Optimist Economy

(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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Read more:

• From Riches to Rags: Causes of Fiscal Deterioration Since 2001 [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, 2024]
• Economic Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act [Congressional Research Service, 2025]
• Is Modern Monetary Theory Nutty or Essential? [The Economist, 2019]
  Is This What Winning Looks Like?: Modern Monetary Theory, the buzziest economic idea in decades, got a pandemic tryout of sorts. Now inflation is testing its limits. [New York Times, 2022]

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:

• For a conversation on activism with a co-founder of Occupy Wall Street, tune in to this episode with Micah White: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/micah-white
• For a recap of how American capitalism evolved into what it is today, listen to this episode with Kurt Andersen: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/americas-evil-geniuses-kurt-andersen
• On solidarity and mutual aid, listen to this conversation with Manuel Pastor: https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/episode/solidarity-and-mutuality-manuel-pastor

Credits:

• Host / Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
• Producer / Writer: Maria Luisa Tucker
• Audio Producer: Zack Travis
• Additional production help: Mia Warren, Erika Gjada, Megan Detrie, Lizzie Jacobs, and Ilya Magazanin
• Archival research: Marisa Holmes
• Archival material courtesy of: Occupy Wall Street Media Working Group.
• Original music: Rude Mechanical Orchestra and Puge Ruhe

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!

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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

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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

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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.

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(Originally aired 6/24/2025) One in five workers in the United States was born in another country. Without them, the country’s prime-age workforce would be shrinking, and thus so would our economy. So the calumny (Terms & Conditions) directed at immigrants is at odds with the basic fact that the U.S. needs them. What about depressing wages? Research finds such a mixed bag of results that the overall effect is about zero. Indeed, if the goal is to save “American jobs” or help American workers, there are a lot more effective ways to spend $185 billion than on a massive crackdown on immigration rules.

Chapters:

00:02:34  Announcements
00:05:55  Retcon

00:10:43  Terms & Conditions 

00:12:21  Big Pilcrow

00:43:07  Executive Orders

00:49:12  Spiritual Sponsors

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It’s the United States’ semiquincentennial … and one of us is not feeling it. The other is literally carrying a flag in her bag — and that’s just her road flag. Kathryn Anne Edwards makes her case for optimism right now: The U.S. is undergoing one of the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts of any industrialized nation. Americans agree that Congress is broken. And the people's agenda on wages, childcare, money in politics, and Social Security polls above 80%. Maybe this isn’t a backslide. It's just what clearing the air looks like.

Chapters:

00:01:21 Announcements

00:04:10 Retcon: More on the national anthem

00:06:36 Terms & Conditions: Origin of "the melting pot"

00:08:01 Big Pilcrow: Make Robin Optimistic about America

00:48:17 Executive Orders: End gerrymandering; mandatory hearings on supermajority issues

00:50:03 Spiritual Sponsors: Knicks celebrations; bourbon in Louisville

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We can’t give financial advice. Or feedback on your 20-page tax proposal. But economist Kathryn Edwards did take a run at nearly 20 listener questions in under 60 minutes. Among them: Why care about birth rates if robots are taking all the jobs? What happens if the AI bubble bursts? Will the dollar collapse? Can the bond market sway the White House? Plus: Why the minimum wage matters even if it doesn’t alleviate most poverty and how to argue for universal free school lunch. 

Chapters:

1:43 — AI & birth rates
2:57 — AI & birth rates (cont.)
5:43 — AI bubble burst
8:11 — The experience of inflation
11:20 — Minimum wage & poverty
13:55 — Job loss after 50
17:30 — Productivity squeeze
21:00 — CEO pay ratio cap
21:49 — Could the dollar collapse?
26:59 — Bonds & the Fed
28:35 — Debt ceiling fix
31:12 — Trump Accounts vs 401k
34:42 — Tax dollar waste myth
36:46 — Universal school meals
40:11 — Part-time for new parents
42:28 — Fighting monopolies
44:14 — Policy ideas for Texas
47:34 — Mamdani goes federal?

