Optimist Economy
Episodes
What’s the Skinny on Laws that Make Salaries Public?
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Listener Max did his grad thesis on pay transparency laws in Colorado and found that they narrowed the gender wage gap by 8 cents on the dollar. But s...
Thanksgiving Prep: An Optimist’s Guide to Dinner Table Debate
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Your drunk uncle calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Your crypto-bro cousin thinks tariffs make China pay. Your grandfather blames working women for...
Retcon on Season One (+ Executive Orderpalooza)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Optimist Economy got its start almost exactly one year ago with a phone call that began, "Hear me out…" Thirty-two episodes later we ask, “What ha...
How Health Insurance Got Shackled to Jobs
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is anyone’s health insurance tied to their job? It's because of a superintendent in Dallas, World War II wage freezes, a 1953 tax code quirk, an...
Optimist Q&A: Evidence for UBI, What to Do About Billionaires, and Where Will the U.S. Economy Be After Trump?
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the final Q&A of the season, economist Kathryn Edwards answers listener questions on recent universal basic income experiments, legislative bud...
Can We Fix America's Broken Unemployment Insurance System?
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just how broken is Unemployment Insurance? Consider this: During every recession since the 1950s, the federal government has had to step in and prop i...
The Ghost Recession: A Brief Economic History of Now
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The economic pain that Americans experienced in 2022-23 was dubbed the “vibesession,” suggesting that negative public sentiment was out of sync wi...
The Cash-for-Kids Study: Misread and Misrepresented
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You might have heard recently that a years-long poverty study “found” that giving $333 monthly to kids with poor parents didn’t make a differenc...
The Case for Going Big on Paid Leave
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paid family and medical leave is a confusing mess: only 27% of private-sector workers get paid leave from their employer. Some others are covered by s...
Aren’t Free School Meals a Conservative's Dream Policy?
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Free breakfast and lunch for every public school student — an idea associated more with countries like Sweden and Finland — should instead be view...
Looking Beyond the Unemployment Rate
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The unemployment rate has been hovering around 4.2%. But in today’s highly unsettled economy, many people feel this headline number from the Bureau ...
GDP Was Never Going to Make You Happy
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gross Domestic Product is the big dog of economic numbers. But this measure of the economy’s size has massive blind spots. It ignores income inequal...
How to Actually Help Young Men Struggling in Our Economy
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The "boys and men crisis" conversation set in motion following the 2024 election is now shooting off in erratic directions, leading to a lot of hand-w...
What You Don’t Know About Poverty
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
About 11% of Americans have a household income that puts them below the official government threshold for poverty. Is poverty a state of being, or a r...
Q&A Part 2: Working Two Jobs, Incentives vs. Handouts, the Gold Standard, and Government ROI
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Economist Kathryn Edwards is back with more answers. In Part 2, she talks more about student loans, who actually “lives off taxpayers,” why gold r...
Q&A Part 1: Tax Philosophy, Liberal vs. Conservative Economists, Marriage vs. Poverty and More
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of two mailbag episodes, economist Kathryn Edwards answers questions from optimist listeners on taxation on wages vs. investments, whethe...
A Million Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t been raised since the era of flip phones. Competing bills introduced in Congress recently would set...
Collective Bargaining Without the Unionization Battles
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Labor unions’ public approval has been increasing since 2009, and is now at levels not seen since the 1960s. And yet rates of union membership have ...
The Tax We’re 99.93% Sure That You Will Never Pay
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Estate Tax is one that half of Americans worry about, but that affects only the richest 0.07% after they die. For nearly 25 years, the U.S. has –...
About That College Grad Who Can’t Find a Job…
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Newly minted college graduates are having a harder time landing that first job than in recent years. Is it AI? Is college useless? Is it a crisis? (No...
Simple Immigration Economics: Bigger is Better
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One in five workers in the United States was born in another country. Without them, the country’s prime-age workforce would be shrinking, and thus s...
Work Requirements Don’t Work
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Here’s what work requirements rarely accomplish: Getting more people to work or lifting them out of poverty. They are, however, very good at driving...
The U.S. is in the Hole. Will We Stop Digging?
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The national debt is $36 trillion — a panic-inducing big number. So maybe it will help to understand how the U.S. ran up that debt. We’ve blown 37...
College Rules! But Student Loans are a Hot Mess!
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. government makes student loans because our economy benefits enormously: Improved human capital. Higher earnings for taxpayers. Innovation and...
OE Lightning Round: Kathryn Edwards Takes Your Economy Questions
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kathryn Edwards answers listeners’ economic questions, with her co-host's stopwatch running. In under an hour, we cover risks to U.S. economic data,...
The Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Change Diapers
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Child care is exhibit A that not everything can be solved by private marketplaces. It is too expensive and too scarce — and as Kathryn Edwards point...
A Family Bill for a Shrinking U.S.
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The declining birth rate in the United States is often discussed not only as a major demographic shift, but as a looming economic disaster. Ideas bein...
Progress is a Long Game
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What sparks progress? The right political conditions? Social pressure? Economic upheaval? In response to two listeners’ questions, Kathryn Edwards s...
Paid Sick Days for Lady Gaga (and Everyone Else Too)
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the category of low-hanging policy fruit, why won’t any politician pluck the ripe, juicy goodness of federally mandated paid sick leave? About 30...
AI Suggested Five Horrible Titles for This Episode
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A recent article in the Washington Post proposed that U.S. labor data has just started to show the bite artificial intelligence is taking out of U.S. ...
Work Rules for the Modern World
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Never heard of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938? It’s why there’s a minimum wage, overtime pay, and 12-year-olds can’t legally have a job. I...
Robin Loves a Tax Story
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States is more than 20 years into a tax experiment – an era of a cumulative $7 trillion in tax cuts. So, asks economist Kathryn Edwards, ...
Social Security Don’t Miss
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What’s with the persistent narrative of Social Security's impending doom? Are the baby boomers draining the trust fund? Are Americans living too lon...
Is This a Recession or Not?
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wouldn’t it be funny if we launched a podcast called “Optimist Economy” at the very moment the economy started to slide? Nice timing, us! In thi...
An Elegy for the DEI Boogeyman
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rapidly changed government and corporate policies mean the era of DEI is coming to a screeching halt. But gross racial discrimination in the U.S. labo...
All We've Tried is Nothing!
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who are we and what in the world is an “optimist economy?”For our first show, we (economist Kathryn Edwards and editor Robin Rauzi) introduce ours...
Welcome to Optimist Economy
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Here at Optimist Economy, we recognize that today’s economy isn’t great for a lot of Americans. That is exactly why now’s the time to talk about...