Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

We spoke to Senator Cory Booker about stock buybacks and his Workers Dividend Act in February. We hope you enjoy the full, unedited conversation!

Cory Booker is the U.S. Senator from New Jersey and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. 

Twitter: @CoryBooker

For all our talk about family values, the U.S. is actually the worst place to raise a family in the developed world. Anne-Marie Slaughter and Katie Hamm join Nick and Jessyn to explain how our family policies got stuck in the last century, and what we should do about it. 

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the President and CEO of New America, a think and action tank dedicated to renewing America in the Digital Age. She is also a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, and from 2009-2011 she served as director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State—the first woman to hold that position. 

Twitter: @SlaughterAM

Katie Hamm is the Vice President for Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress, where she leads CAP’s work on policies impacting young children from birth to five.

Twitter: @DCHammslice

Kristine Reeves is a member of the Washington House of Representatives representing the 30th legislative district. She is also the Director of Economic Development for the Military and Defense sector for the state of Washington. 

Twitter: @KMReevesWA

Further reading: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2017/09/07/438428/blueprint-child-care-reform/

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/news/2017/10/31/441825/the-cost-of-inaction-on-universal-preschool/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/upshot/americans-love-families-american-policies-dont.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fclaire-cain-miller

We’ve established that trickle-down economics and neoliberalism are failed philosophies. But we haven’t yet explored whether economics should be moral - should it reflect our behaviors and preferences, or is it a science that lives separately from our societal norms and values? Heather McGhee joins Nick and Paul to argue that an inclusive economy is not only possible, but imperative to growth. 

Heather McGhee was the President of Demos from 2014-2018, where she is now a Distinguished Senior Fellow. She’s finishing a major book about the personal, economic, and societal costs of racism to everyone in America—including white people. A recognized thought leader on the national stage, Heather serves as a contributor to NBC News and frequently appears on shows such as Meet the Press. Her opinions, writing, and research have appeared in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, The Nation, and The Hill. 

Twitter: @hmcghee

Further reading: https://www.demos.org/issue/economy-opportunity 

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/the-moral-burden-on-economists

You’ve definitely heard of the Green New Deal by now, right? Zach and Annie talk it up in this bonus episode and explain why the economic bill of rights component is so important.

In 2009, President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, thereby ensuring that women across the United States were finally paid the same as men. Just kidding! Women still only make 80% of what their male counterparts do. What is this bullshit? Why hasn’t pay equity been achieved yet? Economist Julie Nelson and journalist Claire Cain Miller join Nick and Steph to explain why this problem is so damn persistent, and to offer solutions for how we can fully include women in the economy. 

Julie Nelson is a professor of economics and department chair at the University of Massachusetts Boston, most known for her application of feminist theory to economics. She is the author of ‘Economics for Humans’ and ‘Feminism, Objectivity, and Economics’. 

Twitter: @julie_nelson

Claire Cain Miller is a correspondent for The New York Times, where she writes about gender, families, and the future of work for The Upshot, a Times site for analysis of policy and economics. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. 

Twitter: @clairecm

Further reading

http://evonomics.com/yes-economics-problem-women/

http://evonomics.com/pretending-hard-science-ethics-free-julie-nelson/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html

https://hbr.org/2018/01/when-more-women-join-the-workforce-wages-rise-including-for-men

We at Pitchfork Economics were saddened to learn of the passing of the brilliant economist Alan Krueger last weekend. We were fortunate to speak with him last year - here’s the full conversation. 

Here are two phrases that should be oxymorons, but aren’t: ‘working poor’ and ‘poverty-level jobs.’ Writer and anti-poverty advocate Hanna Brooks Olsen joins Nick and Goldy to explore how the intense burdens of poverty make it nearly impossible to even think about climbing the economic ladder. 

Felicia Wong is the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank that seeks to re-imagine the social and economic policies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the 21st century. 

Twitter: @FeliciaWongRI @rooseveltinst

Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer and policy consultant. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the Nation, Salon, the New York Daily News, the Huffington Post, and Democracy.

Twitter: @mshannabrooks

Further reading:

https://medium.com/@mshannabrooks/but-seriously-lets-talk-about-millennial-poverty-526066ad9adb

https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/154286/50YearTrends.pdf

The overtime threshold used to be the minimum wage for the middle class—but where did it go? Labor experts Sharon Block and Chris Lu join Nick and Jasmin to explain why the overtime threshold, which used to cover 65 percent of workers, today covers only 7 percent. That’s craziness! And surprise, surprise—employers love to claim that forcing you to work for free is in your own best interest. But are they telling the truth?

Sharon Block is the Executive Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. For twenty years, she held key labor policy positions across the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, including head of the policy office at the Department of Labor. 

Twitter: @sharblock

Chris Lu was the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor in the Obama Administration from 2014 to 2017. He also served as Assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary under Obama from 2009 to 2013. He is a Practitioner Senior Fellow at the UVA Miller Center.

Twitter: @ChrisLu44

Further reading: 

https://crooked.com/articles/beat-trump-overtime-pay/

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/overtime-pay-obama-congress-112954

Ever been in the middle of a Pitchfork Economics pod ep and thought, “WTF are they talking about?” If so, this might help - we define some complex terms that get thrown around a lot (neoclassical, neoliberal, heterodoxy, monopoly, monopsony, and stock buybacks) because we want this to be a fun and informative pod, not, like, a painful and confusing pod.

Twitter: @NickHanauer @GoldyHA

Monopoly and its equally evil twin monopsony are destroying competition, depressing wages, and slowing economic growth. Is market concentration an inevitable outcome of capitalism, or is there a smarter solution?

Jared Bernstein: Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, former Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to VP Biden and Executive Director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and author of ‘The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity’. 

Twitter: @econjared 

Jonathan Tepper: Founder of Variant Perception, a macroeconomic research group that caters to asset managers. Author of ‘The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition’, ‘Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle’, and ‘Code Red’, a book on unconventional monetary policy. 

Twitter: @jtepper2 

Further reading: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/51/progressive-labor-standards/