50:43 — Top 1% wealth myth

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This might be the most dangerous economic assertion circulating today: the high inflation from 2021-2023 was caused by government stimulus. The talking point on the right goes: the third COVID-era stimulus checks landed in March 2021, prices took off, case closed. Of course reality is more nuanced. And most serious estimates pin only a point or two of the inflation peak on the bill; the rest was supply chain chaos, a global chip shortage, and the Ukraine war. The pandemic caused the worst job loss on record — and the response produced the fastest labor-market recovery we've ever had, because policymakers went big. The danger is that they remember the inflation and forget the recovery.

Chapters:

00:01:14 Announcements

00:03:24  Retcon: Q1 GDP Revised 

00:04:50 Terms & Conditions: Output Gap, NAIRU, "The Long Depression"

00:11:49  Big Pilcrow: Is Recession Recovery Getting Blamed for Inflation?

00:42:14  Executive Orders: Parallel parking licenses, FIFA ticketing ban

00:45:52  Spiritual Sponsors: Small hardware stores, handwritten letter to OE

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Thirty million Americans, more or less, work for themselves. They freelance, do gig work, have solo LLCs, or — as a certain economist says — participate in “ non-employee employment.” The economics of their situation is harder than it needs to be. Making self-employment more viable is good for everyone in the labor market, because when workers have options, they also have more power. Plus: Kathryn Anne Edwards testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, and a congressman implied she wasn't a real American. She has thoughts.

Chapters:

0:00 — Start/Announcements

1:21 — Retcon: Bad banks, good overtime, and testifying before Congress (again)

18:17 — Big Pilcrow: Freelancers & non-employer businesses

44:42 — Executive orders: national anthem singing rules, Congressional attendance policy

47:20 — Spiritual sponsors: Supportive listeners and horchada + cold brew coffee

49:01 — Credits

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(Originally aired 7/1/2025) Newly minted college graduates are having a harder time landing that first job than in recent years. Is it AI? Is college useless? Is it a crisis? (No. No. And not yet…) College graduates under 27 still have significantly lower unemployment rates (5.8%) than high school graduates of the same age (6.9%). What economist Kathryn Edwards finds worrying is that these new workers, who are typically a lagging economic indicator, may in this case be a bellwether of a weakening economy. 

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Read More:

• The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates [New York Fed, 2025]
• Hires, from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey [St. Louis Fed, 2025]
• Downskilling: changes in employer skill requirements over the business cycle [Labour Economics 2016]
• Upskilling: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Workers Are Plentiful? [The Review of Economics and Statistics 2020]

A certain kind of wealthy American has been griping out loud lately — about taxes, about progressive cities, about how unappreciated they are for the jobs they create, the stuff they buy, and the tips they hand out. A narrative is coalescing around them too: that the top 10% of earners now do so much of the spending, the U.S. economy relies on them. But an economy that depends so much on the people at the top isn't the healthy one the country deserves — it’s just wearing a nice suit.

Chapters:

00:00:56 Announcements: Q&A episode questions wanted
00:01:18 Retcon: The 86 debate; FDR's full "calamity howling executives" quote 00:05:32 Terms & Conditions: Wealth Effect and Zugzwang
00:09:26 Big Pilcrow: Should we cherish the ultra-wealthy?
00:36:41 Executive Orders: Retire "mummies"; union credits on red carpets 00:39:34 Spiritual Sponsors: Mellow Cello podcast; enormous floral arrangements

Further Reading

Moody's claim that the top 10% of earners now drive nearly half of consumer spending in the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/us-economy-strength-rich-spending-2c34a571

The Minneapolis Fed on what the underlying data actually shows. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2026/have-us-consumers-gone-k-shaped-a-review-of-the-data

Wealthy part-time New Yorkers reacting to a proposed pied-à-terre tax in the Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/3283eaab-e9cf-41e6-a028-5a02fb6f4615

The Wall Street Journal on second-home taxes spreading from New York City to other states, including the San Diego homeowner who'd like to be cherished. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/taxes-on-second-homes-are-springing-up-across-america-93a64448

Full reading list at https://optimisteconomy.substack.com

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Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders?  Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com

It wasn’t just hourly factory jobs that were supposed to come with a 40-hour workweek. Even salaried jobs were supposed to get overtime pay, though very few do do anymore. Overtime protections are the only legal mechanism enforcing work-hour limits, and for 50 years, the salary threshold that determines who qualifies to receive overtime has been left to erode. Employers found another workaround too: just call the sandwich maker a "sandwich manager." Now, the new no-tax-on-overtime deduction isn't protecting workers — it's rewarding the kind of overwork it was overtime was originally designed to punish. Fixing the law governing overtime would be a huge and instant boost not just to the U.S. economy, but to our work-life balance.

