Capitalisn't

Is personal finance rigged against ordinary people? Economists John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai argue the system rewards the wealthy and financially savvy at the expense of everyone else.  Their book Fixed points to a troubling pattern: the fees you avoid by never overdrafting, or by refinancing on time, are paid for by people who don't, and they warn that the resulting resentment is fueling poli...

Free trade was never actually free? That's the case Katherine Tai, Joe Biden's former U.S. Trade Representative, brings Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales this week.  For decades, the economic consensus treated free trade as an engine for cheaper goods and faster growth. But, Tai argues, this system actually relies on ignored externalities, allowing multinational corporations to reap the benefits o...

Corporations are people in the eyes of the law. But how did that happen, and why does it hand them rights you don't have?  UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of "We the Corporations", traces a 200-year campaign by business to win the constitutional rights of human beings. Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales press him on what Zingales calls an incredible trick. Corporations insist they're separa...

How does a free, decentralized, volunteer-run encyclopedia produce something more trusted than nearly any for-profit institution? Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean sit down with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to explore how the platform organizes global knowledge.  The conversation unpacks how Wikipedia governs itself without a central authority, why consensus beats voting, and what the delibera...

Are stagnant wages the hidden price tag of a broken healthcare system? On this week's Capitalisn't, Yale health economist Zack Cooper tells Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales that the U.S. healthcare market is failing because of structural flaws like employer-sponsored insurance, which hides true costs from consumers. He argues this opaque system has quietly become one of the leading drivers of inc...

For the better part of the 20th century, the American economy relied on the steady social peace of "Fordism"—an era of mass production and consumption that helped reconcile capitalism with democracy. Today, a radical new paradigm threatens to upend that equilibrium: "Muskism". While conventional wisdom suggests that Silicon Valley billionaires are libertarians desperate to escape government oversi...

The US economy looks great on paper: high GDP, low unemployment, and booming markets. So why does it feel like the system is broken for so many people? To unpack the disconnect between macroeconomic data and everyday financial anxiety, we’re joined by Chicago Booth professor Steve Kaplan. A staunch defender of the free market, Kaplan argues that despite our collective pessimism, American capitalis...

For decades, Americans were promised that a college degree guaranteed a secure spot in the middle class. But instead of entering corporate management, many graduates are finding themselves trapped in low-paying service roles with crippling debt. Is this widening gap between expectations and financial realities fundamentally reshaping the modern American workforce? New York Times reporter Noam Sche...

Economic models have treated the labor market like a perfectly competitive system where wages naturally align with worker value. Arin Dube, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Wage Standard”, challenges this long-held assumption. He argues that modern labor markets are riddled with invisible frictions that give employers outsized power over your payche...

Most people associate Adam Smith with free markets and “the invisible hand”. But does this conventional narrative purposefully ignore Smith’s deep suspicions about monopolies and power?  Georgetown assistant professor Glory Liu argues this narrow interpretation is actually a deliberate historical reconstruction. In her book, “Adam Smith’s America”, Liu reintroduces the famous philosopher as a theo...

We tend to view technological advancement as an unstoppable force that naturally improves our living standards over time. From the printing press to the internet, modern society assumes that groundbreaking ideas will always find their way into the marketplace. However, beneath the surface of our rapid digital expansion, global productivity is actually facing a troubling and persistent slowdown. Ma...

For decades, Americans viewed the Supreme Court as an impartial referee standing above the political fray. However, public trust in this vital institution has recently plummeted to historic lows. Many observers blame a surge in ideological rulings that align with the party of the President who appointed each justice. If the referee is suddenly wearing a team jersey, the fundamental systems of demo...

As we approach the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's “ Wealth of Nations" this March, his theories on competition and the invisible hand remain part of the bedrock of modern economics. But, have we undermined those theories in our economy today? Widespread public anger suggests there is a growing belief that our current economic system is fundamentally rigged by those at the top. In many instances...

If we want to understand why capitalism feels broken, do we need to stop looking at the economy and start looking at the legal code that underpins it? In our system, capital is often described as money, machinery, or raw materials. But Columbia Law School professor Katharina Pistor argues that capital is actually a legal invention. An asset, whether it's a plot of land, an idea, or a promise of fu...

If a sports betting app has the data to know exactly when a user is struggling financially, should it have a legal duty to cut that person off? On this episode of Capitalisn't , we dive into the murky waters of the American sports betting explosion. We are often told that legalization simply moves an existing black market into the light, but guest Jonathan Cohen argues that the issue isn’t that we...

Is the era of manufacturing-led growth officially over? For decades, the path to a stable middle class was paved through industrialization, but today, even manufacturing giants like China are losing millions of factory jobs to automation. In this episode, Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard and author...

Is the Federal Reserve’s independence a pillar of democracy or a convenient shield that allows elected officials to duck their responsibilities? This week on Capitalisn’t , we confront a shift in Washington after the Justice Department served subpoenas on the Fed.  Joining the conversation is Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Paul Tucker, who complicates the definition of central...

Is the American tax code a fair engine for growth, or a "second estate" where the rich choose whether or not to pay?  We are often told that the top 1% of earners already pay 40% of all taxes, while nearly half of Americans pay nothing at all. Legal scholar Ray Madoff argues that this statistic is a deliberate "bait-and-switch" designed to confuse the public. The reality is that the truly rich oft...

Is capitalism a force of nature, or a human-made order that we have the power to shape? In this episode, Luigi and Bethany sit down with Sven Beckert, a Harvard historian and author of the new book A Global History of Capitalism , to tackle a question that seems basic but remains surprisingly difficult to answer: what exactly is capitalism? Beckert argues that capitalism is not defined simply by t...

There’s a word that’s gained a lot of popularity in the last year: “ensh*ttification”. It refers to a trajectory many see with digital platforms: they initially offer immense value to users, only to systematically degrade that quality over time in order to extract maximum surplus for shareholders.  We invited the coiner of this term, science fiction author and activist Cory Doctorow, on the podcas...

A recent proposal by Lina Khan, co-chair of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral transition team, to cap the price of beer at stadiums in New York City sparked a debate on X last month. At the center of that debate was Matthew Yglesias, editor and author of the Slow Boring newsletter, who argued that the modern antitrust movement has become "slipshod" and is ignoring basic economic trade-offs in favor of poli...

Did you know Amazon makes $37 billion a year— more than double the revenue of all the newspapers in the world combined—from its sponsored results alone? Yes, the same, spammy, sponsored results at the top of a search that bilk shoppers with fake or low-quality items and can starve legitimate businesses of traffic and revenue. This is one of the many insights shared by our guest this week, Tim Wu,...

Recently, Bethany and Luigi joined economist and wealth inequality expert Branko Milanovic in front of a live audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival to explore how capitalism, democracy, and income inequality interact. Together, the three discussed the pervasiveness of income inequality around the world, its connections with democracy and political stability, if the inequality that really matters is...

Standard economic theory informs how we think about business strategy and the economy and presumes that people are selfish, have well-defined preferences, and consistently make welfare-maximizing choices. In other words, we are rational. But what if that is not the case? Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler is out with an updated edition of his bestselling 1991 book, "The Winner's Curse: P...

Every major technological revolution has come with a bubble: railroads, electricity, dot-com. Is it AI’s turn? With investments skyrocketing and market valuations reaching the trillions, the stakes are enormous. But are we witnessing a genuine revolution—or the early stages of a spectacular crash? Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan joins Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean to explain why he believ...