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Civic Ventures

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Billionaires are shaping everything from elections to education to climate policy—and they want us to believe it's generosity.

That’s why we’re re-airing this conversation with Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the power of elite philanthropy—and why it can’t fix the inequality it helps sustain.

Giridharadas breaks down how modern philanthropy allows the ultra-wealthy to “give back” on their own terms, while avoiding the kinds of structural changes—like higher taxes, stronger labor standards, and real regulation—that would actually redistribute power and opportunity. Yes, philanthropy can do good. But it can also function as a pressure valve—easing public outrage while leaving the underlying system intact.

If you’ve been following the surge in billionaire political spending, debates over wealth taxes, or the outsized influence of private foundations, this conversation will hit differently now, Because the real question isn’t whether the rich should give more.

It’s why they get to decide in the first place.

Anand Giridharadas is a writer and political analyst focused on inequality, power, and democracy. He is the author of multiple books, including the national bestseller Winners Take All and The Persuaders. Giridharadas is an editor-at-large for TIME, an on-air analyst for MSNBC, and the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink, where he writes about politics, money, and power. He is also a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

Listen to Eric Beinhocker discuss Market Humanism on Hal Singer’s podcast The Slingshot.

Social Media:

@anandwrites.bsky.social

anandwrites

@AnandWrites

Further reading: 

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

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Substack: The Pitch

Why Philanthropy [STILL] Isn’t the Answer with (with Anand Giridharadas)

Crypto is back—new hype cycles, rising prices, and fresh promises that this time cryptocurrency is changing the financial system for good. But the questions haven’t changed: is this innovation or just another wave of speculation, scams, and financial fraud?

That’s why we’re revisiting this conversation with actor and author Ben McKenzie—whose bestselling book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud and new documentary, Everyone is Lying to You For Money are once again fueling the debate over crypto’s real impact.

What started as curiosity became a deeper look at how the crypto boom blurred the line between investing and gambling—and what that reveals about an economy increasingly driven by speculation instead of real value. McKenzie joins Nick and Goldy to pull back the curtain on the hype, the believers, and the system that made it all possible.

Ben McKenzie is an actor, author, and director best known for his roles on The O.C., Southland, and Gotham. A graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in economics and foreign affairs, he has emerged as a leading critic of the cryptocurrency industry. He is the co-author, with journalist Jacob Silverman, of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and has expanded that work into a documentary, Everyone is Lying to You For Money , examining the rise—and risks—of crypto.

Social Media:

@benmckenzie.bsky.social

mrbenmckenzie

@ben_mckenzie

Further reading: 

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

When Prophecy Fails

Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me)

⁠Everyone is Lying to You For Money

New York Magazine: Congress Just Injected Crypto Directly Into the Most Stable Part of the Economy. What could go wrong?

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

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Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Crypto, Cryptocurrency Scams, and the Illusion of Easy Money (with Ben McKenzie)

The social safety net wasn’t supposed to work like this.

Decades of neoliberal choices from politicians in both parties reshaped it—turning what was meant to support people into a system that often leaves them stuck.

This week, Jamie Keene, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former Biden White House policy advisor, joins us to break down how we got here—and why today’s anti-poverty system can actually reinforce the very conditions it’s meant to solve.

From requirements that trap workers in low-wage jobs to public programs that quietly subsidize those business models, we unpack how the system evolved—and what it would take to turn it into a system that actually gives people power.

Jamie Keene is a stratification economics fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a former White House policy advisor on equality and opportunity. She is also the author of From Safety Net to Power Base: Reimagining, Not Restoring, the US Antipoverty System.

Further reading: 

From Safety Net to Power Base: Reimagining, Not Restoring, the US Antipoverty System

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

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Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

From Safety Net to Power Base: Reclaiming Economic Power for Working People (with Jamie Keene)

Would it be a surprise if we told you the rich don’t actually live in the same tax system as everyone else?

Tomorrow is Tax Day, when millions of Americans will be filing their taxes or applying for extensions, so Nick and Goldy sit down with Ray D. Madoff, Professor of Tax Law at Boston College, and author of The Second Estate, to pull back the curtain on how wealth really moves—and why so much of it never gets taxed at all.

Because here’s the twist: The system wasn’t supposed to work this way.

But over time, something changed. Now, the people who live off paychecks carry the tax burden… while the people living off wealth often don’t have to play the game at all.

Professor Madoff explains what happened and what it would take to fix it. 

Ray D. Madoff is a professor at Boston College Law School and director of the Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good. She is a leading expert on tax policy, wealth, and philanthropy, and author of The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.

Social Media:

@raymadoff

Further reading: 

The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.

The Atlantic - How to Tax Billionaires

CNBC - Lawsuit over $21 million donor-advised fund highlights risks of DAF giving

Washington Post - A Signature GOP Issue Is Omitted From Trump’s ‘Big’ Tax Bill. Weird

New York Times - America Builds an Aristocracy

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

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Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

The Second Estate: Where Billionaires Don’t Pay. You Do. (with Ray D. Madoff)

Corporate profits are booming. So why haven’t most workers gotten a raise?

For decades, we’ve been told a simple story: work harder, become more productive, and your wages will follow. But what if that story was never really true?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Arindrajit Dube—one of the most influential economists shaping how we understand wages, and author of a new book, The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It —for a conversation that cuts to the heart of how pay actually works in America.

At a moment when the gap between what the economy produces and what workers take home keeps growing, this episode challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions in economics—and asks what it would take to build a labor market that actually delivers for working people.

Because if wages aren’t just set by “the market”… then they can be changed.