Chapters:
00:01:43 Announcements
00:02:32 Retcon: Economic data reliability
00:05:54 Terms & Conditions: Tenterhooks; Perquisite 
00:08:23 Big Pilcrow: Overtime 
00:45:27 Executive Orders: Badge of shame for working past 40 hours; more colorful cars
00:46:52 Spiritual Sponsors: Awesome first bosses; Faraday e-bike

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Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders?  Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com

Cash is dirty, inconvenient, and so last century. Some 70% of Americans under age 50 think its days are numbered. But we still need those greenbacks, if as an alternative to banks. More than 4% of households are “unbanked,” and three times as many are “underbanked,” meaning bank services mostly don’t work for them, so rely on services like check cashers or payday lenders. And that's before you get to the racial disparities in who banks approve for credit. Reviving banking services at the post office might be one way to help the unbanked and keep from handing yet more power to the finance sector. 

Chapters:

00:00:48 Announcements

00:02:30  Retcon: Semiquincentennia 

00:03:35 Terms & Conditions: ChexSystems, Unbanked

00:05:46  Big Pilcrow: What’s keeping the U.S. from going cashless?

00:38:28  Executive Orders: Regulate youth sports schedules; Airline baggage fees by weight.

00:40:56  Spiritual Sponsors: Artemis splashdown; Friends with season tickets.

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Consumer sentiment is in the basement. Jobs aren't being added. Prices keep climbing. GDP barely grew at the end of 2025, and a ‘meh’ 2% last quarter. Shouldn’t this be a recession? Not so far. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards walks through the clear cause of each bad number: Tariffs explain the prices and foul mood. Mass deportations explain the jobs. The government shutdown explained last quarter. Still, knowing the passing reasons for economic pain doesn't make it hurt less. And none of it changes the long-term economic reforms we still need.

Chapters: 

00:01:06 Announcements

00:01:57 Retcon: Wealth at retirement

00:03:52 Terms & Conditions: Recession, Slack, Tight, Loose, Goodflation/Badflation

00:09:10 Centerpiece: What is going on with the U.S. Economy right now? The vibe is don’t panic. But don’t not panic. 

00:53:38 Executive Orders: Free work parking. Legislators do their own taxes.

00:55:00 Spiritual Sponsors: Genre-specific bookstores and great newstands

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(Originally aired 5/06/25) What sparks progress? The right political conditions? Social pressure? Economic upheaval? In response to two listeners’ questions, we say… both none of those and all of the above. As an example, we talk through just one bit of the New Deal in the 1930s, which was the law to limit child labor. That movement started decades earlier, and continued decades afterward. For those keeping score at home, this a sneaky third installment of Kathryn’s 68-part series on the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. 

Chapters: 

00:01:08 Announcements

00:01:43 Retcon

00:03:58 Terms & Conditions

00:07:03 Centerpiece

00:42:56 Executive Orders

00:46:25 Spiritual Sponsors

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Average U.S. wages have barely budged since the early '80s — and if you account for today's labor force being older and more college-educated, wage growth basically disappears. Economists have cycled through explanations: workers lacked technical skills, then couldn't compete with global labor, then lost the policies that once lifted paychecks, like strong unions and a meaningful minimum wage. The latest chapter is monopsony — the idea that as employers consolidate, people have fewer choices of where to work, and fewer places to land if they lose a job. Fix the market, and the paychecks follow.

Chapters:

00:00:45 Announcements

00:01:01  Retcon: Double Taxation and Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act

00:03:10 Terms & Conditions: Monopsony, Septel

00:07:07  Big Pilcrow: Why Aren’t Wages Growing?

00:40:37  Executive Orders: Reverse Billing, Leaked Chat Table Readings

00:42:49  Spiritual Sponsors: Dole Whip, Sad Songs, Being Recognized in the Wild

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From California to Washington to New York, states are trying to tax the very rich. The press keeps rehashing whether millionaires and billionaires will flee those states. Wrong question. The more important one is why we’re improvising tax policy state to state when it’s the federal government that should be dealing with health care, child care and affordability—all of which are national problems. Meanwhile, some Senate Democrats are proposing to take even more people out of the tax system entirely. None of these specific proposals make income taxes simpler or fairer, but they do suggest there’s an appetite for reform. 

