Back to Basics Series: Is Economics Moral? (with Heather McGhee)

Summary

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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Back to Basics Series: Is Economics Moral? (with Heather McGhee)

Originally aired July 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the question: Is economics, at its core, a moral discipline? Returning to foundational issues, host Nick Hanauer, joined by Paul Constant and guest Heather McGhee, explore how economic structures are deeply intertwined with moral values, social cooperation, and the legacy of race in America. The conversation debunks the myth of economics as a cold, amoral science, instead arguing that prosperity depends on justice, inclusivity, and intentional policy choices. McGhee, drawing from her expertise and forthcoming book, illustrates how racial division harms everyone and why building a more equitable economy requires directly confronting these legacies and narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Morality and the Foundations of Economics

• Economics as Amoral?

  • Neoclassical economics traditionally frames itself as both asocial and amoral, likening itself to the objectivity of physics and ignoring social relations or morality ([02:01] Nick Hanauer).
  • Hanauer emphasizes that morality is intrinsic to human society and prosperity:

    “Since morality is basically the most important thing to humans and human societies, any economic theory that doesn't sort of intrinsically address those concerns has to be sort of, by definition, insufficient.” ([00:51] Nick Hanauer).

• Economic Choices as Moral Choices

  • Hanauer reframes prosperity not simply as output or GDP, but as “solutions to human problems that increase welfare.”

    "Every economic act, every economic choice is an explicitly moral choice because you're either solving people's problems or you're creating more problems than you solve." ([04:18] Nick Hanauer).

• The Golden Rule and Economics

  • The “Golden Rule”—treat others as you wish to be treated—is shown as foundational not just to ethics but to successful economies. Applying this moral principle to economic life is both “basic” and, sadly, radical in its modern context ([07:53] Paul Constant; [08:17] Nick Hanauer).

    “It's funny that something so basic to the building block society, applying it to economics feels like a revelation.” ([08:19] Paul Constant)

• The Fallacy of ‘Greed is Good’

  • Hanauer challenges the neoliberal belief—popularized in culture by films like Wall Street—that self-interest and greed create prosperity. He argues that real wealth emerges from cooperation, trust, and inclusion ([32:08]–[34:51]).

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2. Race, Economics, and the Zero-Sum Paradigm

• McGhee on Racial Division in Economic Narratives

  • McGhee discusses how right-wing narratives pit racial groups as economic competitors, reinforcing a ‘zero-sum’ paradigm where one group’s gain is seen as another’s loss. She advocates for a new story:

    “We have to tell a different story about race and the economy, one that recognizes that we can't operate in a zero sum paradigm of racial competition. We can't do that and be a functioning, thriving, multiracial society.” ([00:39] & [10:25] Heather McGee)

• Historical Roots: Slavery and Public Goods

  • Using historical research, including Hinton Rowan Helper’s The Impending Crisis of the South, McGhee points out how the slave-based economy concentrated wealth while depriving both Black people and large numbers of white Southerners of public investment and opportunity ([14:11]–[16:36]).

• Consequences of Racialized Capitalism

  • McGhee’s work on the proliferation of subprime mortgages in Black and brown communities demonstrates how ignoring the harms done to some groups ultimately damages the whole system—in this case, leading to the 2008 financial crisis:

    “We can't contain the poisons that are created in a society that doesn't care about the value of some people, some families and some communities. Ultimately our fates are linked.” ([13:02] Heather McGee)

• Racism as an Economic Weapon

  • Strategic use of racial division by economic elites distracts and weakens broad-based coalitions for more equitable, inclusive policies ([18:09]–[22:54]).

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3. Messaging, Agency, and Systemic Power

• The Need for Clear Narratives

  • McGhee’s research finds that Americans respond to stories that identify agents of injustice—not just abstract systems. Messaging that explicitly calls out politicians and corporate interests who use racism to divide people is far more resonant and empowering ([23:39]–[25:07]).

