Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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