Maximizing Shareholder Value Is Killing the Planet

Back when Harvard Business School professor Rebecca Henderson was pitching her latest book to publishers, she recalls, the conversation didn’t get much further than the book title before cynicism kicked in on the other side of the desk. In the latest episode of Pitchfork Economics, Henderson recalls sitting in a big New York City editor’s […]

The Economy Is the American Middle Class. It’s That Simple.

If words are used too often, they start to lose their meaning. Try saying the phrase “deep discount” to yourself sixty times in a minute, for example, and it turns into a disjointed collection of consonants and syllables with no connection to any existing concept or experience. The technical term for this psychological experience is […]

This Recession Is Worse for Women Than It Is for Men

A recent episode of Pitchfork Economics features listener questions from around the world about a broad array of topics, from the motivation of trickle-downers to the effectiveness of divestment as a strategy. Hosts Nick Hanauer and David Goldstein recommend books to convert economic skeptics away from neoliberal economics, and they discuss the core fundamentals of […]

The healthcare debate has reached a ‘fever pitch’ in America

Last week, in response to my column about the outsized power employers have over their workers, a Twitter user named Jim Drinkwine pointed out a glaring omission. To my comment that underpaid workers can’t simply quit and find a better job, Drinkwine added: “Don’t forget if they quit, they lose health coverage.” That’s absolutely correct. In fact, health insurance […]

Happy 50th birthday, Eagle Harbor Book Company!

Bainbridge Island has always been an affordable and easy escape for frazzled Seattleites who need a break from the annoyances of city life. Less than 10 bucks gets you aboard one of the frequent, relaxing half-hour ferry trips from downtown, and a 10-minute walk from the ferry terminal puts you in the heart of the […]

Your Boss Controls More Than Just Your Time

Economics as we know it has been around since the late 18th century, but the field still barely acknowledges the existence of power dynamics as a motivating force in the labor market. Trickle-downers who oppose raising the minimum wage, for instance, will often suggest that workers who want a higher wage should simply quit their […]

If It Feels Like You’re Working Longer for Less Money, It’s Because You Are.

In a Pew poll conducted last fall, 61% of all respondents agreed that there was too much income inequality in America these days. Virtually everyone can feel that the difference between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest is growing out of control, but we don’t understand how big that gap is, or how fast it’s […]

What I read on my summer vacation (2020 edition)

Summer 2020 was the opposite of what we’ve been told a summer should be: it wasn’t carefree, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t restful or rejuvenating or rehabilitating. From the pandemic to the clamoring hoards of aggrieved white supremacists in our streets to the wildfire smoke that’s clotting the air over the Northwest as I write […]

Democrats Abandoned Farmers, Not the Other Way Around.

After John Kerry’s failed presidential run in 2004, Democrats didn’t just double down on cities — they basically behaved as though building and maintaining power in cities was the only strategy going forward. The Urban Archipelago theory argued that American cities were strongholds of progressive thought, and rural America had become an underpopulated conservative wasteland. The future, […]

John Maynard Keynes fought authoritarianism with economics

We’ve all seen the mind-boggling charts demonstrating how income inequality has expanded to unprecedented levels in America since the late 1970s. We know that this ever-growing divide between the wealthiest one percent of all Americans and the rest of us was the result of a systemic trickle-down economic framework of tax cuts and deregulation promoted by conservative […]