Back to Basics Series: Does the Market Really Pay You What You’re Worth? (with Marshall Steinbaum and Saru Jayaraman)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve all heard the story: In a fair market, workers are paid exactly what they’re worth. Economists even have a name for it—marginal productivity theory. It’s neat, simple…and completely wrong. In this Back-to-Basics episode, economist Marshall Steinbaum and labor leader Saru Jayaraman dismantle the myth that the market fairly rewards labor. Steinbaum reveals how this theory has been weaponized to excuse wage stagnation, justify corporate power, and erode worker bargaining rights. Jayaraman shows what that looks like in the real world, from restaurant workers stuck at subminimum wages to entire industries built on underpaying the people who keep them running. They make the case that your paycheck isn’t determined by some neutral law of economics—it’s the result of choices, policies, and power dynamics that can be rewritten to ensure everyone is truly paid what they’re worth. Marshall Steinbaum is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and a Senior Fellow in Higher Education Finance at the Jain Family Institute. Saru Jayaraman is an attorney, President of One Fair Wage and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), and author of One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America. Social Media: @Econ_Marshall ‪@econmarshall.bsky.social‬ @SaruJayaraman Further reading: One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social TikTok: @pitchfork_econ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now,
0:05.6	so we thought we'd take a little break this summer. But we don't want you to miss us too much,
0:10.4	so we thought we'd revisit some of the most essential episodes from early in our history
0:15.5	with a back-to-basic summer series. And as you're trying to maximize your own summer vacation plans,
0:23.6	you might want to ask yourself, does the market really pay you what you're worth?
0:30.2	The way to make workers work more is to give them greater skills, get more higher education
0:34.4	degrees. That whole sort of genre of argument is premiseised on a certain assumption about how the labor market works,
0:40.0	that workers are paid with their worth, and that assumption is false.
0:42.6	I'm an electrician by trade.
0:44.2	I make $18 an hour about the exact same as my uncle who did this back in the 80s.
0:50.3	If it's not marginal product that determines how much you make, what is it?
0:54.6	It's power.
1:01.7	From the offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer,
1:08.8	where we explore everything you wished you'd learn in Econ 101.
1:17.3	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
1:20.6	I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:27.0	So, Nick, before I started working for you, I worked for The Stranger in Alt Weekly,
1:31.8	where I wrote like three, four, five blog posts a day, plus had, I don't know,
1:37.3	600, 2,000 words due in the paper that week.
1:41.1	And I got paid very little money.
1:43.2	And then I came to work for you and you're
1:45.7	paying me so much more than I made at the stranger. So as I understand Econ 101, I'm a lot more
	...

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