are you feeling?
Aw, scared. I'm just going to make a wake. When it's Asher's turn, he heads to a storefront in the corner of Biztown. He sits down across from his interviewer who's an adult volunteer at the camp.
Why do you want this job? Um, I'm good with my management and do stocks on the side. I also have weight leadership and social skills. All around Biztown, Asher's fellow applicants are playing out similar scenes.
What skills do you have that will help you in a job at J.A. Biztown? I don't have a fear of public speaking, so I should freeze up and I have pretty good with improv and clothes. Um, I can speak with a loud and clear voice and pronunciate stuff.
I'm really good at spelling and I am very confident. Some of the kids are really selling themselves. Really? I'm a fast-timer so I can get things done in an instant on computers.
Others go with radical honesty. Alright, are you a leader? I know, I'm not a leader. Oh, the interviewer is?
This is your one minute line. One minute. The counselors score the applicants and sort them in what else and excel spreadsheet. Adults do use them for lots of things.
Then the kids gather to learn their vocational fate. They sit at the Crescrosse applesauce at the center of Biztown. The head counselor calls out their names one by one to come retrieve the envelopes containing their offer letters. And the kids wait for the signal to rip them open.
Hey, I have too much energy. Like, I have the zoom in, so I don't want to hear you. They really build up the suspense. Yeah, just like the hands-on blow up so fast I don't want to hear my job.
Finally, the big moment arrives. Please remember, we will not change your jobs. This is one week out of all the weeks in your life. You will have lots of opportunities to try other jobs.
They are...you're ready. Yes! Are...you're set. I don't want to talk to all of them.
Get in there babe! Yes! All around the room, the kids are frantically waving their offer letters in the air. Some seem disappointed.
But are aspiring banker, Asher Spear? He got exactly the gig he wanted. CEO of Biztown's local credit union. CEO of United's, am I doing job?
Oh my gosh, how are you doing? Good, I've been wanting this job for my whole life. This week I went for it and I got it. And what's that gonna mean?
I managed every single person's loans. You're gonna make and break dreams. Why do you want to manage all the loans? I just like money.
Money's. Money. Money. Hello and welcome to Planet Money Money's Money, I'm Alexie Horwitz.
And I'm Sally Helme. Summer Camp is one of the classic American rights of passage. A place where kids come to make new friends, take on new challenges, and learn a little bit about who they are. But what if it were also a place where they came to learn how to survive in a ruthless free market economy?
Today on the show, Planet Money goes to capitalism at Summer Camp. We follow the money through this miniature economy as the kids scramble to get out of debt to the banks. If Short Tank meets Lord of the Flies. Available balance negative $24.
We're encrypting debt. We're encrypting debt. Less than 24 hours after receiving their job offer letters, 80 or so kids gather at the center of Biztown. They are ready to take this dollhouse economy into their own tiny papers.
If you take a good town for this list, attention Jay, A good town for this list. We are going to play our national anthem in just a moment. The national anthem starts to play. They cover their hearts, some of them salute.
And just a few things in here, Biztown looks kind of like the set of a kid's TV show. It's essentially a warehouse with a ring of tiny storefronts facing a town square. There are generic shops like a cafe and an old-timey general store called the Mercantile. There are also brand-name businesses, companies that have actually paid the camp for the privilege of setting up shop here.
There's a little Walmart painted with the real Walmart blue with the real logo up top. There's a UPS store, even at all state insurance. And today, all of these real-looking stores will be run entirely by children. Coincidentally, some of the sponsors here also sponsor NPR, Key Corp, UPS and Comcast.
Anyway, as the final notes of the national anthem ring out, the kids fan out across the room and take up their positions. The CFOs scoot into chairs behind their little desks. The Walmart sales managers put on child-sized blue vests pretending for the day to be a part of the American workforce. And that is kind of the point of Biztown.
The nonprofit behind the program, Junior Achievement, builds it in part as a way to give kids all over the country a basic understanding of the free enterprise system. Cap Counselor John Duffy explains Biztown like this. The core economic lessons that we're teaching is that the system relies on all parts of the whole. That by taking care of yourself, you're taking care of the rest of society too because they're relying on you.
You know, I think it's a very like standard capitalist model. It's like free market capitalism with some training wheels. Absolutely. 100%.
And the first central economic lesson here is that the Biztown economy runs on debt. All the businesses start their day with zero dollars. Before they can do anything, they have to take out a loan from one of Biztown's two banks. The goal for every CEO and CFO is to pay back that loan with interest by the end of the day, to get their business out of debt before they get picked up by their parents.
