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 some big-name economists reported that such laws...
Your drunk uncle calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Your crypto-bro cousin thinks tariffs make China pay. Your grandfather blames working women for tanking wage growth. Economist Kathryn Edwards...
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 have we done?” Mostly we conditioned ourselves to kee...
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, and decades of inertia. This accident of history co...
In the final Q&A of the season, economist Kathryn Edwards answers listener questions on recent universal basic income experiments, legislative budgeting tricks, and the value of more aggressive...
Just how broken is Unemployment Insurance? Consider this: During every recession since the 1950s, the federal government has had to step in and prop it up. Of people looking for work, only half qua...
The economic pain that Americans experienced in 2022-23 was dubbed the “vibesession,” suggesting that negative public sentiment was out of sync with a healthy economy. But what we were truly experi...
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 difference. But here's why that’s the wrong takeaway: The "Bab...
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 state programs, but those vary. The rest of us s...
Free breakfast and lunch for every public school student — an idea associated more with countries like Sweden and Finland — should instead be viewed as a truly American policy that liberals and con...
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 of Labor Statistics doesn’t capture their economi...
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 inequality and citizens’ wellbeing. It rewards consumpti...
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-wringing about college enrollment, long-gone fac...
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 risk? Are the poor people themselves the root ca...
Economist Kathryn Edwards is back with more answers. In Part 2, she talks more about student loans, who actually “lives off taxpayers,” why gold reserves aren’t a great idea anymore, the importance...
In the first of two mailbag episodes, economist Kathryn Edwards answers questions from optimist listeners on taxation on wages vs. investments, whether student loans are regressive, how bona fide e...
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 it at $15 or $17. Is that high enough, and how c...
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 been falling. Today just 10% of U.S. workers are ...
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 – through loopholes and ballooning exemptions – u...
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. No. And not yet.) College graduates under 27 ...