  • Quote:

    “In the messaging that ended up being most resonant, it was absolutely certain politicians and the greedy lobbyists who back them. Right. There are people who are doing things...” ([24:20] Heather McGee)

• Beyond ‘Color-Blind’ Economics

  • Paul Constant notes orthodox economics’ color-blindness as a lethal oversight:

    “It doesn't take race into account, which is pretty huge… That kind of color blindness is practically lethal to an economy.” ([28:58] Paul Constant)

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4. Inclusive Economics: Everyone Does Better

• Expanding the Circle of Prosperity

  • Richard Kirsch emphasizes that a strong economy depends on everyone’s inclusion—good jobs, education, healthcare, and the elimination of barriers due to discrimination ([29:53]–[32:08]).

  • Quote:

    “When I have better wages and you have better wages, we all do better. And when I don't, if someone's not getting paid enough, if someone, because… they're discriminated against, doesn't get a chance… that actually slows the economy down. It's not just unfair… diversity isn't just a matter of fairness. Diversity supercharges growth.” ([29:53] Richard Kirsch)

• Metaphors for Inclusion

  • Kirsch uses family and team sports as metaphors to help listeners grasp the need for everyone to succeed for the system to thrive.

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5. Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Neoclassical Economics’ Smokescreen:

  • “It's a story that we tell ourselves which rationalizes who gets what and why. It's a way… of instantiating our social and moral preferences about status, privileges and power.” ([02:01] Nick Hanauer)

• On Economic Brainwashing:

  • “How deeply we all in our culture have been imprisoned by neoclassical economic ideas… the more selfish we were, the more prosperity we created… All of these things just got kind of embedded in our heads.” ([08:29] Nick Hanauer)

• Aha Moment About Public Investment:

  • “This kind of feudal, aristocratic plantation economy is not actually working for white people.” ([14:11] Heather McGee)

• Zero-Sum Politics as Political Weapon:

  • “Certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists are hurting everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich and defunding our schools. And then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, black people and new immigrants. Right? That's the key. Everybody knows that that's happening.” ([18:09] Heather McGee)

• On the Fallacy Exposed by Wall Street:

  • “If we accept the idea that people are perfect, selfish maximizers … then we must conclude that greed is good… And, you know, that's the heart of the neoliberal lie… It wasn't billions of individual acts of selfishness… It was billions of collective acts of cooperation that did it. And yeah, greed is not good.” ([34:51] Nick Hanauer)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• “Since morality is basically the most important thing to humans and human societies, any economic theory that doesn't sort of intrinsically address those concerns has to be sort of, by definition, insufficient.”
  ([00:51] Nick Hanauer)

• “We can't contain the poisons that are created in a society that doesn't care about the value of some people...Ultimately our fates are linked.”
  ([13:02] Heather McGee)

• “It's not just unfair... Diversity isn't just a matter of fairness. Diversity supercharges growth.”
  ([29:53] Richard Kirsch)

• “It wasn't billions of individual acts of selfishness that created this amazing economy. It was billions of collective acts of cooperation that did it. And yeah, greed is not good.”
  ([34:51] Nick Hanauer)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:32 – Hanauer: The ultimate moral failure of economics
• 04:18 – Morality’s evolutionary role in society and prosperity
• 10:25 – McGhee: Origins of racialized economic storytelling
• 13:02 – Financial crisis as a cautionary tale about excluding groups
• 14:11–16:36 – Historical example: Public goods in slavery-era South
• 18:09–22:54 – Messaging: Confronting race & economic division
• 23:39–25:07 – Necessity of identifying actors behind injustice
• 29:53–32:08 – Kirsch: Inclusive prosperity and economic storytelling
• 32:08–34:51 – Deconstructing the ‘greed is good’ myth

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Conclusion

This episode dismantles the myth that economics is an objective, amoral science, arguing instead that morality, justice, and inclusion are at the heart of lasting prosperity. The economic system, they insist, is shaped by choices about how wealth and status are distributed—often manipulated through racially divisive narratives. Only by intentionally fostering inclusion and confronting historic and present social and racial divisions can a society realize its full economic and moral potential.