So the first thing that all of the CEOs and CFOs have to do is figure out the size of the loans they'll need to take out. Do some math. We walk over to the old-timey Mercantile store. It is decked out with an old kettle, a little tiny rocking chair.
Is it old-timey barrel in the mix? There we find 11-year-old store manager Penny Petrolia and her CFO, Isla Hather. They're adding up numbers and calculating their expenses for the day. So we have advertising costs, property tax, health care, rent, philanthropy, office equipment, business insurance, business sign, technology fees and utilities, and then obviously the cost of what we have to pay everybody, which is kind of expensive.
Once they tally up their operating costs, the CEOs of each business then have to get their loan applications approved by one of Biztown's two banks, KeyBank or Unites Community Credit Union. And that is where we find 11-year-old banking CEO Asher Spear, holding court as a string of preteen CEOs, stream through with their loan agreements. Ashley, how many papers do you think you've signed today? Easily 20.
Is there a hand getting hired? I'm good, I've trained for this. You've trained for this, how? I signed several times.
Any more pencils? Now, Asher isn't doing due diligence on these loans. He's not asking for collateral or pulling anyone's credit score. Now, his job here is just to make sure that each CEO has done their math correctly.
If it all checks out, he is able to approve their loans and transfer the funds. And Asher is taking all of this super seriously, not only because he wants to do a good job, but because in his mind, he's not going to do it. But because in his mind, Unites Credit Union isn't a head-to-head competition with Biztown's other financial institution, KeyBank. It really won't make more money than us.
Okay, so the goal is B-KeyBank. Yeah, feed them. And in order to beat them, Asher wants to collect all of his debts before KeyBank can collect theirs. His business rival is the CEO of KeyBank, Elise Nicholas.
On the other side of town, she's going over her own stack of loan applications, inside what looks like a real KeyBank ranch, with fake marble columns and a big red key logo over the entrance. Elise is already in the thick of it. She's going over the loan application from Biztown's cafe, when she discovers a problem with their math. The cafe, their loan amount is 129, and they wrote 159.
Okay, so it says loan rejected successfully. We tell Elise what we heard over at Unites Credit Union. They're sort of hoping to beat you guys today. Do you feel that way?
Definitely. I mean, me and Asher were talking on the first guy at her job, and we agreed that we were business rivals. No, look, there's nothing in the rules that says KeyBank and Unites are in competition. But clearly, both of these CEOs just cannot resist the urge to win.
So Elise is taking her loan approvals extra seriously. She bolts off to the cafe to tell them to resubmit their loan. Excuse me, where's your guy's a CFO? Your loan was rejected because of the information from her.
So I think you have to review it and re-enter the information. Just then Asher from the Credit Union rushes into the cafe to check up on his competition. I'm stressed. I have to reject the loan.
You rejected the cafe's loan? Yes, they were wrong. Eventually, the cafe does get the math right. Elise and Asher approve loan after loan until finally, Asher has just one more left.
Then the next phase of Biztown will begin. And they just have to pay their debts. Alright, so you're almost done with getting them all into debt. Now you need to get them to pay back.
Bingo. Finally, all the CEOs have secured their loans. Now the kids can focus on actually running their businesses and generating revenue. And just like in the adult world, as the money starts flowing out, you can see the gears of the economy grind into motion.
The workers get to work. Employees at UPS, wearing the company's signature brown uniforms, start distributing supplies to the businesses. Utility workers in hard hats and vests start making the rounds to read the town's fake gas mirrors. The construction workers appear to just be building a single Adirondack chair.
Do you know this is a rental art? That is a wrench. Can't confirm. Finally, the counselors announced that it's time for the first shift of workers to get their paychecks and go on brick.
Alright, everyone, so we're going to start our first rent group break. So if you're not in the rent group, you're going to keep working. The third of the kids line up under fluorescent lights at the bank or the credit union to get their money. And that is where we find Ed Hemalawadi, CEO of the office supply company, in line at the bank holding his executive level paycheck.
I got $8.82. How does that feel? It's nice because other people make less. And I got the most paying job.
Alright, so you're at the top of the food chain? I'm at the top of the food chain, yeah. The kids are all paid in the local currency, which are called Biztown Bucks. They look kind of like Monopoly money.
And as a CEO, Ad Hem is in the highest pay grade in Biztown. CEOs get paid $9 per period. That is before taxes, which are indeed deducted. CFOs make $850.