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Chapters:

00:01:18 Announcements

00:02:33 Retcon: Occupational Licenses

00:06:16 Terms & Conditions: Progressive

00:07:59  Big Pilcrow: Everyone Wants to Tax Millionaires

00:38:23  Executive Orders: Unreadable Menus and Tax Complainer Merch

00:41:42  Spiritual Sponsors: Dream Robin & the Nobel Laureate’s WNBA Contract

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Americans used to move a lot in search of opportunity. But in 2024, the share of Americans who moved at all hit a 76-year low. Barely 2% of us moved across state lines. Some of that is by choice: people are more rooted, and that's not nothing. But when workers stop moving, rich cities pull further away from poor ones, wages stagnate, and the gaps between thriving labor markets and struggling ones get harder to close. And when there’s a shock to a local labor market, moving is an important release valve. Fixing a fraction of this worker mobility breakdown could improve the labor market for everyone.

Chapters:

00:00:33  Opening

00:01:45  Retcon: Trump Accounts & Career Pivots

00:07:27  Terms & Conditions: Spatial Equilibrium

00:09:55  Big Pilcrow: Does it Matter to the U.S. Economy if We Don’t Move from Place to Place?

00:39:10  Executive Orders: Frances Perkins miniseries; Sleep Shaming; Election Day Weekend

00:43:07  Spiritual Sponsors: The National Consumers League motto ("Investigate, Agitate, Legislate"); ACFC’s winning start

READ MORE:

The increasingly mobile US is a myth that needs to move on | Aeon Essays

Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where’s Home? | Pew Research Center

Job Changing and the Decline in Long-Distance Migration in the United States | Demography | Duke University Press

The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions

Population & Migration | Economic Research Service

Stranded! How Rising Inequality Suppressed US Migration and Hurt Those Left Behind

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Fourteen questions. Zero softballs. Listeners from Tacoma to Montreal wrote in to ask about retirement savings, taxing capital gains, home-buyer assistance programs, corporate profits in the tariffs era, what one state employee can or cannot accomplish, and whether meaningful economic reform will arrive before Millennials drop dead. And more. The inbox did not disappoint. 

00:00 Announcements

01:59  Is a retirement savings crisis brewing? 

04:32  Tax credits for first-time home buyers… good idea?

08:10  What if tax breaks for capital gains only applied to new investments?

13:39  Explain the $1,700 tax credit scholarship program in OBBA?

16:23  Are institutional investors wrecking the housing market?

21:37  What quick policy moves could reverse worsening inequality?

27:32  Will meaningful reform arrive before Millennials retire?

30:56  Is a hotel tax the right way to fund a stadium?

33:05  Can I move the needle on labor policy from inside the system?

35:08  Why has the responsibility and risk for employment shifted onto workers?

37:50  Is fixing the care economy easier than we think?

40:47  Do rent caps work?

44:50  Can we prevent price gouging by companies?

47:53  If states roll out good policies, does the federal government need to do it too?

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The corporate income tax rate got hacked nearly in half by the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. So nine years later, how’s that working out? Corporations’ effective tax rate (about 9%) is lower than what the average American household pays (about 14.5%). After-tax corporate profits have hit record highs for the last four years — about 9% of GDP, a figure not hit since 1929. Workers' share of total national income, by contrast, is at a 70-year low. If corporate taxes go back up, some companies may threaten to reincorporate somewhere cheaper. Call that bluff. Someone else will deliver the toilet paper and make the coffee.

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Switchboard operators. Typists. Secretaries. Lots of factory workers. The economy has a long history of technology slowly eliminating not just jobs but entire occupations. The U.S. also has a long history of not doing a lot to help those thrown out of work by major economic shifts. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards, who literally wrote her dissertation on unemployment insurance (her professional assessment: "it sucks"), makes the case for a wholesale rebuild that triages joblessness, distinguishing between those who need time to job hunt and those who need to pivot to a new career. 

