Optimist Economy

The Consumer Sentiment Index has tracked how Americans experience the U.S. economy through bouts of runaway inflation, a mortgage crisis, stock market bubbles, and six recessions. And yet the scores right now are lower than at any of those moments. After nearly 50 years of tracking by the University of Michigan, Consumer Sentiment has broken through the basement. Beneath the five index questions are some clues as to why: Since 2008, the number of people who say the government is doing a poor job has grown from about a third to about three-quarters. This dissatisfaction has been a slow burn — and it’s also evidence that Americans are ready for bold, non-incremental economic change.

0:00 — Opening

6:25 — Retcon: Vacation Days & Moral Hazard in Healthcare

11:18 — Terms & Conditions: Likert Scale

14:24 — The Big Pilcrow: What’s Consumer Sentiment Telling Us?

17:20 — Record Lows: Sentiment Breaks From the Other Economic Metrics

20:54 — The Five Index Questions: Take Consumer Sentiment Survey Yourself!

26:55 — How’s the Government Doing Managing the Economy? Survey says…Poor

29:39 — It's the Economy, Stupid

31:16 — Partisanship Cancels Itself Out

33:11 — Why This Isn't the Same as What Happened to Biden

35:25 — Who Does Feel Good?

36:07 — Low Sentiment Deserves Big Policy

38:07 — Executive Orders: Hold the reservation. Too many eggs. 

41:52 — Spiritual Sponsors: So, so many

47:17 — Credits

(Originally aired June 10, 2025) The national debt is $36 trillion. That could be a panic-inducing big number. So maybe it will help to understand how we ran up that debt. We've blown 37% of it on tax cuts, with precious little to show for that. But 28% went to stabilize the economy during two major crises (in ‘08-’09 and during the COVID pandemic), which is when you do want the federal government to pull out its credit card. Good news is we don’t have to get the debt to zero. We just need to get it moving in that direction. And for listeners waiting for MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) to make a cameo, that moment has arrived. 

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Optimist Economy is on break this month, but we know that optimist listeners are interested in tales of economic history, issues of inequality and movements for change. So we thought some of you might enjoy "Occupy!" a six-part narrative series about  Occupy Wall Street, the 2011 protest village that lasted nearly two months and turned a spotlight on systemic economic inequality in the U.S.

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EPISODE 1: An Invitation

In 2011, a handful of skeptical New Yorkers answer a call to Occupy Wall Street. What they find feels less like a protest and more like a glimpse of a different world—one where people openly share stories of debt, hardship, and frustration. They start to build an anti-capitalist village in a tiny Manhattan park — under the watchful eyes of police. This is the first episode of Future Hindsight’s brand new 6-part series, OCCUPY! An Unfinished Uprising. Subscribe to Future Hindsight wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss a single episode!

Want to dive deeper? Listen to these episodes of Future Hindsight:

Credits:

Special thanks to T.J. Raphael, Lauren Passell, Arielle Nissenblatt, and Kate Blumenfeld for being our first listeners and sounding boards, and to Tom Koenig for his support. 

Distributed by PRX.

Nearly 90% of private-sector workers get paid vacation days from their job, but a Pew survey found 46% leave at least some of it on the table. Government survey data also show that the share of workers who are on vacation in any given week has fall by about half between 1980 and 2022. Blame thin staffing, guilt culture, and “PTO bundles” that push people to ration days between vacation days and sick leave. The fix exists elsewhere: the European Union, for instance, guarantees 20 paid days a year. If a Costco cashier is able to vacation in Europe twice, so should you.


Chapters:

0:52 Announcements

2:53 Retcon Marathon

11:01 Terms & Conditions: Statutory Leave

12:04 Big Pilcrow: Vacation Days

14:03 Why Do We Think We Can't Take Time Off?

16:01 No Staffing Slack in the Office

16:51 Vacation Guilt is a Real Thing

18:51 What's Worker Power Got to Do With It?

20:20 Decline in Days Off: What the Data Says

21:17 Vague Numbers of Vacation Days

24:23 Cost of Travel is Up

24:56 Statutory Leave Could Create Jobs

26:28 What are Workers Leaving on the Table?

28:48 How Much Does Vacation Time Cost Employers?

31:08 Vacation Marxist Economics-Style

34:40 The Curse of the Long-Weekend Vacation

38:21 Could the Government Mandate Vacation Time?

42:46 Executive Orders: ACFC wins and Americans with Children Act

46:23 Spiritual Sponsors: Lizards!

About 18% of U.S. GDP every year gets spent on health care. Half of that, 9%, is coming from the government, which is about the whole cost of  other countries’ public health programs. In other words, for what the U.S. spends on Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, VA benefits, and the tax write-off for employer-sponsored plans, we could have free basic health insurance for everyone. This is why the co-authors of the 2023 book “We’ve Got You Covered” describe the current health insurance system as a total tear-down. We could have universal insurance coverage for all with no tax hike if we started building from the ground up.

Chapters:

0:00 Announcements 

0:58 Retcon — Costco cashier's $33/hr job and career security

2:49 Terms & Conditions — Political economy, Cost Sharing, Gatekeeping

7:45 The Big Pilcrow: “Americare… Just Enough” 

8:08 Healthcare vs. health insurance — why this is really an insurance/payer fight

12:53 We have 5+ public health programs already

17:07 Health economist Amy Finkelstein's research: "It's a tear-down, not a fixer-upper"

19:55 The proposed system — universal basic coverage + letting “rich people rich" without letting them opt out

28:11What Americans would love or hate

40:44 This health world changed a lot since Obamacare

43:20 Executive Orders — Airport boarding pass warnings, living-roof bus stops

45:20 Spiritual Sponsors — Resurrection fern, Aunt Fern

46:42 Credits

Just-in-time scheduling lets an algorithm decide when — and whether — millions of people work. Surveys find 40% of shift workers (mostly in retail and food service) don’t know their schedule a week in advance. They can also get sent home mid-shift or asked to be on call, unpaid. Studies show that more than 50% of hourly workers’ income swings up to 30% month-to-month, making it hard to budget for rent, qualify for benefits, or plan. A landmark study done at The Gap a decade ago proved stable schedules boost not only morale, but sales, so this isn't even bad for business. We already have fair workweek laws in many big cities, but this is a no-brainer for an update to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

Chapters:

1:01 Announcements — Review shoutouts, Benevity donor thanks.

