The hubbub over the Republican tax plan has died down some since it passed, but the bill isn’t forgotten — not by a long shot.

Many Americans will see the effects already this year, when the IRS gives employers new guidance on how much money to withhold from people’s paychecks. And you can bet it will be a major talking point in the 2018 midterm elections, supplemented by regular presidential tweets touting new hiring and higher stock prices.

Against that backdrop, we received a wave of listener inquiries that boil down to one basic question: Will the recently passed Republican tax plan grow the economy? We decided to try to give these listeners a (relatively) simple answer.

You may already know where this is going. This question asks for a prediction, but also about economics. So a simple yes or no is impossible.

But we can make some educated guesses, based on what smart people have said about this tax plan.

A bump, then a lull

Fortunately, someone has already asked a version of this question to a whole mess of economists at once. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business often polls top mainstream economists on issues of the day. And on this question, those economists leaned heavily away from saying that the bill would create long-term economic growth.

The Booth School asked economists in November whether they agreed that tax plans “similar to those currently moving through the House and Senate” (this was before the tax bill was passed, remember) would leave GDP growth “substantially higher a decade from now than under the status quo.”

Of the 42 economists, just over half (52 percent) disagreed — that is, they don’t believe the plan would lead to faster economic growth. Thirty-six percent were uncertain. Only 2 percent agreed. (The remainder did not answer.)

So they weren’t unanimous, but almost none of them had confidence that the tax plan will lead to “substantial” economic growth.

This runs counter to Republican messaging during the tax fight that it could boost GDP by an average of 0.4 percent per year over the next decade. While the bill was being crafted, multiple expert analyses of the tax plan agreed that it would fall far short of that kind of growth.

But let’s start at square one. The idea that tax cuts would create growth isn’t at all wrongheaded. It makes sense that giving people (or businesses) some extra dollars through the tax code would lead them to spend more, speeding up the economy.

And different tax cuts affect the economy in different ways. In a 2012 report, Mark Zandi, chief economist at economics research firm Moody’s Analytics, estimated the effects of various policies.

At that time, he found that a temporary child tax credit passed in 2009, for example, boosted GDP by $1.38 for every dollar in revenue lost on that tax cut. A payroll tax holiday came in at $1.27. Meanwhile, extending the Bush tax cuts came in at 35 cents for every revenue dollar lost, and cutting corporate taxes came in at just 32 cents.

So what does Zandi think of this tax plan — will it create growth?

“Not much,” he said. “It’s a pretty costly way to not go very far.”

In his view, the tax plan will create a temporary sugar high that will taper off after a couple of years.

“The economy will experience stronger near-term growth in 2018 and 2019 with the stimulus created by deficit-financed long-term tax cuts,” he said. “That will generate temporary growth. But it will also result in higher interest rates.”

There are a few reasons why that growth will fall off. One, as Zandi suggested, are those higher interest rates. What he’s saying is that if and when the tax plan creates that new growth, the Fed will raise interest rates, which they took down to near-zero in the Great Recession to boost the economy. Since then, central bankers have slowly inched that rate upward, though it’s still well below where it was pre-recession.

All of which is to say that the Fed is already carefully weighing when to tighten policy, and a burst of new growth from the tax plan could mean the central bank would want to tighten Fed policy sooner.

On top of that, the job market looks good, the stock market looks good, GDP growth has been solid recently — there’s just not a lot of room for improvement. And that initial burst of new demand in the economy won’t last — it will fall off. Other boosts — say, in labor supply or investment — won’t make up for it, according to a report from the Tax Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank that has been critical of the tax plan.

“I expect it to be beneficial,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum and a director of the Congressional Budget Office under George W. Bush. “I don’t expect it to be very long-lasting, because there’s not very much room to grow there.”

Figures from the Tax Policy Center square with that, predicting that the new tax regime will boost GDP in 2018 by an additional 0.8 percent. But then after that, it would eventually taper off — by 2027, the bill would provide no additional growth.

That drop-off toward the end of the 10-year window is in large part because many of the bill’s provisions expire at the end of 2025.

Were Congress to extend those provisions — assuming there were even the political will in eight years to do that — it could boost the economy. But then, that would cost money. And that cost would come on top of an already steep price tag.

Currently, the plan is projected to cost around $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Adding that much or more to the debt, some economists fear, will hurt the economy by bumping up interest rates. The idea here is that higher interest rates would mean less borrowing and spending throughout the economy.

