Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Latest Episodes:

When Companies Run the Courts: How Corporate Power Becomes Legal Power (with Brendan Ballou) Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

We like to think that if a company cheats us, steals our wages, or breaks the law, we can take them to court. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance you’ve already signed that right away.

This week, Brendan Ballou returns to the podcast to explain how forced arbitration created what he calls America’s secret justice system—and why this is as much an economic story as a legal one. He joins Paul and Goldy to unpack how corporations use economic power to weaken workers’ and consumers’ legal power, why the myth of the “voluntary contract” falls apart when every option comes with the same fine print, and how making corporate misconduct harder to challenge changes the incentives that shape the entire market.

Brendan Ballou is the founder of the Public Integrity Project, a nonprofit anti-corruption law firm, and the author of When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System.

Further reading:

When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System

Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America

Pitchfork Economics: Stop the Steal: Revisiting Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America (with Brendan Ballou)

Public Integrity Project

Social Media:

@brendanballou.bsky.social

Instagram: @brendanballou

Substack: @brendanballou

@brendanballou

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Gouged: How Big Tech Reinvented the Rip-Off (with Lindsay Owens) Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

For 150 years, the price tag made a simple and universal promise: the price you saw was the price everyone saw. Now, that promise is disappearing. This week, Lindsay Owens, President and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative returns to discuss her new book, Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — And What That Means for Your Wallet. She explains how corporations are using algorithms, personal data, and AI to figure out not what something costs, but how much you personally are willing to pay. From Instacart’s grocery experiments to the coming world of AI shopping agents, the conversation asks a basic question: If nobody knows what the real price is, can markets actually work the way we’re told they do?

Lindsay Owens, PhD, is the President and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank focused on corporate power, prices, and an economy that works for workers and families. She is also the author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — And What That Means for Your Wallet.

Social Media:

@lindsayowens.bsky.social

@groundwork.bsky.social

Further reading:

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

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

When the Invisible Hand Becomes An Algorithm with Lindsay Owens

How Outsized Corporate Profits Raised Prices with Lindsay Owens

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Can We Build a Common Good Economy? (with Mariana Mazzucato) Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

Economics teaches us to think of markets as natural forces, and government as something that should only intervene when they fail. In her new book, The Common Good Economy: How to Make Capitalism Work for Us All, economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that story is backward. She joins Nick and Goldy to ask what changes when we recognize that markets are choices — shaped by rules, institutions, public investment, and power — and what that means for the kind of economy we could build instead.

If we designed this system, can we redesign it?

Mariana Mazzucato is a Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Entrepreneurial State, The Value of Everything, Mission Economy, The Big Con, and most recently, The Common Good Economy: How to Make Capitalism Work for Us All.

Social Media:

@mazzucatom.bsky.social

@MazzucatoM

@mazzucatom

Further reading:

The Common Good Economy: How to Make Capitalism Work for Us All

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose

The Entrepreneurial State

Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism

The Big Con

The Great Transformationby Karl Polanyi

A Mission-Oriented Approach to School Meals

Mission-Oriented Public-Private Partnerships: Lessons from the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

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The $29 Trillion Social Security Crisis We Already Know How to Fix ( with Rey Fuentes) Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

Americans are told Social Security is in trouble because there are more retirees and fewer workers to support them. But that story leaves out a major part of the problem: how much income now sits outside the system that funds Social Security.

Roosevelt Institute’s Rey Fuentes joins Nick and Goldy to explain how rising inequality, stagnant wages, and an outdated payroll-tax structure helped create Social Security’s looming shortfall — and why benefit cuts are far from inevitable. Plus, Nick puts forward a different way to think about fixing the system — one that starts with a basic question: why should some kinds of income count toward Social Security while others don’t?

Rey Fuentes is Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Roosevelt Institute.

The $29 trillion figure in this episode’s title refers to Social Security’s projected 75-year unfunded obligation. According to the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report, the combined retirement, survivor, and disability programs are projected to have a $29.3 trillion financing shortfall, measured in present-value dollars, between 2026 and 2100. That is not $29 trillion that comes due when the retirement trust fund is projected to deplete its reserves in 2032.

Read the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report Summary

Social Media:

@rooseveltinstitute.org

@rooseveltinst

@therooseveltinstitute

Further reading:

Social Security Doesn’t Need Cuts. The Fiscal Panic Is Missing Where the Money Is

1983 v. 2032: The Economics of the Last and Next Social Security Reform

What’s Actually Behind Social Security’s Trust Fund Shortfall

“Will Social Security Run Out?” Is the Wrong Question: How Lawmakers Can Protect Beneficiaries and Strengthen OASI

“Sound, Needy, and Patriotic Legislation”: Preserving the Fundamental Promises of the Social Security System

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Profit, Power, and the Crisis of the Common Good (with Sen. Chris Murphy) Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Why do so many Americans feel powerless, lonely, and disconnected — and what does that have to do with our economy?

Senator Chris Murphy joins Nick and Goldy to discuss his new book, Crisis of the Common Good, which makes the case that America’s political crisis is inseparable from a deeper collapse of power, connection, and shared purpose.

They dig into the “cult of profit,” Market Humanism, AI, scarcity, corruption, and the limits of an economy organized around efficiency and extraction. It’s a conversation about what happens when profit becomes the highest measure of success, and what it would mean to build an economy rooted in dignity, connection, and the common good.