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Transcript

[Goldy]

Hey, Pitchfork listeners. Goldy here. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now, so we thought we'd take a little break this summer, but we don't want you to miss us too much. So we thought we'd revisit some of the most central episodes from early in our history with a Back to Basics summer series. And if you've ever been turned off by the cold, hard math of economics, you will enjoy our conversation with Heather McGee about. Is economics moral?

[Nick Hanauer]

An economy that systematically takes advantage of some people will eventually take advantage of everybody.

[Heather McGee]

I think that we have to tell a different story about race and the economy, one that recognizes that we can't operate in a zero sum paradigm of racial competition.

[Nick Hanauer]

Since morality is basically the most important thing to humans and human societies, any economic theory that doesn't sort of intrinsically address those concerns has to be sort of, by definition, insufficient.

[Heather McGee]

From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer in honest conversation about how to make capitalism work for everyone.

[Nick Hanauer]

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

[Paul Constant]

I'm Paul Constant and I'm a writer at Civic Ventures. So in this show, we do a lot of talking about how. How neoliberalism and neoclassical economics have failed over the course of the last 40 years or so. We haven't done a whole lot of talking about why they've failed. And that's going to involve a word that you. I don't think I've heard yet on this podcast, which is moral morality.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, all that. All that messy stuff. Yeah. So, Paul, you know, one of the ways I think that most defines and signifies the failure in particular of neoclassical economics is its assertion of sort of in the behavior model of Homo economicus, that economics is both asocial, which means that social relations are all transactional and that it's amoral in the sense that moral considerations are outside the bounds of economics. And so, you know, basically what that means is that morality and economics, they have nothing to do with one another. And economics is a science like physics and has nothing to do with people or our moral relations, our moral preferences, or our evolved nature as social creatures. And since morality is basically the most important thing to humans in human societies, how we relate to one another morally, any economic theory that doesn't sort of intrinsically address those concerns has to be sort of, by definition, insufficient. And, you know, there's been this ridiculous tradition in neoclassical economics, in particular over the last 40 years, which is just asserted that, you know, like, we're economists and we don't speak to moral issues and we don't deal with them. And we're just like white guys in lab coats and giving you the objective truth. And all of that really is a smokescreen for what economics really is in human society. Certainly how people experience economics, which is, it's a story that we tell ourselves which rationalizes who gets what and why. It's a way economic ideas and policies are a way of instantiating our social and moral preferences about status, privileges and power. And so that's so, you know, it's really important to recognize that.

[Paul Constant]

So for people like me, who, you know, I was raised in the 80s and so when I hear the word moral, I think of Jimmy Swaggart or some evangelical who's holding, using it as a stick to hold it over. So can you talk a little bit about what we mean when we're talking about the morality of economics?

