Optimist Economy

Working from home, a new study in the journal Science says, leaves employees lonelier, sadder, and more likely to be depressed. So does that mean everybody get back to your office desks so morale improves? The authors looked at rates of mental distress among people in jobs that could be done remotely or not before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and concluded that remote work is responsible for about a third of the overall increase, with the worst results for people who live alone. But before-and-after is not cause-and-effect. Isolation is real. Chaining everyone to a desk for friendship is not the only fix.

Chapters:

00:01:44 Announcements

00:02:27 Retcon: Immigrants work in every occupation; occupational crowding; sports betting scandals

00:07:21 Terms & Conditions: Procedural; remotable vs. non-remotable jobs

00:10:00 Big Pilcrow: Does Work From Home Make Us Sad?

00:37:21 Executive Orders: News alerts; more brass!

00:38:28 Spiritual Sponsors: Animal conservation workers; Andrew Bird

Since the U.S. Supreme Court let states legalize betting on sports in 2018, gambling has exploded. More than half of men ages 18 to 49 say they have an active account with an online sportsbook. Want to bet on a game, a play, or even an individual performance? The bookie is always open on your phone, and it sends promo credits to keep you in the game. Young men see the harm up close. The share of men under 30 who call legal sports betting bad for society has more than doubled since 2022, to 47%. Built to be addictive, sports betting is like cigarettes—and deserves a public health response. 

Chapters:

00:01:02 Announcements

00:02:27 Retcon: Healthcare moral hazard vs. cost-sharing; networks and military branches

00:07:37 Terms & Conditions: Handle, the hold, and the tulip bubble

00:12:52 Big Pilcrow: Sports betting, prediction markets, and addiction

00:41:42 Executive Orders: Free museum entry for union members; kid-sized sink staircases

00:44:26 Spiritual Sponsors: Hermanos Gutiérrez; good procedural movies

Over a year into the administration's anti-immigration agenda, we’re seeing the economic fallout. For the first time in at least 50 years, estimates are that we lost immigrants on net; far fewer than usual arrived and a somewhat higher than usual number left. But if anyone benefited from that shift, it wasn’t U.S.-born workers. Even against the backdrop of our weak labor market, foreign-born workers now have slightly lower unemployment rates and higher labor market participation than they did two years ago. Their wages have also ticked up. Meanwhile, reduced population growth has thrown the country’s economic benchmarks into chaos, making it harder to interpret job creation, GDP, and the health of the labor market.

Chapters:

00:00:50 Announcements: Send us your anticipated Thanksgiving dinner fights

00:01:45 Retcon: Consumer sentiment update, auto-enrollment for Trump Accounts 

00:07:43 Terms & Conditions: Plutocratic

00:08:42 Big Pilcrow: Immigration and the Economy

00:36:38 Executive Orders: “The media isn’t covering this” comments; best-of award for bookstore tote bags.

00:38:31 Spiritual Sponsors: Sonoratown and an IPA on tap

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

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]