I'm John Schwartz, a writer at The Intercept, filling in for Ryan Graham on this week's

episode of Deconstructed.

Most people with a progressive perspective are used to hearing fancy Ivy League economists

to tell them, sure, it might be nice to have a country that worked for regular people,

but sadly, as you can see from the lines on this graph, that is impossible.

He's just science.

Today on Deconstructed, I'm talking to Dean Baker, an economist who makes the case really

convincingly that that's just wrong, that the lines on that graph don't have much to

do with reality, and that the United States could in fact provide a much better life for

regular people.

I worked for Dean long ago, just for a short time, but it was long enough to make me believe

that he would be one of America's most prominent public intellectuals if we cared about things

like the public or intellect.

I hope this episode of Deconstructed will get even more people on the Dean Baker bandwagon.

We talked about many of the greatest hits of his career, including the role he played

in helping thwart the privatization of Social Security by just asking super simple questions

and how he was a voice in the wilderness in the mid-2000s, warning about the housing

bubble, which then did burst and almost destroyed the world economy.

Then we talked about some of his interesting and exciting ideas for the future.

Of course, interesting and exciting is not a phrase that usually applies to economics,

but it actually does here.

Dean Baker works at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank

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