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The popular narrative is that baby boomers rode cheap houses and 401(k)s to wealth, dismantled the welfare state behind them, and left everyone else to fight over scraps. But conflating boomers and conservatives lets the latter off the hook for 25 years of tax cuts and disinvestment in children. It erases the Black boomers, poor boomers, and pensionless workers who never got a slice of that wealth. And it lays the groundwork for the one policy outcome its loudest advocates actually want: gutting Social Security. Who really benefits when you decide your parents' generation is the enemy?

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“Trump Accounts” might evoke the president’s other side hustles, like gold-plated mobile phones or meme crypto coins. But these investment accounts for children are one of the actually beautiful things to come out of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." More than 30 years in the making, these accounts have previously been pitched as KidSave, Baby Bonds, the ASPIRE Act, 401Kids. They’ve been proposed more than a dozen times by Democrats and Republicans alike. Economist Kathryn Edwards explains the long journey, what the research says about why auto-enrollment is everything, and why the name won't last but the policy should.

Read more:

Every child deserves a Trump Account: Here’s how to make it happen 

Op-ed by Ray Boshara and Michael Sherraden in The Hill [2026].

“Check-the-Box” Enrollment Will Limit Participation in Trump Accounts: Lessons From Asset-Building Research — Center for Social Development at Washington University [2025]

Why Automatic Enrollment Is Essential for the Success of Trump Accounts: Lessons from SEED OK — Center for Social Development at Washington University [2025]

The (Unknown) Children’s Savings Accounts Federal Policy Landscape 

— Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis [2024]

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Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards is a Social Security fan girl. Would it be possible for her to love it even more? Yes, if the old-age insurance program got some updates to handle the messy, gradual and interrupted way that retirement truly transpires. Her four blue-sky pitches: changing benefit calculations for caregivers, taking benefits temporarily, a sliding “full” retirement age based on years worked, and a tax on companies that abuse 1099 non-employee compensation. Plus: A big retcon segment including details from a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that further explains why "more supply" isn't the whole answer to the housing affordability crisis.

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The Federal Reserve is in the news constantly these days. Beyond the regular will-they-or-won’t-they question on interest rates, there are multiple legal battles with implications for the central bank’s independence, President Trump’s nominee for chairman may (or may not) get a hearing in the Senate soon, and Jerome Powell's may (or may not) leave when his term as chair ends in May. So let’s try to demystify the Fed. How does it stop bank panics? How did it make the Great Depression worse? What is a Fed Note exactly? And is the discount window a metaphor? From Glass-Steagall to the dual mandate to quantitative easing, here’s a crash course.

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Recent polls show 54% now consider housing unaffordable and the cost of homeownership dominates Americans’ economic anxieties. The popular “abundance” narrative says there’s a housing shortage and suggests cutting zoning or environmental rules will let us build our way out of it. But we don’t have  a simple net shortage of units—we have a deep mismatch between what gets built and what workers get paid. After 50 years of wage stagnation, the median mortgage payment is over $2,200 while median weekly earnings are $1,200. That’s a gap deregulation or more luxury condos won’t close. The solution isn’t to just build more. It’s also to pay people more.

END NOTES:

• To be considered affordable (30% of income) the median mortgage of $2,259 would require weekly earnings of $1,737. But the median weekly wage for full-time workers is $1214. 
• Where is the Housing Shortage? Of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas, only four experienced a housing shortage between 2000 and 2020. (Op-ed from the author in Barron’s here.)
• The US Housing Crisis is Really About Low-Wage Jobs. Kathryn’s take from 2024 in Bloomberg Opinion.
• Rate of U.S. homeownership has been climbing since bottoming out in 2016 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Mortgage Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income is about what it was in 2019 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States shot up about $90,000 from 2019 to 2025 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
• Housing Affordability and Housing Demand (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)

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An essay went viral by claiming that $140,000 is what a family of four needs to just get by — a number higher than what 70% of American households earn. Conservative economists called it idiotic. Kathryn dismissed it and got a nasty DM. What’s the real controversy? It’s not that the poverty line is misleading. It's that we have no measure for our current affordability crisis. And the American mindset has been so warped by decades of bad economic policy that we think the only way to get help is to prove that we’re poor.

