Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

This week, Nick and Goldy sit down with Rohit Chopra, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to explore the agency's efforts to lower financial costs for working Americans. From cracking down on credit card late fees to tackling medical debt on credit reports and regulating bank overdraft charges, Director Chopra sheds light on the CFPB's various initiatives to promote transpare...

Even though the American labor market is currently stronger than it has been in decades, earlier this year Big Tech companies were laying off workers at an alarming pace. Economists struggled to understand why some 25,000 tech workers were losing their jobs, even as the media panicked about whether those layoffs were a warning sign of an oncoming recession. University of Washington Professor Jeff...

Journalist Nick Romeo joins us to discuss his new book "The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy." Romeo argues that the conventional economic wisdom has fostered political and economic instability, resulting in widening inequality, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of workers. He also highlights innovative solutions and success stories—including worker cooperatives, public-optio...

This week, Nick and Goldy sit down with ethics professor Ingrid Robeyns to discuss her groundbreaking new book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Robeyns challenges the idea that it’s acceptable to allow extreme wealth concentration and inequality to persist, advocating instead for a hard cap on wealth accumulation. Nick and Goldy navigate the moral and practical implications of weal...

This special episode of Pitchfork Economics features a live conversation from the "Redefining the Center: How to Make Middle-Out Economics the New Mainstream" conference hosted by Democracy Journal in Washington, D.C. Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, joins Nick for a wide-ranging discussion moderated by Michael Tomasky, editor of Democracy Journal. Hanauer...

In the shadows of corporate greed and exploitation lies a sinister crime that is silently perpetrated, leaving countless victims in its wake—a crime that affects millions of hardworking Americans every year and sucks billions out of our economy —Wage Theft. No industry is immune to this insidious crime, from restaurant workers to construction laborers. On this episode of Pitchfork Economics, we ar...

Preston Mui, Senior Economist at Employ America, recently authored a report titled "The Dream of the 90s is Alive in 2024: How Policy Can Revive Productivity Growth." The report offers a blueprint for policymakers seeking to emulate the successes of an unparalleled period of productivity in the United States. Mui joins us to examine and reflect on the policy decisions which drove the strong produc...

Today, Arin Dube, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, joins us to discuss his latest research, which suggests that the American labor market is undergoing a remarkable transformation. The widespread wage inequality that rapidly expanded between 1980 and 2019 is finally reversing, and American paychecks are growing again—especially at the bottom end of the income scal...

In his State of the Union Address, President Biden made it clear that taxes and tax policy were his next big target for a middle-out makeover. However, we can't talk about the future of taxes without discussing the potential expiration of Trump’s’ 2017 tax law. Samantha Jacoby, a senior tax analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, joins us today to help us understand the repercussion...

Eleven years ago, Democracy Journal released a special issue on "The Middle Out Moment" that explored the implications of what was then the brand-new theory of middle-out economics. The moment may not have fully arrived back in 2013, but no doubt it's here now. So this week, Democracy Journal is publishing a follow-up edition called "The Middle Out Moment Part Two," marking the fact that what was...

The latest economic indicators show a historically strong economy. Over the past couple of years, the unemployment rate has consistently stayed below 4%, real wages have been growing faster than they have in decades, and economic growth has been strong. And yet, public opinion surveys consistently show dissatisfaction with economic conditions. Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist from the Upjohn Ins...

While the average American worker is subject to a progressive income tax system where tax rates increase as income rises, the wealthy often exploit a range of loopholes and deductions that significantly reduce their tax burden—sometimes to the point where the biggest corporations and one-percenters pay nothing at all. David Cay Johnston, a tax policy expert and former investigative journalist for...

Ganesh Sitaraman joins us today to discuss his new book, Why Flying Is Miserable And How to Fix It. Air travel has become an increasingly frustrating experience, with countless horror stories of cancellations, delays, lost baggage, cramped seats, and poor service. For most of the 20th century flying was luxurious and fun, so it’s especially baffling that air travel is plagued by these problems in...

President Biden’s economic policies mark a paradigm shift away from the trickle-down economics that have held sway over Washington DC for the past 40 years. Bidenomics recognizes that a strong and inclusive economy grows from the middle class outwards, centering working Americans and their families rather than relying on a top-down approach that benefits the wealthy first and foremost. In this epi...

Over the next two decades, $30 trillion of wealth is expected to be transferred from Baby Boomers to their heirs. Journalists and financial experts have been referring to this event as the “Great Wealth Transfer,” and it's important that we understand the policies that make such a monumental transferral of generational wealth possible—not to mention the tremendous economic and societal implication...

Over the past few decades, economists have gathered a lot of empirical evidence supporting the underlying truth of middle-out economics: that a thriving middle class is the cause of economic growth. Our friends at the Roosevelt Institute have produced a new report which outlines the events that led to our new understanding of how the economy really works. Suzanne Kahn, Vice President of the Think...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has agreed to expand the Child Tax Credit again, but it will be smaller than the pandemic-era credit was. If this version of the Child Tax Credit is passed by Congress and signed into law, it would benefit 16 million children in low-income families and lift at least half a million kids out of poverty. We thought it would be a good time to revisit this episode from 2...

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most opaque industries in America, and they take advantage of this lack of transparency by setting ever-higher prices for lifesaving prescription drugs like insulin. But provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act are curtailing the exorbitant price-gouging strategies that the pharmaceutical industry uses to pump up their profit margins at the expense of sen...

National elections are won and lost on the economy. Of course they are: the state of the economy affects individuals' job security, income levels, access to healthcare, education, and overall quality of life, so it's not surprising that voters evaluate candidates based on their proposed economic policies and their ability to address pressing economic challenges. As we kick off a big year for elect...

When Pitchfork Economics was started, our ideas about economic cause and effect were way outside the economic mainstream, and so much has changed in the last ten years. The economic world is shifting its thinking away from neoclassical ideas, and the primary middle-out economics messenger driving this paradigm shift is in the Oval Office. In this episode, Nick and Goldy explain how the podcast wil...

2023 was a big year for middle-out policy and research, so we are recapping some of the biggest middle-out moments that are improving people's lives and helping us close the book on America’s neoliberal era. Today, Civic Ventures writer Paul Constant joins Goldy to help recap the biggest middle-out successes of 2023 that have benefited workers, and are changing the way people think about economic...

Business reporting on labor unions tends to focus on speculation about how much striking workers might hurt the economy. But the reality is that successful strikes have a long-term positive impact on economic growth because they raise wages for all workers. Economist and researcher Kate Bahn, Director of Research from WorkRise argues that strikes, especially historic strikes such as the recent UAW...

We already know that many mainstream economists advocate against the economic interests of the majority of working Americans and for the benefit of a tiny handful of super-rich people and corporations. But Clara Mattei argues that economists are actually guilty of something even more insidious: By promoting austerity measures that destabilize working people and consolidate wealth and power at the...

We’ve lived in the shadow of trickle-down economics for over 40 years. During that time, our leaders unquestioningly embraced economic policies that prioritize the wealthiest and most powerful, with the idea that their wealth will eventually “trickle down” to everyone else. Of course, that wealth never has trickled down. Thankfully, our economic understanding has finally started to shift. This has...

In its quest to combat inflation the Federal Reserve has seemingly done everything in its power to engineer a recession, which would throw millions of people out of work. Rather than question the Fed’s actions, mainstream economists cheered them on, claiming that we need multiple months of high unemployment to bring inflation down. But do we really need to immiserate America’s working class in ord...