And everyone else, the cashiers, the construction workers, the meter readers, they all make a minimum wage of $8 flat. This, of course, is one of the big places where the Biztown economy diverges from the real one. The CEO at the UPS in Biztown, for example, makes exactly one Biztown Buck more than the lowest paid delivery worker. While in real life, the CEO of UPS has recently made more than 500 times the starting pay for UPS drivers.
Alright, so Ad Hem, highly paid CEO, but not that highly paid. He steps up to a child bank teller. Time number? 240.
240. Gets his money. And yes, I'll cash back $2.00. And immediately heads off to the cafe.
And this is where we see the next part of the Biztown economy, Spring to Life, as some of these workers transform into consumers. Hot corn? Yeah, we have no tax. Hot corn.
The cafe is already bustling. Hot corn. Hot corn. Hot corn.
Okay. They're serving real sodas, rice, crispy treats, and popcorn. My goodness, everyone wants coffee. The cafe workers, again, all children, they are overwhelmed.
Holy moly. Oh, it's already down in C. It's madness. And at one of the cafe tables, we run into Isla Hather, the CFO of the old-timey Mercantile store.
She is happily munching on her first bag of popcorn. The person at the, um, who took my writer was like, what do you want? Did they seem stressed at the cafe? Yeah, I think I'm glad I've never signed up for it all like that.
That sounds very bad. The service industry can be tough when things get slammed. How are you feeling about your job so far? Our company is in like $200 of debt, but pretty good.
Do you feel like you'll be happier, sad, depending on how things turn out for the business? I mean, you can ask the CEO, but like, eh, as long as I get everything I need. And while that may not be exactly the kind of self-interest that Adam Smith had in mind in the wealth of nations, it does feel like all around the room you can see the invisible hand at work, as the kids scramble to supply the demands of their peers. How much are the supposed to be?
Two balls? Two, six. Can I use the other card for the 50 cents? We don't need to do the card.
Squishy balls at Walmart are a hot commodity. So are the sodas and bags of popcorn at the cafe, of course. But the most coveted commodity in all of Biztown isn't really commodity at all. It's a puppy.
Well, it's a stuffed animal puppy. Yes, it is available from Biztown's only nonprofit, the Humane Society, for a $9 adoption fee. And as we look around the town, it starts to become clear that some businesses should be able to make a profit, no problem. While others seem like they might be kind of doomed to default on their loans.
I mean, the cafe? Pact. Walmart? We're ready, Pact, too.
Confusingly, a storefront called the International Sign Company is swamped. Indeed, because they sell signs, but also apparently a coveted giant pencil. I wanted one. I mean, good luck.
However, some of the stores are not really bringing in customers, like no one is spending their break at the copy and print shop. No one really seems to want any old, tiny products from the old, tiny, mercantile store. And the company that seems most doomed to fail is Allstate Insurance. Yes, they are selling fake car and life insurance to the kids of Biztown.
And keeping my children are maybe the worst possible market for insurance. They have no dependents. They are the dependents. They haven't been alive long enough to understand the long-term catastrophic risk.
And a lot of them think of themselves as invincible. The Allstate employees are so strapped for customers that one of them actually pitches us on a policy. Can you guys buy some car and life insurance from Allstate, please? Sorry, I can't, I didn't say I had any Biztown books.
You can have any life insurance? I'm a little older than you guys, I guess. Yeah. As the day goes on, this cycle of consumption repeats over and over again.
Yellow group, business, you're a two-minute warning. Yellow group, two minutes. Different groups of kids go on break and spend their paychecks. Green group, you are now on break.
By early afternoon, the most popular items are scarce. The cafe runs out of root beer, there are no more giant pencils. All the puppies are sold out for my break. No way.
All the puppies are gone? All the puppies. Had you been saving up for it? No, I was saving up.
I had enough money. Oh man, what are you going to spend it on now? No, no, no. These very popular businesses have been raking in the money and steadily making payments on their loans.
But some of the businesses are struggling. And that is a problem, not just for them, but also for our two bankers, Asher and Elise. Remember, they are competing to see which bank will get paid back first. So Asher decides to take matters into his own hands.
He drops by the old-timey mercantile store to see what's going wrong. And he talks to Isla, the CFO. You want paying your loan? That's what we don't have any money to pay the loan.
How do you get the money? Price, lease up and nobody's buying stuff. So no one's bought anything here? Not really.
What do you want to do that? Have fun. Elise from KeyBank, meanwhile, has decided to skip her break entirely to keep working. Why didn't you want to go on break, Elise?