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, well, I mean, all human societies to one degree or another have moral codes. And if you look at the evolutionary data or the anthropological data or cultural data, those moral codes always take very similar forms, although there are different flavors, of course. And they basically have, they are always some version of the golden rule of reciprocity. Is it do unto others as you would have them do unto you? And all moral codes are designed to encourage cooperation and altruism and to discourage selfishness and sociopathy. Why? Because moral codes are an evolved construct to designed to enable groups of people to cooperate with one another, to compete against other groups of people, often who are trying to kill them and take all their stuff. And so our moral foundations are always oriented somewhat in that way. And so that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about morality. And what's crazy about neoclassical economics is that it doesn't address any of that stuff, that it treats humans as these amoral asocial characters who don't give a rip about anything but their own self interest, when in fact that's not who we are at all as a species. And that is not how we succeed as groups. Obviously, if you think about what value is, what prosperity is in human societies in the right way, it's not output or GDP or price, it's solutions to human problems that increase welfare. And if you acknowledge that, then what has to also be true is that every economic act, every economic choice is an explicitly moral choice because you're either solving people's problems or you're creating more problems than you solve. And so that's the first way in which it's really easy to see that economics and morality are one in the same, in a sense. The other thing that's really super obvious is that if you understand how prosperity is created in human societies is as it really is. A solutions to human problems are prosperity. And those complex solutions in a modern society can only be a consequence of cooperation. Well, that cooperation in turn is only possible if people trust one another. And that trust is always based on justice. That justice, including people, really is what you do if you want to create justice, is the way in which you create prosperity and market economies in human societies. And so in that sense, both the output of the economy, solutions to human problems have a moral dimension, and the, and the process by which you create those solutions only works out if you're being moral. Really, it works. Certainly the more moral we are, the better we treat one another, the more solutions we create, and that the more prosperous we all become. And so in that sense, morality and justice, fairness, these things are inextricably intertwined into creating human prosperity. And for that reason should be at the center of economic concerns, should be at the center of what economists study and try to optimize for. And so this, again, it's so obvious why neoclassical economics fails in this respect because it doesn't address any of these issues, any of these central issues at all.

[Paul Constant]

And, you know, I think one of the things that has surprised me is that we didn't start thinking that the golden rule applied to economics. I think I was in the room when you and Goldie sort of, it came to you that the economic golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, applied to economics. And it felt like a revelation.

[Nick Hanauer]

And.

[Paul Constant]

It'S, it's funny that something so basic to the building block society, applying it to economics feels like a revelation.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yes.

[Paul Constant]

You know what I mean?

[Nick Hanauer]

And how deeply we all in our culture have been imprisoned by neoclassical economic ideas and neoliberalism. How deep that brainwashing goes, how we all got kind of conned by this idea that the more selfish we were, the more prosperity we created, that there was a direct trade off between economic justice and economic efficiency. All of these things just got kind of embedded in our heads. And you know, when, when you sort of free yourself from these bad ideas, what you realize is that, you know, moral laws, the reason that all societies sort of end up with the same moral rules is that those are the rules that create prosperity in human societies. That, that, you know, thou shalt not steal is not just a moral rule. It's also how you create abundance in a society, because if everybody's stealing from everybody, you can't cooperate, you can't build anything. Right, right. And. And so all of these things actually are the same thing if you zoom out far enough. It's really super interesting.

[Paul Constant]

It's quite remarkable. The basic rules of it are things that we all learn when we're two.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. Yes. And then. And then the economy, the economics profession came along and chalked us all out. It's like, no, be assholes.

[Heather McGee]

It'll be great.

[Paul Constant]

Our guest today is our friend Heather McGee. She's done a ton of research on the stories behind the kind of capitalism that's being lived out today. She also talks a lot about how we can and should tell stories about how the economy works so that we can include everyone in it.

[Nick Hanauer]

Heather, hi, it's Nick.

[Heather McGee]

Hi, Nick. How are you?

[Nick Hanauer]

Good. We're. We got the right number. Finally. I think we had something good because.

[Heather McGee]

