Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

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@isabellamweber.bsky.social

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Anti-Fascist Economics (with Isabella Weber) Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

What happens to democracy when people can no longer afford the basics of everyday life?

Economist Isabella Weber argues that the affordability crisis isn't just an economic problem—it's a threat to democracy itself. Drawing on her new book, Anti-Fascist Economics, she joins Nick and Goldy to explore how inflation, austerity, and corporate profiteering fuel the rise of the far right, and why protecting democracy requires more than defending its institutions. From housing and groceries to energy and healthcare, Weber makes the case for an economy that puts people's livelihoods, dignity, and democratic power ahead of corporate profits.

Isabella Weber is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding director of Essential Economics. Her research focuses on inflation, corporate pricing power, and economic policy. She is the author of Anti-Fascist Economics: In Defense of Affordability, Dignity, and Democracy and How China Escaped Shock Therapy.

Social Media:

@isabella_m_weber

@IsabellaMWeber

www.isabellaweber.com

Further reading:

Anti-Fascist Economics: In Defense of Affordability, Dignity, and Democracy

Best of Times, Worst of Times: Record Fossil-Fuel Profits, Inflation and Inequality

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

The Wall Street Journal - America Made Me Very Rich. There's a Pro-Market Way to Give Back.

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This episode originally aired December 10, 2024.

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Housing Is a Market Power Problem (with Sandeep Vaheesan & Brian Callaci) Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

Housing is still ridiculously expensive, and building more housing is absolutely part of the solution. But supply alone won’t fix a system where landlords have the power to jack up rents with the assistance of algorithms, and developers make more money building for the wealthiest in the market, rather than building homes a typical family can afford.

In this 2024 conversation, Brian Callaci and Sandeep Vaheesan join Nick and Goldy to explain why America’s housing crisis is about more than a shortage of homes. They dig into landlord power, RealPage and algorithmic rent-setting, tenant protections, rent stabilization, and why relying on private developers alone won’t produce enough housing that working- and middle-class families can actually afford.

They also make the case for a bigger public role in housing—including social housing and other public options that can create affordable homes without requiring every project to maximize private returns.

Brian Callaci is the Campaigns Director at the Strategic Organizing Center and the former chief economist at the Open Markets Institute. He is also the author of Chains of Command: The Rise and Cruel Reign of the Franchise Economy.

Sandeep Vaheesan is Legal Director at the Open Markets Institute, where he leads the organization’s legal advocacy and research, including its amicus program. His work focuses on antitrust, monopoly power, labor markets, and fair competition.

Further reading:

“The Market Alone Can’t Fix the U.S. Housing Crisis”

“Deconstructing Housing”

“Supply and the Housing Crisis: A Debate”

U.S. v. RealPage

Social Media:

@briancallaci.bsky.social

@brian_callaci

@sandeepvaheesan

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This episode originally aired August 1, 2023.

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Who Is Industrial Policy Really For? (with Isabel Estevez) Oct 06, 2026

Show notes

Industrial policy is back at the center of the economic debate. But tariffs, factories, and reshoring are only part of the story. In this 2023 conversation, development economist Isabel Estevez joins Nick and Goldy to argue that industrial policy is ultimately about choices: what we produce, how we produce it, and who benefits. She explains why a smart industrial strategy has to look beyond manufacturing output to workers, communities, climate, public investment, and the broader public good.

Because the real debate isn’t whether the government shapes markets. It already does. The question is what—and who—we’re shaping them for.

Isabel Estevez is an institutional and development economist and Co-Executive Director of i3T—Industry, Infrastructures and Innovation for Strategic Transformation. She previously served as Deputy Director of Industrial Policy and Trade at the Roosevelt Institute and as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Sierra Club.

Further reading:

Using Industrial Policy for Productive Transformation: Three Lessons from Development Economics for US Industrial Strategy

How Can (Green) Industrial Policy Serve Human and Natural Flourishing?

Global Green Industrial Policy: Navigating Power Dynamics for a Pro-Working-Class, Pro-Development Green Transformation

The New Economics of Industrial Policy

Social Media:

@isabel_estevez_

isaestevez.com

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

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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:

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

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@brendanballou

Ask Pitchfork: Have a question for Nick, Goldy, or the show? Leave it in the comments on YouTube or Spotify with #askpitchfork.

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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:

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

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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:

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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Read the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report Summary

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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.

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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@chrismurphyct.bsky.social

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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

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