Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

By Civic Ventures

Business

What's Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer about?

Any society that allows itself to become radically unequal eventually collapses into an uprising or a police state—or both. Join venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and some of the world’s leading economic and political thinkers in an exploration of who gets what and why. Turns out, everything you learned about economics is wrong. And if we don’t do something about rising inequality, the pitchforks are coming.

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Setting the record straight...

10.03.2023

There have been a lot of bad takes on inflation out there in the media, from wild speculation about its causes to absurd predictions about when and how the wave of price increases would finally come to an end. But ...

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer episodes:

10.03.2023 Setting the record straight on inflation (with Mike Konczal) There have been a lot of bad takes on inflation out there in the media, from wild speculation about its causes to absurd predictions about when and how the wave of price increases would finally come to an end. But ...
09.26.2023 The Tyranny of Merit (with Michael Sandel) In this wide-ranging conversation with one of our favorite authors, philosopher Michael Sandel explains how the concept of meritocracy has helped to create such a massive divide in American politics and culture. Michael Sandel is a world-renowned philosopher who teaches ...
09.19.2023 What the new Draft Merger Guidelines could mean for the economy (with Maggie Goodlander) Earlier this summer, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a draft update of their Merger Guidelines, “which describe and guide the agencies’ review of mergers and acquisitions to determine compliance with federal antitrust laws.” Maggie Goodlander from ...
09.12.2023 The CHIPS Act, explained (with Ronnie Chatterji) It’s been a little over a year since President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested $231 billion into semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, into law. Despite the fact that those investments are already creating economic growth ...
09.05.2023 What labor shortage? (with Heidi Shierholz) When employers say they can’t find workers, what they really mean is that they can’t find enough people willing to work for what they want to offer. The so-called “labor shortage” we’ve heard so much about these last few years ...
08.29.2023 Why don't we fight poverty by just giving people money? (with Paul Niehaus) We saw during the pandemic that giving people cash is good for individuals and the economy as a whole. It makes sense: When people have more money, they spend it in their communities and stimulate the local economy. So why ...
08.22.2023 Power, progress, and technology (with Daron Acemoglu) New technologies are sold as a net benefit to society as a whole, but the truth is that technological progress is only loosely correlated to the improved welfare of the majority of citizens. This is not to say that technology ...
08.15.2023 Ask Nick Anything Nick and Goldy answer more of your questions! What happens to current economic systems if world population growth goes to zero? Should I feel guilty for wanting my stocks to do well? What could be a good methodology to measure ...
08.08.2023 Wages need a revolution (with Michael Lind) Today we’re talking about wages—specifically, how the widespread suppression of wages is destroying the American economy. Author, professor, and fellow traveler Michael Lind just published a new book titled “Hell to Pay” that argues America is in need of a ...
08.01.2023 How Industrial Policy actually works (with Isabel Estevez) Industrial Policy (IP) has dominated conversations in economic and political circles thanks to President Biden’s big investments in manufacturing, infrastructure, and working Americans. But according to today’s guest, development economist Isabel Estevez, the conversation around IP is too narrow. IP ...
07.25.2023 Private equity’s plan to pillage America (with Brendan Ballou) Over the last decade, private equity firms wiped out nearly 600,000 jobs in the retail sector by taking over and bankrupting major retailers like Toys R Us and Payless Shoes. But in that same time, private equity also destroyed companies ...
07.18.2023 Bidenomics (with Bharat Ramamurti) “Bidenomics” is closely aligned with many—probably even most—of the middle-out economic principles that we discuss on this podcast every week. Much to our surprise and delight, Joe Biden has become the first President in 40 years to reject trickle-down economics ...
07.11.2023 Why good jobs are good for business (with Zeynep Ton) Low pay is obviously terrible for workers, but a growing body of research proves that it’s bad for businesses, too. Smaller paychecks lead to higher turnover, decreased productivity, and poor sales. Will low-wage employers in the grocery, retail, and restaurant ...
07.04.2023 How economics can create a more sustainable planet (with Sarah Bloom Raskin) In the 21st century, summertime isn’t just for lounging on the beach and trips to the ice cream shop. Climate change has made summer much more unpleasant—and even dangerous. This year alone, New York City and Chicago have been choked ...
06.27.2023 Summer Reading List It’s Paul and Goldy’s summer reading list! We want to know what you’re reading, too. Leave us a comment on Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Remember to shop local and small when you can, or order from IndieBound or Bookshop.org—both of which support ...