I have a landline. I'm the only person in the world that still has one, so let's use it. My name is Heather McGee. I'm the immediate past president of and now a distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Demos and its advocacy partner, Demos Action. I'm writing a book right now about a question that has really vexed me for my entire career, which is how can we talk about the way the economy is structured and also recognize how our society is structured racially and particularly the way that so often the right wing tells a story that we're all economic competitors here and that people of color are taking jobs and opportunities away from white people. And I think that we have to tell a different story about race and the economy, one that recognizes that we can't operate in a zero sum paradigm of racial competition. We can't do that and be a functioning, thriving, multiracial society. And so what my book does is looks at all the different ways, the economic ways, the societal ways, but also even the personal ways that. That a racially inequitable society isn't just bad for people of color, it's also bad for white people and for our society as a whole. The biggest example that really was an aha moment for me in my career was when I was working for over a decade on the issue of financial market fairness. And we started out at Demos working on regulation of financial markets when subprime mortgages were running roughshod over black and brown communities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And honestly, those racially discriminatory loans that were stripping wealth from communities that had just gained a grasp on the American dream. They were allowed to flourish because the people who had the power to stop it were most likely not people of color and people from those communities. And they turned a blind eye. And they used racial stereotypes to say, well, there are all these foreclosures in this neighborhood. Maybe because the people in this neighborhood shouldn't have been able to afford those houses anyway. And they don't have a track record of home ownership. And of course, what ended up happening, that racism that was first targeted at black and brown communities ended up creating a monster that could, couldn't be contained. Those subprime mortgages turned into interest only adjustable rate mortgages that went throughout the prime mortgage market and were securitized into assets that went across the globe. And we had the financial crisis of 2008. So the lesson I took from working on that issue and trying to stop what I could clearly see was coming was we can't contain the poisons that are created in a society that doesn't care about the value of some people, some families and some communities. Ultimately our fates are linked.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, that's a super interesting thesis. And I think that this other thing that you just said is really super interesting. I think there's a lot of data to support it, which is that in a world that preys on some people, you know, sort of an economy that systematically takes advantage of some people will eventually take advantage of everybody.

[Heather McGee]

No, you're absolutely right. And so, you know, in this book which I'm working on now, I wanted to go back to. It's so obvious that if you include everyone, people will flourish. But at the same time it's not obvious because it's not how arguably the greatest market economy in the world was structured at the beginning. At the beginning, our slave based capitalism was absolutely structured on the concentration of wealth in relatively few plantation owners and the broad exploitation of all African Americans and the deprivation of white Americans in the south who didn't enjoy any kind of public investments in their states because you had a plantation feudal economy that didn't need in order to thrive, any kind of public investments to attract laborer. The labor force was captive. There is a great book that was written in 1857 by an avowed racist segregationist, otherwise pro slavery southerner named Hinton Rowan Helper. And he went to count how many schools, libraries and other public institutions had been set up in the north versus the south where he was from. He found that in Pennsylvania there were 393 public libraries in South Carolina and the entire state there were just 26. And that at the time was actually an anti slavery, pro white argument, which was this kind of feudal, aristocratic plantation economy is not actually working for white people.

[Nick Hanauer]

So he. Did he think it was a good thing or did he just come back?

[Heather McGee]

No, he thought it was a bad thing. He was a racist who nevertheless thought that slavery was distorting the society in the south because the governing class had no interest in investing in the state and in the community and providing any kind of public investment because they didn't need it. They didn't need to attract free labor, they didn't need to create flourishing local markets because they just had their plantations that had captive labor and were selling it in a global exchange.

[Nick Hanauer]

Fully extractive.

[Heather McGee]

Exactly. Fully extract. And when you look at that basic idea where slavery thrived, a few people were enriched, many were oppressed and exploited, and public investments were cheated. The idea that the public is sort of the enemy of the kind of capitalism that was founded with our slave, you know, slave based system in the United States, you see the strands of that still today?

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Heather McGee]

Sort of war between concentrated wealth and racial exploitation and a fully invested, equitable society.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah.

[Heather McGee]

I mean, there's a reason why economics is called the dismal science. It is a social science that is really about behavior, not about natural forces. But that's where there's a really great parallel to race. Because right at the time in the 19th and 18th centuries, we had a dominant science of race that had created these categories and they were absolutely just, you know, white men in England, primarily Germany and the United States, creating taxonomies and categories that justified their own social position. Things like the brains of African Americans are smaller. Things like there is simply no way for Chinese people to be, you know, citizens to even understand what democracy is. These were self justifying, but absolutely scientific rationalizations.