Senator Chris Murphy is the junior United States Senator for Connecticut

Social Media:

@chrismurphyct.bsky.social

@ChrisMurphyCT

Further reading:

Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America

Watch Nick Debate Obama Admin Economist Jason Furman: NickHanauer.Substack.com

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Chains of Command: How Franchising Turned Control Without Responsibility Into a Business Model (with Brian Callaci) Aug 25, 2026

Show notes

When you walk into a McDonald’s, it looks like one company. But legally, the person making your fries probably doesn’t work for McDonald’s at all. Brian Callaci, Chief Economist at the Open Markets Institute and author of Chains of Command, joins Nick and Goldy to explain how franchising became a blueprint for corporate control without responsibility — shifting risk, liability, and labor costs onto franchisees and workers while profits flow upward.

Brian Callaci is the chief economist at the Open Markets Institute and author ofChains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy.

Social Media:

@briancallaci.bsky.social

@brian_callaci

briancallaci.com

Further reading:

Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black Americaby Marcia Chatelain

Sectoral bargaining FAQ: Collective bargaining, sectoral wage and standards boards, and worker power

The Founder (2016)

Continental T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977)

Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust & Monopoly Hearing on Distribution problems affecting small business. Part 1: franchising agreements, March (1965)

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The Joy of Money (with Carrie Joy Grimes) Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Most personal finance advice starts with the same basic premise: you’re doing money wrong. But Carrie Joy Grimes, founder of WorkMoney and author of The Joy of Money, says that misses half the story.

Yes, people need real tools to budget, save, pay down debt, and plan for the future. But no amount of discipline can fix an economy where wages are too low, costs are too high, and working people have lost power over the rules that shape their lives. This week, Nick and Goldy talk with Grimes about why money is “math and feelings,” how shame keeps people stuck, why so much financial advice is written for people who already have money, and why the best thing we can do is not teach people to be better at being poor — but build an economy where fewer people are poor in the first place.

Carrie Joy Grimes is the founder and CEO of WorkMoney and author of The Joy of Money. Before founding WorkMoney, she spent two decades as a union organizer fighting for higher wages, better benefits, and stronger worker power.

Social Media:

Carrie Joy Grimes

Work Money

Further reading:

The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money—No Matter How Much You Have

WorkMoney - Provides free tools, tips, and resources to help people lower their living costs, find financial assistance, and increase their overall income.

MoneyFinder - A bill-negotiation service launched by WorkMoney.

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What Happened to Liberal Democracy (with Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu) Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

Nobel Prize-winning MIT economist Daron Acemoglu joins Nick and Goldy to discuss his new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity. They explore why so many people have lost faith in democracy, how inequality and weakened worker power have reshaped politics, and why democracy has to deliver in people’s daily lives. They also dig into AI, automation, and whether new technology will concentrate even more wealth and power — or help build a more prosperous, democratic future.

Daron Acemoglu is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Institute Professor at MIT. He is one of the world’s leading thinkers on political economy, institutions, inequality, technology, and the relationship between democracy and shared prosperity. His books include Why Nations Fail, The Narrow Corridor, and Power and Progress. His new book is What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity.

Social Media:

@dacemoglumit.bsky.social

@DAcemogluMIT

Further reading:

What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity

New York Times - Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats

NBER - Automation and Repression

Check out THE BILLIONAIRE AGE on IDEAS

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What Happens When the Other Washington Stops Enforcing Antitrust? (with WA State Attorney General Nick Brown) Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Paramount Skydance wants to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111 billion deal that would put even more of Hollywood—and two major newsrooms—under one corporate roof.

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown joins Nick and Goldy to explain why a coalition of states is suing to stop it, how they forced Paramount to pause the merger, and why state attorneys general are increasingly stepping in as the federal government retreats from antitrust enforcement. They also discuss the successful fights against Live Nation–Ticketmaster and Kroger–Albertsons—and what happens when corporations become powerful enough to escape competition.

Nick Brown is the Attorney General of Washington State

Social Media:

@atg.wa.gov

@AGOWA

Further reading:

Washington Post - Washington state is suing Paramount. Here’s why.

Washington State Office of the Attorney General

Check out THE BILLIONAIRE AGE on IDEAS

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The Good Life Economy (with Elizabeth Wilkins) Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

What is the economy for — GDP, corporate profits, or people?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk with Elizabeth Wilkins, President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, about Roosevelt’s new Good Life Agenda and why so many old assumptions about markets, government, and growth are suddenly up for grabs. It’s a conversation about human flourishing, public power, and what democracy has to deliver if people are going to believe in it again.

Elizabeth Wilkins is the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.She previously served as Chief of Staff to the Chair and Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. She has also held senior roles in the White House and the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, clerked for Justice Elena Kagan and then-Judge Merrick Garland. She began her career as a labor organizer with SEIU 32BJ. She is one of the authors of Roosevelt’s new report, The Good Life: An Agenda for Fuller Lives, a Stronger Economy, and Renewed Trust.

Social Media:

@elizabethwwilkins.bsky.social

@ewwilkins

Further reading:

The Good Life: An Agenda for Fuller Lives, a Stronger Economy, and Renewed Trust.

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