I want to keep doing my job. Because I have a few things left. And then I can help my employees. Do you feel like you're a little bit of a workaholic?
Maybe. I think next break I probably enjoy. But right now, I really am on edge and want to get back to my job. The kids are getting more and more frazzled.
And for CEOs and CFOs, the pressure to pay their debts is getting intense. I mean, the interest is piling up. And a few of them start to get creative in order to make more money. For example, the Biztown Fire Marshal, Nvala's, to Padua, who works at City Hall, he's decided to work straight through his break in order to catch as many businesses as possible with code violations.
It was clean up! Let me see. Let me see. Yes it was!
Nvala's can issue fines for things like having a messy workspace. Why are you going to work again? Because we need to pay off our loan. So you're just trying to get money for the city.
And fines are $60. That's a lot of money. Oh, that's a lot. Trying to go and do a complete route very quickly so I can get back around so they won't have cleaned up by the time I'm around.
I'm going to find them. So you're trying to make sure that you almost trick them. Almost make it harder than it should be. You're nodding.
Another innovation? The Comcast CEO Gabriel Samore has decided to start offering additional Wi-Fi routers to the other businesses for free so we can start billing them for extra Wi-Fi. I'm going to charge every business for Wi-Fi, but we need more money than that. So Wi-Fi routers are free now because more Wi-Fi routers are too full of more bills.
Alright, so it's like a promotion. Others might call that a scam. I don't know if they're getting double Wi-Fi, I don't know the problem. But even with this frenetic push to make as much money as possible, by the late afternoon, Asher at United's Credit Union, he's still feeling the pressure when he looks at his books.
You know, they are full of outstanding votes. None of the CFOs have paid their debts yet. How do you go about that? They have paid your back.
Oh man, they're not giving me the money. What happens to your business if you don't get the money guy? We go on debt and then we die. But you'll go under unless they pay you back.
Yep. After the break, will the children of Biztown be able to get out of debt to their lenders? Or will a string of defaults cause the whole Biztown financial system to come crashing down? And we learn that things in Biztown might not be as they seem.
Apparently I'm getting fined or something? Yeah, for $40. What? As the Biztown simulation enters its final quarter.
Come on, Q4. Things are getting heated. Our bankers, Asher and Elise are busy reminding their debtors that the clock is ticking. And one by one, many of the businesses do start to pay off their loans in full.
But in the final minutes, there are still a few stragglers struggling to get across the finish line. All right, paper company, how are we doing? Horrible. Loans are not looking good right now.
Yeah, we need to do. We're due. The CFO goes to double check the company's account balance. When she notices, something strange.
Oh, actually never mind. We have. We can repay our business loan. Up to $1.
Yeah, we can pay back our business loan. Yeah. Everything's going great. How did that change so fast?
I have no idea. I just know with my job. I know that football. And I'm ready to punch it at someone.
Somehow, the paper company has pulled it off. They have gone from hopelessly insolvent to profitable. Then we drop by the Mercantile store to check in with CFO, Ila Hather. Yeah, all day the Mercantile has been struggling.
And they are still about $100 in debt. But when Ila checks her company's account. Fund's available for loan-retaining $209. What?
Okay, so some money has mysteriously appeared in your account? We just got random money. And we don't, none of us know how. So I'm just gonna give it to the bank to hopefully repay a few things.
A suspicious pattern seemed to be emerging. Was this money coming from some sort of angel investor? Was it a last minute bulk order of old-timey curios? Whatever the case, Ila types the remaining loan-balanced intercomputer to send it over to Asher and his team at NITES credit union.
She holds her breath and then clicks confirm. I looked hares across Biztown in search of her CEO, Penny, who she eventually finds mid-japping spree. Penny! How?
We have no duus! How does it feel? Good. I didn't expect that.
Why did we get $200? I don't know. But we probably paid off our stuff. I don't really know.
I'm excited. Okay. What do you think is the lesson here? Just be hopeful, I guess.
Because I don't give up. You staying in there? Yeah. I'm gonna go Walmart because I still have $5.
Some of these businesses have had a mysterious windfall. The kids seem to have chalk it up to luck. Or hopefulness. Asher Spear has been watching the loan payments come in.
Finally, he gets word that they have all been repaid. What on? You're done. Yeah, I'm just gonna use up to the key bank, but we beat them.
Aw, this feels good. Asher strides confidently into the middle of key bank. Refines his financial nemesis, Elise. Hey, we beat you.
What do you mean we pay back our loan squint? Well, everybody else will beat off the check. I'll stay. Oh, I'll stay.