[Nick Hanauer]

Right.

[Heather McGee]

And they, and they exist today. And they exist today in political terms. And you know, this core ideological economic framework, as you mentioned, has become politicized into very simple, you know, resonant, almost common sense narratives. And one of the most powerful ones that we are seeing, the absolute fullest manifestation of, is an effort by the very wealthy to alienate white Americans from people of color, from any kind of collective action, whether it's labor unions or government itself, out of this ideology that people of color are undeserving at best and criminal at worst. And so the mechanism of joining together with people of color, whether it's labor unions or government, is itself inherently suspect. And that is how we have seen the political realignment over the past three generations of white people to the Republicans, Republican Party on this anti government, racist, pro, quote, unquote, free market ideology. And it's where Democrats have really struggled because, you know, Democrats will say, we've got the economic solutions. Why aren't the majority of white voters, who sure may be better off than most families of color, but certainly aren't where they were a generation ago or where they'd like to be, or why aren't they with us? And so over the past year, Ian Haney Lopez, a law professor at Berkeley, and Anant Shankar Osorio, who's a linguist and communications strategist, and my colleagues at Demos and Demos Action said we've got to sort of unwind this tangle. And we did research to try to create a story that politicians and grassroots organizers could use, you know, on the doors in their stumps to talk about the way that certain politicians and their corporate backers are using racism as a way to divide people for their own economic interest. And what we found was that kind of racially inflected populism, right? It's talking about, you know, the 1% and corporate lobbyists who are, you know, reading the rules for their own benefit. But it's not being blind to race, right? Because how can you be blind to race in this political arena? Right. Where, you know, the right wing is, Trumpism has created an entirely, you know, racial and xenophobic narrative. And if you're sort of not even engaging, people don't even, you know, they can't, they can't find a hook for you to understand the world that we're living in right now. And so what our research showed was that if you actually talk about race, but talk about it in a way where it includes everyone, you know, say something like, no matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families. Just talk about that right up front and then say racial scapegoating is a weapon that's economically harming us. Right? Say things like, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists are hurting everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich and defunding our schools. And then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, black people and new immigrants. Right? That's the key. Everybody knows that that's happening. But Democrats have been afraid to say it or they'll just say it to audiences of color. And they don't think that it's something that they can say to white people. But what our Research showed is that they can. Of course, you've got to be hopeful. You've got to say, you know, we can join together with people from all walks of life. We can cross, you know, divides and join people with people from other communities. People actually of all races are really aspiring to have a more integrated life, but they feel like there are so many barriers to it. And then you need to connect it to government and say that we need to, you know, take government back and put it on the side of the people. And I found this whole project, which is, you know, available on the Demos website and the Demos Action website, to be really hopeful. One piece of hope that we can actually be honest with the American people about the way that race is being used as a weapon, that we don't have to choose between populism and identity politics and that both white people and the democratic base of people of color and young people are excited by this message and this idea of the sort of truth telling around race and the way it connects to the concentration of wealth.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[Paul Constant]

You refer to race being used as a weapon. And that's. That's interesting to me because there's an intentionality behind it.

[Nick Hanauer]

And.

[Paul Constant]

But you've gone back and forth, and rightfully so.

[Nick Hanauer]

Right.

[Paul Constant]

Like a metaphor is not a perfect descriptor of anything, but you've gone back and forth between an intentionality behind it and of systemic racism in American economics. And so when you're trying out the messaging, is there a difference between that? Is there a difference between saying, you know, the economy is a tool to enforce racism or, you know, is the American economy racist? And do those messages.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, no.

[Paul Constant]

Do they synchronize or is there. Is there a difference between them?

[Heather McGee]

That's a really good question. So we started out by trying to talk about structural racism. And, you know, it's sad to say, the focus groups were pretty ugly. It was just really hard for people to grasp the idea of sort of victims without aggressors or, you know, effects without causes or effects without actors. And we know that that makes sense. Right. That's just not how the brain works. It's not how our storytelling works. Right. There has to be an actor who.

