Nick Hanauer

I'm going to offer my lame Senate predictions so that we can compare notes on the other side of this, but I've also got a fun one about Scott Besant, some urgent questions about the whole of Europe, and an analysis of Haley Stevens' dreams.

Killer left take goes to Adam McKay, and we've got a phone-a-friend snippet from my conversation with Nick Hanauer.

And in Max Notes, we're looking at the Department of Defense.

All that and little else on this week's On the Record.

I'm excited for that one.

We're also doing – so Phone a Friend is kind of like getting out of control just because it's election season.

We're doing a show swap with Chris Cuomo.

So we're going back on his show.

And I've been working with a small group of political troublemakers trying to do just that for quite some time.

You've probably heard of our founder, Nick Hanauer, and probably heard his podcast, Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer.

Well, this is Pitchfork Politics, a podcast about how you run and win on the economy.

Yeah, and on the economy, I'll just say this.

We know what we're doing now is broken.

So what's next? As our guest Nick Hanauer says, our problems don't just stem from political dysfunction or media fragmentation or this us versus them tribalism that we're all mired in now.

To Nick, those are all real problems, but in his mind, it all comes back to economics.

As soon as we stopped believing that hard work would mean a good life or that hard work equaled security or opportunity was available to anyone willing to work Hard.

His book on the topic, Markets Built for Humans, Creating an Economy for the People, Planet, and Democracy, has some incredibly compelling ideas that I really wanted to share with you because half the world is starving while we just got our first trillionaire.

So clearly the economy is broken.

So without further ado, please welcome my guest, entrepreneur, investor, civic activist, and philanthropist, Nick Hanauer.

Welcome to the show, Nick.

Hey, Pitchfork listeners, Goldie here.

Be sure to stay tuned at the end of the episode for our new segment, Ask Me Anything with Nick Hanauer.

The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.

The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven't worked.

Because the middle class is the source of growth, not its consequence.

That's right.

This is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out.

Welcome to the show.

So how did you decide on the best metaphor to use?

It was really a hard choice because there are certain moments where you can't backtrack on yourself in research and I first read the book from Nick Hanauer and Eric Louis, Gardens of Democracy, and I was convinced that I had to pick the garden metaphor.

And I've been like, I really try to take my time with it and sit with it for a bit.

What does it really mean if the economy is a garden? It means that there is a gardener, right? And that gardener is in control of tending to it.

They talk about rent.

And where the General Assembly, I believe, needs to get involved is, according to not really an economist, but a podcaster, but an educated podcaster, Nick Hanauer, one of the things he stresses is that this isn't necessarily an affordability crisis.

What we have, rather, is a wage crisis.

And that's where I'm convinced.

Totally, and I...

Rick, I encourage you and everybody, everybody out there to look up this new booklet that's just come out called Markets for Humans, uh, by an academic from Oxford and, uh, a business owner, Nick Hanauer.

What it puts out...

It's called Markets for Humans.