Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

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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Substack: The Pitch

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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Why have wages for working Americans stagnated for decades—even as productivity, corporate profits, and the wealth of the people at the top continued to rise?

The mainstream explanations are familiar: automation, globalization, education, or simply the unavoidable forces of the market—but wage stagnation was not inevitable. It was the result of policy choices.

This week, we’re revisiting a conversation with economists Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens about the decisions that reshaped the American economy, weakened worker bargaining power, and made it harder for working people to claim their share of the prosperity they helped create.

As we continue sharing more about Market Humanism—the idea that markets are human-built systems shaped by rules and power—this conversation feels especially relevant. The economy we have did not emerge naturally. It was built. And that means it can be rebuilt.

This episode originally aired on June 1, 2021.

Josh Bivens is the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. His research focuses on macroeconomics, inequality, social insurance, public investment, and the economics of globalization.

Larry Mishel is a distinguished fellow and former president of the Economic Policy Institute. His research focuses on labor economics, wages and income distribution, industrial relations, productivity growth, and the economics of education.

Social Media:

@joshbivens-econ.bsky.social

@joshbivens_DC

@larrymishel.bsky.social

@LarryMishel

Watch Nick on The Diary of a CEO

Nick recently joined Steven Bartlett and entrepreneur Daniel Priestley for a wide-ranging debate about the wealth divide, stagnant wages, artificial intelligence, and whether capitalism can still deliver broadly shared prosperity.

Watch the conversation on The Diary of a CEO.

Further reading ⬇️

Economic Policy Institute: Identifying the Policy Levers Generating Wage Suppression and Wage Inequality

Economic Policy Institute: The Productivity–Pay Gap

Economic Policy Institute: Wage Calculator: How Much More Would You Be Making If Pay Had Kept Pace With Productivity?

Roosevelt Institute: Democratic Abundance: An Abundance That Works for Workers

Roosevelt Institute: From Safety Net to Power Base: Reimagining, Not Restoring, the US Antipoverty System

Markets Built for Humans: A Guide for Policy Professionals to the New Economics

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Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