Podcast
Optimist Economy
Hosted by Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi · EN
Optimist Economy is the anti-doomscroll economics podcast. Work rules, tax fairness, healthcare, housing costs, retirement security — the economic forces shaping American life have real problems. But also real solutions. Each week, economist Kathryn Anne Edwards and editor Robin Rauzi break down one problem and solution with data, history, humor, and a belief that tools to build a better economy exist. We just haven't tried them. New episodes on Tuesdays.
✨ Support the podcast at: optimisteconomy.com ✨
Ask questions or share your economic worries with us at: optimist.economy@gmail.com
48episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Can the U.S. Go ‘Cashless?’
4d ago00:44:19Summary readyCash 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 Announcements00:02:30 Retcon: Semiquincentennia 00:03:35 Terms & Conditions: ChexSystems, Unbanked00:05:46 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. Donate to Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Video clips available at the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. We’re also on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. You can also search for us on Facebook and chat with other Optimists on Substack. Consume leisure while donning Optimist merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Have a questions for our next Q&A? Send it to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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The 2026 Economy: Make it Make Sense
2w ago00:58:12Summary readyConsumer 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 Announcements00:01:57 Retcon: Wealth at retirement00:03:52 Terms & Conditions: Recession, Slack, Tight, Loose, Goodflation/Badflation00:09:10 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 Donate to Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Hey, we are on Facebook! Follow us! Or, on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Or on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Chat with other Optimists on Substack. You need this hat: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Send us your economic questions and concerns at optimist.economy@gmail.com
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Progress is a Long Game
3w ago00:49:53Summary ready(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 Announcements00:01:43 Retcon00:03:58 Terms & Conditions00:07:03 Centerpiece00:42:56 Executive Orders00:46:25 Spiritual Sponsors Donate to Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Follow us on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Or on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Chat with other Optimists on Substack. Shirts, caps and totes, oh my!: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Reach us at optimist.economy@gmail.com
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The Great Wage Stagnation
4w ago00:46:54Summary readyAverage 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 Announcements00:01:01 Retcon: Double Taxation and Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act00:03:10 Terms & Conditions: Monopsony, Septel00:07:07 Big Pilcrow: Why Aren’t Wages Growing?00:40:37 Executive Orders: Reverse Billing, Leaked Chat Table Readings00:42:49 Spiritual Sponsors: Dole Whip, Sad Songs, Being Recognized in the Wild Donate to Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Follow us on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Chat with other Optimists on Substack. Andy says look at the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Get that excellent hat at: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Got economic anxieties, executive orders or spiritual sponsors? Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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Tax Reform Gone Wild
Apr 1400:45:36Summary readyFrom 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. ---Chapters:00:01:18 Announcements00:02:33 Retcon: Occupational Licenses00:06:16 Terms & Conditions: Progressive00:07:59 Big Pilcrow: Everyone Wants to Tax Millionaires00:38:23 Executive Orders: Unreadable Menus and Tax Complainer Merch00:41:42 Spiritual Sponsors: Dream Robin & the Nobel Laureate’s WNBA Contract Make Optimist Economy economically viable: https://optimisteconomy.com We have faces on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. We’re also on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. The party is at the Substack chatroom. In lieu of a “I’m better than you… because I pay taxes” T-shirt, can we offer you an Optimist Economy one?: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Got economics questions, anxieties, or executive orders? Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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Nobody's Pulling Up Stakes Anymore
Apr 700:45:49Summary readyAmericans 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 Opening00:01:45 Retcon: Trump Accounts & Career Pivots00:07:27 Terms & Conditions: Spatial Equilibrium00:09:55 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 Weekend00:43:07 Spiritual Sponsors: The National Consumers League motto ("Investigate, Agitate, Legislate"); ACFC’s winning startREAD MORE:The increasingly mobile US is a myth that needs to move on | Aeon EssaysWho Moves? Who Stays Put? Where’s Home? | Pew Research CenterJob Changing and the Decline in Long-Distance Migration in the United States | Demography | Duke University PressThe Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy QuestionsPopulation & Migration | Economic Research ServiceStranded! How Rising Inequality Suppressed US Migration and Hurt Those Left Behind Invest in Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Faces visible on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. We’re also on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Where’s the party? On our Substack chat. Represent your optimist side: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Email your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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The Optimists Have Questions…
Mar 3100:54:24Summary readyFourteen 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 Announcements01:59 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? Still have questions, concerns, or worries? Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com Keep Optimist Economy podcasting: https://optimisteconomy.com See our faces on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Commune with fellow Optimists on our Substack chat. We’re on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. There’s a t-shirt in your size here.https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy
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Corporate Profits Are Up. Their Tax Bill Should Be Too.
Mar 2400:42:22Summary readyThe 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. Donate to keep Optimist Economy going: https://optimisteconomy.com Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Consume leisure with us on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat. Feel like dis-saving? Our merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders? Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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If AI Gets Hired, America Can Handle It
Mar 1700:51:21Summary readySwitchboard 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. Donate to keep Optimist Economy going: https://optimisteconomy.com Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Consume leisure with us on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat. Feel like dis-saving? Our merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Send your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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Boomers Didn’t Ruin Everything. Really.
Mar 1000:49:38Summary readyThe 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? Support Optimist Economy by donating: https://optimisteconomy.com Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel. Follow us on Instagram at @optimist_economy or TikTok at @optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat. Optimist merch provides great utility: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Send your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to optimist.economy@gmail.com
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