Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchCorporate Profits Are Up. Their Tax Bill Should Be Too.
Season 2 Episode 9
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’ …
3 hours ago
If AI Gets Hired, America Can Handle It
Season 2 Episode 8
Switchboard operators. Typists. Secretaries. Lots of factory workers. The economy has a long history of technology slowly eliminating not just jobs b…
1 week ago
Boomers Didn’t Ruin Everything. Really.
Season 2 Episode 7
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 …
2 weeks ago
Can $1,000 at Birth Make Us a Country of Savers?
Season 2 Episode 6
“Trump Accounts” might evoke the president’s other side hustles, like gold-plated mobile phones or meme crypto coins. But these investment accounts f…
3 weeks ago
Social Security Upgrades for Retirement's Realities
Season 2 Episode 5
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 progra…
1 month ago
What The Actual Fed.
Season 2 Episode 4
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 l…
1 month, 1 week ago
We Don't Have a Housing Shortage. We Have a Paycheck Shortage.
Season 2 Episode 3
Recent polls show 54% now consider housing unaffordable and the cost of homeownership dominates Americans’ economic anxieties. The popular “abundance…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Affordability vs. the Poverty Line
Season 2 Episode 2
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 ea…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
$79 Trillion Worth of Income Inequality
Season 2 Episode 1
Our own optimist economist Kathryn Anne Edwards worked on a research project several years ago to measure income inequality. Its massive headline num…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
We're Back with a Backlog of Optimism
Season 2
Hey optimists! Season two of Optimist Economy is finally here. New episodes coming on Tuesdays starting January 27. More at www.optimisteconomy.com
2 months ago