Arin Dube is an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the leading researchers on wages and labor markets. He is the author of The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It, and has advised policymakers in the U.S. and internationally on minimum wage policy and labor market dynamics.

Social Media:

@arindube.bsky.social

@arindube

Further reading: 

The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It

MBAs in management lead to lower employee pay, study finds

Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark

Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates

Using Contiguous Counties

NELP Research Brief on Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties

Minimum wage own-wage elasticity repository: a representative estimate of the own-wage elasticity (OWE) of employment from every minimum wage study published since 1992.

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

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TikTok: @pitchfork_econ

YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics

LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It (with Arin Dube)

What happens when the economic data says one thing, but people’s lives say another?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Matt Stoller about what he calls a “Boomcession”—the disconnect between headline economic indicators and how the economy actually feels for most people.

They go straight at the disconnect: why the numbers say everything’s fine… and people say otherwise. If the economy is supposed to work for people, why do so many people feel like it isn’t?

Matt Stoller is the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. He writes the Substack newsletter BIG, focused on monopoly power, corporate concentration, and political economy.

Social Media:

@matthewstoller.bsky.social

@matthewstoller

Further reading: 

The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom

Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy

Organized Money Podcast

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

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LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

The Boomcession: Booming on Paper. Brutal in Real Life. (with Matt Stoller)

Over the last 50 years, nearly $79 trillion that could have gone to the bottom 90%…didn’t.

Where did it go—and what did that cost you?

Nick and Goldy are joined by Carter Price, senior mathematician at the RAND Corporation, to break down how rising inequality reshaped wages, growth, and even the federal budget—and why the economy feels so disconnected from everyday life. Because this isn’t just about who got richer. It’s about what everyone else lost.

Carter Price is a Senior Mathematician at the RAND Corporation and Professor of Policy Analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy

Social Media:

@CarterCPrice

Further reading: 

Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023

RAND Budget Model: Groundbreaking insights into the everyday impacts of federal policy

Unlocking the Tax Code with RAND's Tax Code Analysis Tool

Preliminary Strategies for Reducing the Burden of Federal Debt

Impacts of the Retirement Savings for Americans Act

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

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LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

The $79 Trillion Price of Inequality (with Carter Price)

What Is Swiftynomics—and Why Does It Matter?

Taylor Swift didn’t just break records—she broke the way economists think about the economy. Because if one artist can reshape entire cities overnight, what else are we missing?

This week, economist Misty Heggeness uses the “Swift effect” to expose a bigger problem: the models we rely on weren’t built to see women’s power, unpaid care, or culture as real economic forces.

What would change about our economy if we actually counted women’s work—and treated culture as real economic power?

Misty Heggeness is an economist and the author of Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy, which uses Taylor Swift and broader pop culture as a lens for examining women’s economic power, labor markets, and the persistent blind spots in mainstream economic thinking.

Social Media:

mlheggeness

@m_heggeness

Further reading: 

Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

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Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Swiftynomics: Who’s Afraid of Women’s Economic Power? (with Misty Heggeness)

The price you see online might not be the real price.

A new investigation found that Instacart was quietly running pricing experiments—charging different customers different prices for the same groceries at the same time.

This week, Paul and Goldy talk with Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens about how companies are using AI and massive data sets to run experiments on consumers—testing exactly how much each of us is willing to pay.

And if every shopper sees a different price, one big question follows:

Do markets still work the way economists say they do?

Lindsay Owens is the Executive Director of the economic think tank Groundwork Collaborative and author of the forthcoming book, GOUGED: The End of a Fair Price in America.

Further Reading: 

Same Cart, Different Price: Instacart’s Price Experiments Cost Families at Checkout

We Had 400 People Shop For Groceries. What We Found Will Shock You.

Gouged: The End of a Fair Price--and What That Means for Your Wallet

Social Media:

BlueSky: @lindsayowens.bsky.social

Instagram: @lindsayowensphd

TikTok: @lindsayowensphd

Twitter: @owenslindsay1

BlueSky: @groundwork.bsky.social

Twitter: @Groundwork

Organizations developing policy on surveillence pricing: 

American Economic Liberties Project

Economic Security Project

Tech Equity

Consumer Reports 

More Perfect Union

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

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LinkedIn: ⁠Pitchfork Economics⁠

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer

Substack: The Pitch

Same Cart, Different Price: When the Invisible Hand Becomes an Algorithm (with Lindsay Owens)

Economic debates often focus on poverty — how to raise wages, strengthen safety nets, and ensure people don’t fall too far behind. But what if fairness also requires asking a different question: how much wealth is too much?

This week, we’re resharing our conversation with ethics professor Ingrid Robeyns about her idea of limitarianism — the argument that societies should place moral limits on extreme wealth accumulation. Rather than starting with policy prescriptions, Robeyns asks a deeper question about justice, democracy, and what kind of economy we want to live in.

As inequality continues to dominate public debate, this conversation invites listeners to reconsider something we rarely question: not just how to lift people up, but whether an economy without limits at the top can truly work for everyone.

Ingrid Robeyns is a distinguished scholar and Professor of Ethics of Institutions at Utrecht University, and author of the new book, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Professor Robeyns’ research in the field of Ethics and Political Philosophy focuses on issues of justice, inequality, well-being, and the ethical dimensions of societal structures and policies.

Social Media:

@ingridrobeyns.bsky.social

 @IngridRobeyns

Further reading: 

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com

Facebook: Pitchfork Economics Podcast

Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social

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Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Why Philanthropy [STILL] Isn’t the Answer with (with Anand Giridharadas)

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