06.20.2023 Doughnut Economics (with Andrew Fanning) On its website, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab describes Doughnut Economics as “a compass for human prosperity in the 21st century.” Its proponents prioritize economic solutions that meet both the basic needs of all people—food, housing, equity, democratic inclusion—and the ...
06.13.2023 How the franchise system is rigged (with Marshall Steinbaum) In the 20th century, big corporations sold franchising to Americans as a less risky way to buy into business ownership. But in recent years, the franchise industry has tipped hugely in favor of franchisors, extracting wealth from both franchisees and ...
06.06.2023 Americonned (with Sean Claffey and Dave Pederson) Americonned, a new documentary featuring our own Nick Hanauer, examines the inequality crisis currently plaguing the United States. The film shows the hidden struggles of American families and dissects the elite’s calculated political maneuvers to preserve and even grow their ...
05.30.2023 Can the economy be liberated? (with Jeremie Greer) Even when our nation's prosperity was most broadly shared in the 1950s and 1960s, Black people and other communities of color were purposefully denied the shared prosperity that white families enjoyed. And because inclusion drives economic growth, excluding anyone from ...
05.23.2023 Higher minimum wages are creating more jobs (with Michael Reich) Ten years ago, Nick was called "near insane" for saying that substantially raising the minimum wage would create jobs. In retrospect, it seems obvious: After all, if no one has any money, who will buy all the stuff? Researchers at ...
05.16.2023 Do we need an Economic Bill of Rights? (with Mark Paul) We learn in grade school that American citizens are endowed with certain inalienable rights, but basic necessities like housing and education aren’t protected by the Constitution. Imagine how different this country might be if affordable health care and guaranteed employment ...
05.09.2023 The case for inclusive growth (with JP Julien) At the core of middle-out economics is the idea that the more people we include in the economy, the faster and more prosperous it grows. And this inclusionary principle isn’t something we just made up—there’s actual data to support it. ...
05.02.2023 Can economics save the world? (with Erik Angner) We all want to live happier, more fulfilling lives and build a better future for ourselves, but can economics help to make that dream a reality? Economist and philosopher Erik Angner is so confident that economics can save the world ...
04.25.2023 How college broke the American dream (with Will Bunch) This week we’re continuing our exploration into the ways that higher education contributes to America’s political, cultural, and economic divisions. Goldy chats with author Will Bunch about how our leaders almost established a university education as a public good, why ...
04.18.2023 Econ 101 is failing college students (with Abigail Acheson and Nouhaila Oudija) Universities across America are still teaching an outdated, neoclassical way of economic thinking. The trickle-down curriculums taught in Econ 101 classrooms aren’t just bad for students—they have had disastrous, far-reaching effects on the economy. Decades of bad education has left ...
04.11.2023 How rich people dodge taxes (with Gabriel Zucman) As Tax Day approaches in the United States, we’re revisiting our conversation with Gabriel Zucman, the authority on wealth taxes. For the last 40 years, trickle-down politicians have slashed tax rates on the rich, benefiting the wealthy few at the ...
04.04.2023 Banning noncompetes is good, actually (with Evan Starr) One in five American workers has signed a noncompete clause. The FTC believes that the elimination of these clauses would generate extra job opportunities for 30 million workers and raise wages by $300 billion—a huge win for the average American ...
03.28.2023 How we all fell for The Big Myth (with Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway) When did ordinary people come to believe that free market solutions are always better than government intervention? How do we create a future where markets serve democracy instead of stifling it? In this episode we’re talking about the “magic” of ...
03.21.2023 Slouching towards economic utopia (with Brad DeLong) Between 1870 and 2010 an unprecedented explosion of material wealth transformed the globe, but that wave of prosperity failed to create a fully functioning and equal society. How did we manage to create an economic pie large enough for everyone ...
03.14.2023 The problem with unequal cities (with Richard McGahey) We've released dozens of episodes exploring how to improve the lives of Americans that live in rural areas, but we don’t often discuss how cities (and the folks that live in them) are being left behind by state lawmakers and ...
03.07.2023 The high price of misclassification (with Heidi Shierholz) A new report from the Economic Policy Institute found that anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of employers are essentially stealing thousands of dollars from their workers every year by misclassifying them as independent contractors. In addition to lower pay, ...
02.28.2023 Why Walmart workers are still broke (with Rick Wartzman) Goldy and Paul interview author Rick Wartzman about how America’s biggest employer (Walmart) began taking better care of its workers (by raising wages)—and why that decision might be too little, too late. According to Wartzman, Walmart has gone through a ...
02.21.2023 Why stock buybacks should be taxed more (with Cory Booker) Stock buybacks are one of the worst excesses of modern capitalism, which naturally means they're one of our favorite subjects to cover on the podcast. And since they’re in the news again, we thought it would be a good time ...