“The problem with making it permanent is it’s really going to help you in years 9 and 10, but it’s actually going to really hurt you in years 30 through 32,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for smaller deficits and debt. “If you make it permanent, instead of adding $1.5 trillion to the debt this decade, it’s going to add $2 trillion to the debt this decade and then another $2 or $3 or $4 trillion next decade and another $2 or $3 or $4 trillion the decade after that.”

So there’s a good case to be made that there will be initial growth, but that it will disappear — or nearly disappear — in the medium-term.

The tax bill wasn’t just about rates

But there’s more to the tax bill than just tax cuts, Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum stresses.

“The more lasting and important contribution are the reforms, as opposed to pure tax cuts,” he said. “The most important thing the bill does is change dramatically the way the U.S. taxes business activity.”

The plan drastically lowers the corporate tax rate — down from a top rate of 35 percent to 21 percent. But there’s another big change it makes on the corporate side: It changes the U.S. from a worldwide system, one in which a company’s foreign and domestic earnings alike are taxed, to a territorial corporate taxation system, in which just domestic earnings are taxed.

This brings the U.S. more in line with other major world economies. Proponents of this policy believe that this helps level the playing field with other countries and encourages more companies to be based in the U.S., among other benefits.

To Holtz-Eakin, this is more important for sustained economic strength than the tax cuts. He believes it will mean modest, but meaningful and lasting growth that will compound over time — well beyond the 10-year budget window.

Still, it’s not clear to everyone that it will be that meaningful.

“Moving to a territorial system is a good idea, but that is really on the margin,” Zandi said. “When they’re making investment decisions, they’re looking at lots of different factors.”

He points to trade and energy policy, as well as where businesses can find the workers they need. In addition, he notes that other nations might find ways to change their tax systems in turn to compete with the U.S.

Put all of this together, and there’s no way to give a firm yes or no that answers this question fully.

The best answer to this question seems to be a highly qualified yes. Yes, the tax bill will likely spur some economic growth. But there’s good reason to think that 1: that growth will be heavily front-loaded, and 2: the longer-term growth change over what the U.S. would have had without the tax plan will be modest, or even minimal.

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In the world of streaming workout videos, Shawn T is like Jay-Z or Mick Jagger. He’s a superstar. Millions of people have done his workout programs. One is called “Insanity.” Another, “Focus T25,” aims to get you in shape in just 25 minutes a day without leaving your house.

In our ever more digital world there are all kinds of apps and other quick ways to fit fitness into your life. But you still have to do the exercise. And in his new book, T is for Transformation, Shaun T tells the story of his life and the lessons he’s learned about finding that motivation.

With his sculpted muscles and abs, Shaun T is the picture of fitness. In his workout videos he’s funny and happy. But it wasn’t always like this.

“The first thing I remember as a kid was being washed in the sink of our west Philadelphia apartment,” Shaun T says. Back then, 40 years ago, he was a toddler named Shaun Thompson. “I was so small, but I soon began to realize that where we lived wasn’t necessarily the best place in the world.”

Shaun T grew up poor and had a rough childhood in a violent neighborhood. The family was on food stamps. And they had so little food he’d sneak bread into his underwear and eat it at night in bed.

Being hungry stays with you. And when he got a scholarship to a state college, that came with a dining hall meal plan card, which meant free food.

“When you give someone who grew up on food stamps a meal card, I could just go and eat and eat. And then when I found out that you can use this food card at Domino’s, late night cravings became a whole new thing. I was like, ‘Whhhhaaat?’ ”

Shaun T gained 50 pounds his freshman year. He didn’t like that. But he says he was too embarrassed to go to the gym, even though he ran track in high school. “I was extremely unhappy with the way that I looked and the way that I felt,” he says.

But he finally got on the treadmill. And he took some dance fitness classes. And as soon as he’d lost just a few pounds, he says he loved how that made him feel. So much so that he switched his major to sports science. And then he went to the manager of the school rec center and told her, “I want to teach a class.”

Shaun T had no experience. But his fellow students liked him. And 90 of them signed up for his first class in the rec center. He turned on the hip-hop song “Space Jam,” from the 1996 movie with Michael Jordan, put it on repeat, and got everyone doing his halfway-thought-out hip hop aerobics routine. The students loved it.

