Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Zombie Economics (with Paul Krugman)

Hi there, Pitchfork listener.

I'm Greg, a producer here at Pitchfork Economics.

This week we're continuing myths that built trickle-down economics with a different kind of myth, the idea that bad economic ideas disappear once the evidence proves them wrong.

They don't.

They get rebranded, recycled, and shoved back into the policy debate as if we haven't already seen how the story ends.

Oh, tax cuts for the rich will magically pay for themselves.

Taking healthcare and food assistance away from struggling families is fiscal responsibility.

Tariffs are free money paid by other countries.

And if government would just get out of the way, the market would solve everything on its own.

But those ideas have continued to fail over and over.

Somehow they keep getting resurrected in our politics because they still serve powerful interests.

That is what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman calls zombie ideas, dead ideas that somehow keep walking around eating our brains and shaping our public policy.

And that is why this episode is such an important part of this series.

Trickle-down economics was not built on evidence.

It was built on stories that sounded simple, served the wealthy, and survived long after they were proven wrong.

So today, we are revisiting Nick and Goldy's conversation with Paul Krugman about how to spot zombie economics, why these bad ideas refuse to die, and what it takes to finally kill them.

Can you even kill them?

[upbeat music] 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, but what's the alternative?

Middle-out economics is the answer.

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

That's right.

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

Welcome to the show.