[Paul Constant]

Does something to someone makes people feel powerless too? I think.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, it's called power. Right. And so in that, you know, in the messaging that ended up being the most resonant, it was absolutely certain politicians and the greedy lobbyists who back them. Right. There are people who are doing things similarly, you know, in the story of the formation of slave based capitalism. There were absolutely people who were doing things. And in the story of the financial crisis, there were executives at Wells Fargo and mortgage brokers who were doing things. And so I actually don't think that we can have a disembodied story about the way that power is structured in society. I think it has to be that these are decisions that powerful people are making every day and that it's a contest for power to be able to make those decisions in ways that are more equitable.

[Nick Hanauer]

Yeah. And I think that, you know, for our listeners, what we're trying to reinforce is that, you know, often we think that a disagreement over economics is a disagreement over facts, when in fact it's a disagreement over power or status or privileges. So let me just, we're running short of time, but I do want to press on one more thing which is, you know, you were saying that Democrats are confused about why, given that we have the economic solutions, that people are not with us and that, you know, the right has done a really great job of dividing people by race and so on and so forth.

[Richard Kirsch]

But.

[Nick Hanauer]

Like I both acknowledge that you are correct and feel strongly that one of the reasons that Democrats, progressives, people on the right side of these issues, whatever you want to call them, have not connected with more voters is because we have not been there for them in any reasonable, material or consistent way for a very long time. Right. Like just, you know, so, you know, reasonable people have been able to conclude over the last 20 or 30 years that Democrats are feckless corporate stooges too. And that has to be, I mean, yes, we are better, but being less shitty than the trickle downers is not a terribly persuasive political platform or policy platform. And I just think we have to, and I am hopeful that as you know, and you must know a ton of these people personally, there's a crop of new entrants into the Congress who are, who want to throw down and hopefully their message will be clearer.

[Heather McGee]

I couldn't agree with you more, Nick. The only, you know, I've been fighting to push the Democrats to be more populist and more Democratic with a small D my whole career. The only distinction I would make from not what you're saying but from how this is often discussed is the, it's again, a zero sum. Right. You know, I was around for the fights about, you know, how to respond to the financial crisis. And I'll tell you that the reason why there wasn't, you know, a public option in health care or A better response to the financial crisis wasn't because Democrats were spending too much time, you know, addressing criminal justice reform and immigration reform and other things that people of color cared about. Right. It was the money and the economic orthodoxy of the Democratic Party, the donor class, not the, you know, people of color. And so that's just something that, you know, it's so often talked about as if, you know, Democrats are paying too much attention and giving too much great, you know, stuff to people of color. And that's why they're not, you know, looking out for the white working class.

[Nick Hanauer]

When will your book be done?

[Heather McGee]

Good question.

[Nick Hanauer]

Don't ask me when my book will be done.

[Paul Constant]

Exactly.

[Nick Hanauer]

Don't put me on that spot.

[Heather McGee]

Author to author, you know, not to say something like that. No, it will definitely be out around the end of next year, you know, whether it gets done sometime soon. And then, you know, the publishers work their magic and sometimes somehow need to take six to nine months to turn it around into a book. But I hope to have it out right in smack DAB in the 2020 conversation.

[Nick Hanauer]

Thank you so much for spending the time with us and best of luck on your book and your baby.

[Heather McGee]

Thank you. Thank you both. All right, talk soon. Take care.

[Nick Hanauer]

Okay, bye.

[Heather McGee]

Bye. Bye.

