Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that austerity is responsible economic policy.

We’re revisiting this conversation now because the austerity playbook is still very much alive. The Trump administration and DOGE have cut federal agencies, pushed out public servants, and treated public infrastructure like waste — even though those are the systems we need most during a crisis. And if the economy turns downward, politicians will almost certainly reach for the same old answer: slash public support, make working people pay the price, and call it responsibility.

Nick and Goldy talk with professor and political economist Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, about how austerity became one of the most powerful myths of modern capitalism, how economists helped sell it as common sense, and why it has always been about more than budgets.

Clara Mattei is a professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, Founding President of FREE: Forum for Real Economic Emancipation, and author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism and Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention.

This episode originally aired on December 12, 2023.

Social Media:

@claraemattei

Further reading:

The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

U.S. Treasury: The U.S. Economic Recovery in International Context

CBPP: Robust COVID Relief Bolstered Economy and Reduced Hardship for Millions

GAO: Federal Agency Workforce Changes

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This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that bad economic ideas die once the evidence proves them wrong.

They don’t. They come back as zombie ideas: tax cuts for the rich sold as growth policy, safety-net cuts sold as responsibility, and market fundamentalism sold as common sense. These ideas have failed again and again, but they keep returning because they still serve the people and institutions with the most power.

In this episode, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman joins Nick and Goldy to explain why zombie economics refuses to die, how bad assumptions infected mainstream economic thinking, and why defeating trickle-down economics requires more than better evidence — it requires naming the myths that keep shaping our politics.

This episode originally aired on March 31, 2020.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor, author, and former New York Times columnist. His book Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future examines the failed economic ideas that continue to dominate American policy debates.

Social Media:

@pkrugman.bsky.social

Paul Krugman on Substack

Further reading:

Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

CBO: Estimated Distributional Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

KFF: Tracking Implementation of the 2025 Reconciliation Law: Medicaid Work Requirements

CBPP: The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deliver

EPI: Setting High Standards for a Federal Minimum Wage

Tax Foundation: Who Pays Tariffs? Americans Will Bear the Costs of Tariffs

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This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value.

For decades, Americans were sold the idea that if corporations focused on boosting stock prices and rewarding shareholders, prosperity would trickle down to workers, consumers, and communities. Instead, shareholder primacy helped justify stock buybacks, wage suppression, layoffs, and underinvestment — extracting wealth from the real economy and funneling it upward.

In this episode, Nick and Goldy talk with William Lazonick and Lenore Palladino about how shareholder value became one of the core myths of trickle-down economics, why it has caused so much damage, and what it would mean to build corporations around workers, consumers, communities, and long-term prosperity instead.

This episode originally aired on February 19, 2019.

Lenore Palladino is associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and author of Good Company: Economic Policy After Shareholder Primacy.

William Lazonick is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and co-founder and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network.

Social Media:

@lenorepalladino.bsky.social

@Lazonick

Further reading: 

Good Company: Economic Policy After Shareholder Primacy

Washington Center for Equitable Growth - To restore democracy, end shareholder primacy at U.S. corporations and on Wall Street 

Roosevelt Institute - Regulating Stock Buybacks: The $6.3 Trillion Question

Roosevelt Institute - Ending Shareholder Primacy in Corporate Governance

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This week, we’re kicking off our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with one of the most persistent myths in American politics: that regulation kills growth.

Corporate lobbyists and trickle-down evangelists have spent decades branding any rule that limits big business as a “job killer.” But what if good regulation isn’t the enemy of prosperity, but one of the things that makes prosperity possible?

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich joined Nick and Paul back in 2019 to explain why we should stop calling these rules “regulations” and start calling them what they really are: protections.

Because the economy always has rules. The real question is who they’re written to protect.

This episode originally aired on February 5, 2019.

Robert Reich is the former U.S. Secretary of Labor, co-founder of Inequality Media, and author of Saving Capitalism.

Social Media:

@rbreich.bsky.social

@RBReich

@rbreich

@rbreich

Further reading: 

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

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AI doomsdayers want us to believe mass job loss would be unprecedented. But Kathryn Anne Edwards has a sharp reminder: In the first five weeks of the pandemic, the U.S. economy shed 22.5 million jobs—larger than any single AI job-loss estimate she has seen. The difference was policy. Unemployment support, direct cash to families, and a strong public response helped workers survive the shock and helped the labor market recover.

This week, Nick and Paul talk with Edwards about what the pandemic recovery can teach us about AI, automation, unemployment, and the future of work. Why do AI debates so often treat workers as passive victims and government as irrelevant? What would a serious policy response to technological disruption look like? And why should we be skeptical of billionaires and tech leaders who insist that this time, unlike every other economic transition, they are uniquely important and special?

Kathryn Anne Edwards is a labor economist, independent policy consultant, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, economics influencer, and co-host of the Optimist Economy podcast. 

Social Media:

Instagram

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Further reading: 

Optimist Economy Podcast

Bloomberg Opinion - AI Can Lead to a Fix of This Broken Government Program

Bloomberg Opinion - Is AI Coming for Your Job? A Bigger Government Can Help

Bloomberg Opinion -  AI Anxiety Won’t Be Eased by Universal Basic Income

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