END NOTES:

• The essay in question: Part 1: My Life Is a Lie - by Michael W. Green,
• What economists thought: Viral essay says $140,000 should be the new poverty line - The Washington Post ; Cato: The $140,000 ‘Poverty Line’ Is Laughably Wrong, So Why Does It Feel Right? ; AEI: How Not to Redefine Poverty
• How U.S. poverty measures actually work: Two Ways the U.S. Census Bureau Measures Poverty to Capture Clearer Picture of Poverty in America 
• Kathryn on Money with Katie (at min. 35)

Watch video clips from this episode at the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

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Our own optimist economist Kathryn Anne Edwards worked on a research project several years ago to measure income inequality. Its massive headline number has taken on a life of its own in columns, talking points, memes. We explain how Kathryn and co-author Carter Price managed to answer this question: What would have happened to Americans’ incomes if they’d grown at the same rate as the U.S. economy overall? Spoiler alert: 90% of us would be a lot better off.

Read the working paper Kathryn co-wrote in 2020: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 and Carter Price’s update going through 2023.

Watch video clips from this episode at the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

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Hey optimists! Season two of Optimist Economy is finally here. New episodes coming on Tuesdays starting January 27. More at www.optimisteconomy.com

Listener Max did his grad thesis on pay transparency laws in Colorado and found that they narrowed the gender wage gap by 8 cents on the dollar. But some big-name economists reported that such laws can actually reduce wages. So what’s the deal? Kathryn’s answer during our October Q&A was so overlong and multipart that we jokingly called it, “The Max Show.” So here it is, as a mini-episode.

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Your drunk uncle calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Your crypto-bro cousin thinks tariffs make China pay. Your grandfather blames working women for tanking wage growth. Economist Kathryn Edwards takes on a dozen hostile dinner-table challenges to help optimists everywhere prepare for dinner table debate. Robin plays every annoying relative you've ever argued with. Pass the [expletive] gravy.

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Optimist Economy got its start almost exactly one year ago with a phone call that began, "Hear me out…" Thirty-two episodes later we ask, “What have we done?” Mostly we conditioned ourselves to keep our eye on the ball – the better U.S. economy and future that are possible – through a lot of very bad news days. In the background, we both moved. Kathryn kept a lot of pregnancy symptoms hidden. We incorporated a nonprofit. And somehow, we managed to drop a new episode every Tuesday. Thanks to all our listeners for being our spiritual sponsors on this journey.

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Why is anyone’s health insurance tied to their job? It's because of a superintendent in Dallas, World War II wage freezes, a 1953 tax code quirk, and decades of inertia. This accident of history costs America $384 billion a year in tax breaks to corporations for providing coverage. And what do we get for that? A system that locks people in jobs they'd otherwise leave, suppresses wages of those who look "expensive to insure," and disadvantages small businesses that can't afford gold-level health plans. In a different historical timeline, President Harry S. Truman’s 1945 national health plan would've given us universal coverage, paid medical leave, and government-funded medical schools. But of course we’re not living in that timeline.

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In the final Q&A of the season, economist Kathryn Edwards answers listener questions on recent universal basic income experiments, legislative budgeting tricks, and the value of more aggressive IRS auditing. She also explains what eradicating the minimum wage exemption might mean, particularly for disabled and incarcerated workers. We also discuss what people actually do for money when they stop job hunting. Fair warning: this one runs long and the keeping it f-bomb free resolution lasted about five minutes.

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Just how broken is Unemployment Insurance? Consider this: During every recession since the 1950s, the federal government has had to step in and prop it up. Of people looking for work, only half qualify for Unemployment Insurance. And just half of those actually receive benefits. That’s what you get from a system designed mostly for factory workers nearly a century ago and then left to the heedless care of states. Benefits vary wildly by state — $235 a week in some, over $800 in others. Most states have — understandably — taken the lesson that they don’t have to fix anything because Washington will step in if the economy gets really bad. This is a scrap-it-and-start-over situation. Many solutions would be better, including a system focused on re-employment that keeps workerbots attached to the labor market, helping businesses prevent layoffs during downturns, and making job-hunting less awful.