They had an impossible task before them, selling fake insurance policies to 11-year-olds. The other businesses have somehow made ends meet, but not all state. In the last 10 minutes of the simulation, we go over to visit them. So far, they've only sold three policies to their kid customers for a total of around $15.
We asked the CEO, Gwenie Hayden, how they're doing with the loan. Not very well. Really? Yeah, and I'm kind of stressing out because we only have a little bit to pay it off.
So, yeah. Do you think you guys are gonna still have time to make it? Gwenie turns to our CFO who nervously checks the computer in the corner. How much money do we need for the loan?
$72.25. Oh, so you still owe $72? Yeah. And how much money do you have right now?
$0. $0, okay. No mysterious extra money for them. But a couple minutes later, one of the camp counselors comes to check in on the group.
Nice to pick a CFO. Have you paid off your loan yet? The kids explain, no, we're $70 in the whole. The counselor tells them to sit tight and heads quickly back to a computer at the center of Biztown.
We decide to follow her. So what's happening over here? It sounds like all state didn't get enough income to pay off their loan. Yes, and so we have the ability to subsidize, and so I'm gonna add $75 to their account so that they can pay off their loan.
So this is where the money's been mysteriously appearing. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
So now I'm gonna go tell them to see if they can pay off their loan and they should be able to. Okay. That's a pretty successful debt. I wouldn't call it a free market.
We're learning. Isn't that what the point of this is? The counselor walks back to all state where the kids suddenly discover their last minute change of fortune. They send the money over to KeyBank.
All of the companies have paid back their loans thanks to this last minute capital infusion. Some would call it a bailout. Yeah, but they're too cute to fail. And yes, and there is something undeniably joyful and positive seeing the kids finally breathe a sigh of relief as their financial woes fade into the background.
But it also cast what we've been seeing at Biztown in kind of a new light. Because on the surface when we first arrived, Biztown seemed like this straightforward introduction to the free market. But the fact that at the end of the day, there seems to be no way for any of the campers of Biztown to fail made it feel like they're coming away with a kind of rose-tinted view of how our economic system actually works. We asked Camp Counselor John Duffy to explain what we'd seen in those crucial final minutes.
The big magic wand at the end of the day is if they have put anything towards their loan, we give them a subsidy for the rest. Because sometimes the salesmen at all state only sell free policies and they feel terrible about it, so then we come around with a subsidy. And it's like a listen, you did what you could do, you did the work. So it's like from each according to their ability, you kind of give subsidies to each according to their needs?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that just socialism? Um, it's, it's, uh, yeah. And sure, John says, you could see what's going on here as a way of selling the free market to children with all the warm, fuzzy feelings of socialist equality.
You know, capitalism with training wheels. But that isn't the entire picture. We realized Biztown is also kind of like an initiation into some of the essential economic rituals of adulthood, filling out a job application, cashing a paycheck. It shows kids that we're all connected by the flow of money.
J.A. Biztown is now closed. We are going to take the next five minutes for you to tie up our businesses and try to make it look exactly like it did when we came around. After the last loan has been paid and the last stuffed puppy has been sold, the kids return to their little mini workplaces to clean up.
Huh? No, it's not me. They're plugging in cables, putting pencils back in drawers, arranging the paperwork into neat piles for the next workers of Biztown. Finish the closing staff, closing the business off.
Nah, this is nice. When you ask the kids themselves what they'll be taking away from their time at Biztown, your opinions feel quite sized. What advice would you give to the next CEO of United's? If you can, don't forget about paperwork.
And you should bake as well. Get your money, get your popcorn, get your soda, sit down with some friends. Drink and eat as quick as you can. So it sounds like all of a sudden it's kind of like how to not eat you stressed.
Yeah. So next time you say do some things to be less stressed. Definitely. Yeah, next time Asher would be more relaxed.
Maybe focus less on competition and more on another goal that he'd also have that day, which was to drink two different kinds of soda at the same time. Because at the end of the day, going to Biztown is a chance for kids to just vacation in the land of adulthood. They're not yet permanent residents. Even if someday they will have to join the Big Biztown where the rest of us live.
This episode was produced by absolute genius James Sneed. It was edited by justraying and fact checked by Sierra Juarez, engineering by Guillain Moon. Alice Goldmark is the next part of the show. Special thanks to Shannon Wakeman, Barbara Smith, Jairlyn Brimer and Tom Russell.
I'm Lexi Horwitz-Gazee. And I'm Sally Helm. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.