02.14.2023 How Biden is restoring economic competition (with David Dayen) In July 2021, President Biden signed an executive order directing government agencies to rewrite policies to encourage competition in the U.S. economy. Returning guest David Dayen has compiled 18 months’ worth of actions resulting from this order. After more than ...
02.07.2023 Why canceling student debt makes great economic sense (with Fenaba Addo) When the Biden Administration announced last year that they would forgive up to $20,000 student loan debt per individual, millions of people celebrated—and for good reason. The student loan debt that Americans carry has ballooned to $1.8 trillion in recent ...
01.31.2023 The many benefits of a guaranteed job program (with Max Kasy and Lukas Lehner) Oxford economists are currently running the world’s first Universal Job Guarantee program in Austria, and so far the results are very promising. When unemployed people have guaranteed access to training and/or a job, those people feel more in control of ...
01.24.2023 The legacy of the Fight for $15 (with NELP) Exactly one decade ago, activists and civic leaders launched the Fight for $15. It’s hard to recall now, but the idea was wildly controversial at the time—Forbes called Nick’s support of a $15 minimum wage “near-insane,” for example. A new ...
01.17.2023 Sci-Fi Economics (with Kim Stanley Robinson) We can’t tear down the existing economic framework and replace it with a better one without first telling a persuasive story about how the economy actually works. And few people in the world are more compelling storytellers than science fiction ...
01.10.2023 The real reasons why inflation soared last year (with Ira Regmi) For most of last year economists and pundits engaged in a long, circular debate about why inflation was spiking around the world, and who was to blame for those skyrocketing prices. Economic experts at the Roosevelt Institute (including past guest ...
01.03.2023 New Year, New AMA Nick and Goldy kick off the New Year by answering more of your questions! Has there ever been a time period with strong deflation? Should folks prepare for an upcoming recession? Why aren’t we allowed to question the free market? ...
12.27.2022 Revisiting the economics of abortion (with Caitlin Myers) Out of all the topics we discussed in 2022 one stayed at the top of headlines all year long: abortion. We spoke to Professor Caitlin Myers in February of this year, months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. ...
12.20.2022 Revisiting corporate greed’s effect on the supply chain (with Rakeen Mabud) Judging by the amount of downloads for this episode, we’d say it was our listeners’ favorite from the past year. “Did Corporate Greed Break the Supply Chain?” with Rakeen Mabud from the Groundwork Collaborative exposes how the supply chain was ...
12.13.2022 CEO Pay is out of control (with Mark Kreidler) A new report from the Economic Policy Institute looks into the salary and stock packages of America’s most overcompensated corporate titans and the numbers are staggering. According to journalist Mark Kreidler, who recently covered the report for Capital + Main, ...
12.06.2022 America isn’t lost, it’s Adrift (with Scott Galloway) Inequality has grown so large that a number of pessimists believe America is lost. But Professor Scott Galloway argues that our nation is actually adrift, and in his latest book he explains what needs to be done to fix this ...
11.29.2022 Fair Social Contracts (with Eric Beinhocker) Human society is built on social contracts, but decades of neoliberalism have left many of our most fundamental contracts—worker power, social safety nets, trust in key institutions— in tatters. It’s no wonder that people are pissed off: without fairness, we ...
11.22.2022 Charting a new path forward (LIVE from EconCon Presents) In one of the highlights of last week’s EconCon Presents event in Washington D.C., Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. convened an all-star panel of political experts. Maurice Mitchell, Faiz Shakir, and Anna Greenberg joined Bacon to share lessons learned ...
11.15.2022 Why we can't let Kroger buy Albertsons (with Stacy Mitchell) Kroger wants to buy Albertsons and effectively become the second-largest grocery chain in the United States. This merger would result in less competition, rising grocery prices, and lower wages. Corporate greed has gotten us into this mess, but new federal ...
11.08.2022 The reality of voter suppression in America (with Andrea Hailey) If there's one thing we learned from the far-right campaign against voting rights following the 2020 election, it's how fragile our democracy really is. That’s why we’re celebrating Election Day 2022 by revisiting our conversation with Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey, ...
11.01.2022 Chokepoint Capitalism (with Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin) Corporate concentration has strained the labor market for virtually all workers, but the resulting lack of competition has caused unique harm to the creative economy. Increasingly exploitative monopolies have rendered artists, authors, musicians, and other creative workers all but powerless. ...
10.25.2022 Middle-Out Messaging for the Midterms (with Melissa Morales and Bobby Clark) Economics is another form of storytelling—specifically, it’s the story of who gets what and why. And as the rise of trickle-down and middle-out economics shows us, telling the right story at the right time can transform the economy for a ...

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