The economic pain that Americans experienced in 2022-23 was dubbed the “vibesession,” suggesting that negative public sentiment was out of sync with a healthy economy. But what we were truly experiencing was more like a “ghost recession.” As the Fed squeezed the economy by raising interest rates from zero to above 5% to get inflation under control, only the extraordinary circumstances of the post-pandemic economy kept unemployment low and the economy growing. But if we had a ghost recession, that also means that the nascent 2024 “ghost recovery” screeched to a halt with the radical changes to economic policy this year. Also in this episode: What it means that 911,000 fewer jobs were created from spring 2024-2025, and many metaphor try-outs.

Revenge of the Vibecession | The New Yorker Birth-Death Model FAQ

THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE definition in American English | Collins English Dictionary

Economists’ models of inflation are letting them down [The Economist 2019]

You might have heard recently that a years-long poverty study “found” that giving $333 monthly to kids with poor parents didn’t make a difference. But here's why that’s the wrong takeaway: The "Baby's First Years" study wasn't designed to test cash payments. It is multi-year, ongoing scientific research into how poverty affects child development. Researchers found "selective impacts on preschoolers' brain activity with possibly different impacts across brain frequency bands" — which roughly translates to "this is incredibly complicated and we're still figuring it out," not "money is useless." And yet this rigorous research got reduced to a talking point amid an ongoing policy debate on child tax credits and what it means to lift kids out of poverty.

Paid family and medical leave is a confusing mess: only 27% of private-sector workers get paid leave from their employer. Some others are covered by state programs, but those vary. The rest of us scramble to patch together short-term disability with other paid time off, if we have it. Meanwhile, the United States instead has a federal Family Medical Leave Act that protects unpaid time off. Truth is, sooner or later, nearly everyone needs time away from work to care for a sick spouse, a new baby, a dying parent, or to recover from one’s own illness or injury. And they shouldn’t have to go broke to do it. An idea this popular — supported by about 80% of Americans in polls — shouldn’t be this hard. If paid family and medical leave were added to Social Security, that would give every worker benefits that follow them across jobs and states. The infrastructure already exists. But there’s a lot of heel-dragging in Congress because expanding Social Security can’t be done before dealing with its long-term funding.

Read more:

• Paid Leave Works: Evidence from State Programs [National Partnership for Women & Families 2023] — A good primer on paid family and medical leave.
• Economic Effects of Offering a Federal Paid Family and Medical Leave Program [Congressional Budget Office 2021] — CBO analysis of a version of paid leave that was proposed in the Build Back Better Act, but that died in the Senate.
• A National Paid Leave Program Would Help Workers, Families [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2021] — Outline of what would be in a comprehensive program.
• New parents aren’t the only people who need paid family leave [Urban Institute 2018] — Pretty self-explanatory.
• Paid Leave for Illness, Medical Needs, and Disabilities: Issues and Answers [Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute 2020] — Chapter on how this could be implemented from a joint Brookings-AEI project.
• Paid Leave Working Group Request for Information Response [Urban Institute 2024] — Response to Congressional working group’s request for input on paid family leave.

Free breakfast and lunch for every public school student — an idea associated more with countries like Sweden and Finland — should instead be viewed as a truly American policy that liberals and conservatives can both love. Want complete meritocracy? Then you should be furious that some kids can't focus in class or during tests because they're hungry. Want to compete globally? Eating better raises student test scores. Want to make America healthy again? Professional kitchen staff serving nutritionally balanced meals to everyone actually beats harried parents trying to cobble together a lunch sack. Want less government interference? Universal programs eliminate the invasive bureaucratic hassle of asking every student’s family about their income. School meal programs have even been found to lower grocery prices in local communities. Nine states have made free meals universal, and others have expanded access, so this ball is rolling.

Read more:

• Solutions: Free School Meals - by Kathryn Anne Edwards [2024]
• How Free School Meals Went Mainstream - The New York Times [2024]
• School Lunch Debt Statistics: Total + Costs per Student [2025]

Brown paper bags and ketchup as a Vegetable

• A story too good to check: Paul Ryan and the tale of the brown paper bag - The Washington Post [2014]
• Why Michelle Obama Is Wrong on School Lunches | The Heritage Foundation [2014]
• U.S. Holds The Ketchup In Schools - The Washington Post [1981]
• U.S. Federal Register from 1981 [see page 49]

The unemployment rate has been hovering around 4.2%. But in today’s highly unsettled economy, many people feel this headline number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t capture their economic struggles — from slow hiring to working two part-time jobs to recent graduates unable to find work in their fields. But as economist Kathryn Edwards points out, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also measures underemployment (currently 7.9%) as well as discouraged workers and many other indicators of labor market slack. But there’s one thing the government probably should not measure, and that’s skills mismatch, or being “overqualified” for the job you have. In this episode, we also go way, way back to the Great Depression, when social workers and advocates for the unemployed fought to get the government to measure joblessness at all.