“I was like are you kidding me? This is the most amazing thing. I could teach and have fun, and all of these people are not only doing what I’m doing but most of them were afraid to dance and they’re actually doing it and they’re stepping outside their comfort zone. And I’m looking at these people and I’m like, ‘This is it. I want to do this for the rest of my life.’ ”

And that’s what Shaun T has done. First classes, at small workout studios. He taught a class for workers at a nuclear power plant in New Jersey. He’d teach anywhere he could. Later he moved to LA and started doing videos. Today, the company that distributes his workouts, Beachbody LLC, says Shaun T has sold more than $1 billion worth of fitness videos.

Shaun T says to stay motivated, it can help to mix it up. For example, sign up for a dance class or a basketball league. He does his own workouts, “but I also play tennis. But I also get my friends I’m like, ‘Yo, let’s play volleyball today.’ It doesn’t always have to be the same thing. Like create it for yourself and it will be so much fun.”

And he says, focus on the fun, not about how much you weigh. “My goal for people out there is just just do things that make you feel good. ‘Cause the weight will come off but the happiness is what’s most important.”

Of course, it can often be more complicated than that for people, including Shaun T. Growing up in that violent neighborhood, he says he suffered abuse from his stepfather and went through things that, later in life, it took him years of therapy to really work through and understand. He encourages others to consider doing the same if they think they might have unresolved baggage holding them back from their health and fitness goals, or other goals for that matter.

“You get stronger by unpacking the baggage, not by packing it into the closet,” he says. But he adds, “It’s just really important for people to understand that your biggest struggles are also the motivators to your biggest strengths.”

Shaun T’s struggles back then got him to do something that took courage when he was 14 years old and about to start high school. He decided to leave his family and go live with his grandparents in New Jersey. His grandfather was a former boxer and a minister and this family was stable and loving. It was a big change and it made a big difference. “I didn’t start living until I was 14 years old,” Shaun T says. “From that point forward my grandparents were my angels, they were just like the best ever.”

In his book, Shaun T says even if it’s in a less dramatic way, changing the people around you can make a difference. If most of your friends are couch potatoes, he recommends spending more time with people who exercise and who will support you and encourage you to live a healthier life.

On a more counterintuitive note, he says, “selfishness gets a bad rap.” He says some people spend so much time doing things for other people — their family, their friends — and they feel guilty taking any time at all just to take care of themselves. He says obviously don’t abandon your loved ones, but you’ll be a happier person if you take time the time you need. He says it’s usually OK to take 25 minutes to do that workout. “Be selfish, because all the people in your life will benefit if you are,” he says.

Of course when it comes to health and fitness, what you eat is important too. Shaun T says one of those giant sugar-frosted cinnamon buns has so many calories you’d have to work out like a maniac for two hours to burn it off. But there too he says, enjoy yourself. Eat healthy 85 percent of the time and enjoy some pizza or a doughnut the rest of the time. But, he says, cut the doughnut in half.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the social media giant would begin emphasizing more “meaningful” content on users’ feeds – giving greater weight to posts from friends and family and less to businesses, brands and media.

In a long Facebook post of his own, Zuckerberg stressed that the social media platform — which has more than two billion active users worldwide — was created “to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us.”

While the move was anticipated, Thursday’s announcement filled in more of the details.

“The research shows that when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long term measures of happiness and health,” Zuckerberg wrote. “On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos — even if they’re entertaining or informative — may not be as good.”

The changes come as the company has faced increased criticism for the way its algorithms have allowed the spread of targeted disinformation aimed at disrupting U.S. elections, as well as more general criticisms that over-use of social media can contribute to depression.

Zuckerberg writes that he’s directed the company’s product teams to shift “from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.”

As Wired notes, “The upshot: The newsfeed algorithm will now give less weight to the popularity of posts and more weight to posts that encourage users to interact and comment. One of the big criticisms of Facebook in the past 18 months is that the content we see in the newsfeed is driven too much by Facebook’s obsession with persuading people to spend as much time as possible on Facebook. The more time people spend in the newsfeed, the more ad revenue Facebook makes. That may be good for Facebook, but, according to an increasingly loud chorus of critics, it’s not so good for humanity.”

According to The Associated Press, “The move will not affect advertisements – users will continue to see the same ads they have before, ‘meaningful’ or not. But businesses that use Facebook to connect with their customers without paying for ads will also feel the pain.”

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