2:15 Retcon — July 4th recap, AI job-loss predictions walked back.

7:29 Terms & Conditions — Just In Time scheduling and clopening.

10:21 The Big Pilcrow: Underwork — Why part-time and shift workers get scheduled unfairly.

13:50 How the BLS tracks part-time hours by industry.

17:05 Economic vs. non-economic part-time reasons.

25:05 The Gap Study — Predictive scheduling boosted sales 7%.

28:22 Consequences — Income volatility and benefits fraud traps.

32:06 Fair workweek law and bills

35:20 Labor market regulation as low-cost policy.

41:59 Executive Orders — Credit card charge names, smaller jar lids.

43:52 Spiritual Sponsors — WaPo editorial takedown, new yoga studio.

48:12 Credits

Nobody has more riding on any changes to Social Security than people under 40. The trust fund is currently projected to run dry in the fourth quarter of 2032, but it could be sooner. Every election, starting in November, selects the lawmakers who will shape the program’s future. Neglecting to fix its finances will mean an automatic 22% cut to everyone's benefit. But for Millennials and Zoomers, what’s at stake isn't your elders’ monthly check — it’s the only life insurance, disability insurance, and old-age poverty insurance guaranteed to follow you through every job you'll ever have.


Chapters:

1:21 Announcements — Unbleeped feed, subscribe reminders.

2:23 Retcon — Seed OK savings accounts follow-up.

4:36 Terms & Conditions — Social insurance vs. private insurance.

8:42 Big Pilcrow — Under 40? Time to tune in to the Social Security debate.

11:51 Youth Skepticism — Why young people have always doubted Social Security, and how that's politically exploited.

16:56 OBBA Impact — How the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut Social Security's revenue.

18:37 Immigration Trends — Deportations and lower immigration also hurt.

21:11 Elections Have Begun — Social Security as a live political battleground.

22:35 First Beneficiaries — What studies of early recipients tell us.

30:36 Otherwise Uninsurable Risks — Death, disability, savings, longevity, inflation.

33:17 Paid Family Leave — Could Social Security's model extend to paid leave?

34:21 Claim Ownership — Youth should own this program.

37:08 Cuts by Geography — Rural states will get hit hardest if cuts come.

38:27 Executive Orders — Casting ages, cosmetic disclosure.

40:22 Spiritual Sponsors — World Cup, Jeopardy! triumph.

Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders?  Send them to [email protected]

(Originally aired 6/24/2025) One in five workers in the United States was born in another country. Without them, the country’s prime-age workforce would be shrinking, and thus so would our economy. So the calumny (Terms & Conditions) directed at immigrants is at odds with the basic fact that the U.S. needs them. What about depressing wages? Research finds such a mixed bag of results that the overall effect is about zero. Indeed, if the goal is to save “American jobs” or help American workers, there are a lot more effective ways to spend $185 billion than on a massive crackdown on immigration rules.

Chapters:

00:02:34  Announcements
00:05:55  Retcon

00:10:43  Terms & Conditions 

00:12:21  Big Pilcrow

00:43:07  Executive Orders

00:49:12  Spiritual Sponsors

It’s the United States’ semiquincentennial … and one of us is not feeling it. The other is literally carrying a flag in her bag — and that’s just her road flag. Kathryn Anne Edwards makes her case for optimism right now: The U.S. is undergoing one of the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts of any industrialized nation. Americans agree that Congress is broken. And the people's agenda on wages, childcare, money in politics, and Social Security polls above 80%. Maybe this isn’t a backslide. It's just what clearing the air looks like.

Chapters:

00:01:21 Announcements

00:04:10 Retcon: More on the national anthem

00:06:36 Terms & Conditions: Origin of "the melting pot"

00:08:01 Big Pilcrow: Make Robin Optimistic about America

00:48:17 Executive Orders: End gerrymandering; mandatory hearings on supermajority issues

00:50:03 Spiritual Sponsors: Knicks celebrations; bourbon in Louisville

We can’t give financial advice. Or feedback on your 20-page tax proposal. But economist Kathryn Edwards did take a run at nearly 20 listener questions in under 60 minutes. Among them: Why care about birth rates if robots are taking all the jobs? What happens if the AI bubble bursts? Will the dollar collapse? Can the bond market sway the White House? Plus: Why the minimum wage matters even if it doesn’t alleviate most poverty and how to argue for universal free school lunch. 

Chapters:

1:43 — AI & birth rates
2:57 — AI & birth rates (cont.)
5:43 — AI bubble burst
8:11 — The experience of inflation
11:20 — Minimum wage & poverty
13:55 — Job loss after 50
17:30 — Productivity squeeze
21:00 — CEO pay ratio cap
21:49 — Could the dollar collapse?
26:59 — Bonds & the Fed
28:35 — Debt ceiling fix
31:12 — Trump Accounts vs 401k
34:42 — Tax dollar waste myth
36:46 — Universal school meals
40:11 — Part-time for new parents
42:28 — Fighting monopolies
44:14 — Policy ideas for Texas
47:34 — Mamdani goes federal?

50:43 — Top 1% wealth myth