Read more:

• True Rate of Unemployment [Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity July 2025]
• Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory. [David Card, UC Berkeley and NBER, February 2011]
• THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO A Social Study — W. E. B. DuBOIS
• Case studies of unemployment, compiled by the Unemployment Committee of the National Federation of Settlements
• Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]
• Table A-11. Unemployed people by reason for unemployment - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]
• Table A-12. Unemployed people by duration of unemployment - 2025 M07 Results [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Gross Domestic Product is the big dog of economic numbers. But this measure of the economy’s size has massive blind spots. It ignores income inequality and citizens’ wellbeing. It rewards consumption and thus environmental degradation. Yes, it is vital to know if your economy is growing or shrinking and why. And yet maybe GDP shouldn’t be the lodestar. In fact, as economist Kathryn Edwards relays, the person who invented GDP warned us of its limitations.

The "boys and men crisis" conversation set in motion following the 2024 election is now shooting off in erratic directions, leading to a lot of hand-wringing about college enrollment, long-gone factory jobs, and “loss of purpose.” Still, men’s workforce participation has been on a long, slow slide for seven decades, and it is reaching a worrying level. To address that, though, we need to have harder conversations about what truly affects young men disproportionately – things like substance abuse disorders, other addictions like gambling and video games, and criminal records.

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About 11% of Americans have a household income that puts them below the official government threshold for poverty. Is poverty a state of being, or a risk? Are the poor people themselves the root cause of poverty? Or are they the outcome of a low-wage labor market that churns people in and out of work? Because how you diagnose the problem matters if you’re looking for solutions. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards tackles three major misconceptions about poverty.

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Economist Kathryn Edwards is back with more answers. In Part 2, she talks more about student loans, who actually “lives off taxpayers,” why gold reserves aren’t a great idea anymore, the importance of mobility in worker power, and whether ROI is a good measure for the work of government. If this two-parter was too much, blame the listener who said he didn’t like it when we used the timer back in May.

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In the first of two mailbag episodes, economist Kathryn Edwards answers questions from optimist listeners on taxation on wages vs. investments, whether student loans are regressive, how bona fide economists wind up on opposite sides of policy debates, and what it really means when a Montana Congressman calls the CBO “historically wrong.” Yeah, this episode has a long title. But there was a lot of talking. And that’s why Part 2 is coming in a few days.

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The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t been raised since the era of flip phones. Competing bills introduced in Congress recently would set it at $15 or $17. Is that high enough, and how can we ensure it doesn’t fall so far behind again? Minimum wage debates are dominated by worry about anticipated harms to some businesses, but ignore the proven positive effects for American workers — like narrowing Black-White wage gaps. And most importantly for our resident economist Kathryn Edwards, she gets to revisit her favorite but flawed piece of legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

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Complete show notes with links to articles and data at optimisteconomy.com.

Labor unions’ public approval has been increasing since 2009, and is now at levels not seen since the 1960s. And yet rates of union membership have been falling. Today just 10% of U.S. workers are represented by a union, and below 6% in the private sector. What if there were a less adversarial way to get the worker-protection aspects of unions without the brutal shop-by-shop campaigns? Enter “sectoral bargaining,” where boards with worker, employer, and government representatives hash out wages and working conditions for occupational groups. Think all fast food workers, janitorial staff, or health care providers.

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The Estate Tax is one that half of Americans worry about, but that affects only the richest 0.07% after they die. For nearly 25 years, the U.S. has – through loopholes and ballooning exemptions – undercut a tax that could pay for some nice things, like maybe a children’s trust fund. If we chose to just dent more big inheritances, it’d also reduce the concentration of wealth and power. In this episode, economist Kathryn Edwards gets to go way, way back to the Gilded Age and editor Robin Rauzi still loves a tax story, so the topic is a win-win as far as we are concerned.

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