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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: All politics is local. Also, the whole economy is AI.

Tricky, then, that Wall Street is getting nervous about Big Tech’s spending just as communities are saying they don’t want data centers nearby. What’s all this mean for the election next month?
We’ll get into it all in today’s newsletter, starting about 30 minutes south from where I’m writing to you now.  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor
A couple stands in front of their home with a sign reading
Kirsti Marohn/MPR News
What's at stake in Minnesota's data center debate
Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall-Genzer talked with residents worried about their water and their home equity.
To get a firsthand look at how the data center battle lines are shaping up in Minnesota, I went to Cathy and Gary Johnson’s house. They live in Minnesota’s second congressional district in Farmington, which is in the suburbs south of Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

For more than two years, the Johnsons have been fighting a proposal to turn a golf course across the street into a data center. They’re worried about environmental damage, noise, and bright lights.

They formed a nonprofit and filed a lawsuit, trying to stop construction, but they had to drop the suit after they ran out of money. Now, construction will move forward. Minnesota did pass a law last year requiring the biggest projects to consider efficient water use, but Cathy Johnson said that’s not enough.

“There’s no teeth there,” she said. “It’s like recommending that you follow the speed limit.”

The Johnsons’ neighbor, Terrie Pearson, lives right next to the data center site. She and her husband are going to sell their home and move because of it. She said a realtor told her if they sell now, they’ll get about $500,000 for their house.

“But if we wait until the digging starts, it’ll be $100,000 less,” Pearson said.

We reached out to Tract, the developer of the Farmington site, but didn’t hear back by deadline.
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News you should know
Let’s do the numbers
  • Tech stocks dragged the rest of Wall Street down today. The S&P 500 closed down 1.1%, erasing last week’s gains. The Nasdaq dropped 2.1% for its worst week in months, while the Dow lost just 0.3%.

  • Tesla shares popped this morning after Elon Musk showed off a new “flying” Roadster. But like that car (which you can’t buy, by the way) the stock came back down to Earth closing 2% below yesterday.

  • These data centers can really do the numbers, by the way — the latest ChatGPT model trained with nearly an octillion calculations. Here’s an illustration showing just how big that is, and how it compares to post AI models.
Your money
  • Most Americans say they don’t make enough money and they don’t have a rainy day fund, according to a new Pew survey.

  • Pair that with the updated retail sales data we got yesterday: Consumers spent way more on gas stations last month, but pulled back at sporting goods, hobby and book stores.

  • If you struggle with staying on top of your finances, our podcast “This Is Uncomfortable” got some brain hacks this week. Listen.
Take the Marketplace news quiz!
Listen to “Marketplace,” test your knowledge, brag to your friends.
LET'S GO
A man smiles at a desk.
Sarah Leeson/Marketplace
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The number of people that go into any hospital in India is probably multitudes larger than any other system in other parts of the world, so we had access to a lot of data to train the algorithms.”
— Prashant Warier, cofounder of Qure.aI
Qure.ai’s lung technology, which helps identify lung cancer and other diseases, is used in more than a dozen health systems in the United States. The company has more than 400 employees worldwide, most of which are in India, and Warier said he’s been able to keep a lot of tech talent in the country who might otherwise go abroad. That’s key to our series “The Age of Work”
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A man passes a Dunkin advertising a pumpkin spice latte
Luke Hales/Getty Images
Final note
Talk about seasonally adjusted inflation! 🥁
It’s pumpkin spice season, but enjoying the flavors of fall will cost you. LendingTree released its annual survey of pumpkin products and found these autumnal treats cost 8.9% more on average than their year-round counterparts.

That’s pretty spooky, but not all chains charge the same pumpkin premium. Trader Joe’s hikes the price on pumpkin flavored items by about 11%, while Starbucks charges 28% more for an iced PSL, compared to a normal, uh, L. Check out the full list.
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