[Paul Constant]

One of the things that I learned from that conversation with Heather was that orthodox economics doesn't really have a place in it for race. It doesn't take race into account, which is pretty huge. It means that the economists who sort of hew to the to the mainstream of economics believe that race doesn't factor into all of the economic issues that affect all of us every day. And that is a tremendous gap. That kind of color blindness is practically lethal to an economy. If you can't take that into account, then what else are you not absorbing into your system? What else can't orthodox economics understand? Our friend Richard Kirsch, who's the director of our story, the hub for American Narratives, came in to offer his take on how to talk about inclusive economics.

[Richard Kirsch]

So the biggest challenge we really have is in telling the story about middle class economics, is to help people see that it's not just that working families in the middle class drive the economy, but that means everyone. We need to be sure that everyone has good jobs that can care for and support their families. Everyone can educate their kids, afford their health care, shop their neighborhoods. And that triggers for some people, the idea of, well, zero sum winners and losers. But this is a different idea. The way the economy works is we all do better and we all do Better. That's not just a statement of values. It's actually a statement of how the economy works. Because again, when I have better wages and you have better wages, we all do better. And when I don't, if someone's not getting paid enough, if someone, because of they're discriminated against, doesn't get a chance to get a good job, doesn't get the education they need, then that actually slows the economy down. It's not just unfair, as Nick likes to say. Diversity isn't just a matter of fairness. Diversity supercharges growth. And that's really how the economy works. It's more like a team. We know that if you have a team, you don't want just the starting players to be good. You want everybody on the bench to be good because they may be needed. And when they come in, you want to be sure the team does well. Or think about your family. If someone in your family is not doing so well, that's going to affect the whole family. And in a bigger sense, those kind of metaphors are how the country works. Now, one way to get people here, as well as talking about that, is to point out how powerful elites, some very wealthy people, some big corporations, try to divide us. And we find that if we tell a simple story that the powerful benefit by dividing the rest of us by our race or where we come from or by our gender. Well, they do that to rig the economic rules to benefit themselves. And when people hear that, they go, oh, what's going on here? Maybe we shouldn't be fighting each other. Maybe we should understand that again, powerful are dividing us so they get richer. But in fact, we'll all do better when we all do better.

[Nick Hanauer]

So there's this great scene in the movie Wall street where Michael or the lead character, Michael Douglas, playing Gordon Gekko, makes the greed is good speech of.

[Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)]

Evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book, you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pre tax profit of $12 billion. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the usa. Thank you very much.

[Nick Hanauer]

And it was remarkable. It was a great scene and a really remarkable sort of cultural phenomenon because it reflected so much of what we believe about ourselves and what neoliberalism has taught us. And it just. Just interesting to remind ourselves that if we accept the idea that people are perfect, selfish maximizers, and then we look around the world at all the prosperity in it, then we must conclude that in fact greed is good, that selfishness caused prosperity. And, you know, that's the heart of the neoliberal lie. If, on the other hand, we understand human behavior for what it really is, that people are evolved to be other regarding reciprocal and fundamentally cooperative, and we look around the world at all the prosperity in it, then we must recognize that in fact greed is not good, that it was cooperation and reciprocity that created the prosperity around us. And it wasn't billions of individual acts of selfishness that created this amazing economy. It was billions of collective acts of cooperation that did it. And yeah, greed is not good.

[Paul Constant]

In the next episode of Pitchfork Economics. Why does the US hate families?

[Narrator/Producer]

Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. The Magic Happens in Seattle in partnership with Large media. That's Larj Media and the Young Turks Network. Find us on Twitter and Facebook Action. And follow our writing on Medium kskunkworks. And you should also follow Nick Hanauer on Twitter ickhanauer. As always, a big thank you to our guests and thank you to our team at Civic Ventures. Nick Hanauer, Zach Silk, Jasmine Weaver, Jessen Farrell, Stephanie Ervin, David Goldstein, Paul Constant, Nick Casella and Annie Faideley. Thanks for listening.

[Paul Constant]

Every morning I wake up, I look in the mirror and I repeat this speech from the movie Wall Street.

[Narrator/Producer]

Pull on my capitalist devil suit.