Hi, I'm Annie Fadley, and I'm here to welcome you to Quick Pitch, the first installment of a series of Pitch Fork Economics Bonus episodes,

hosted by my boss, Zach Silk, the President of Civic Ventures.

So Quick Pitches are going to be short and sweet

analyses of timely topics that didn't quite make it to a full episode this

season. If you're listening to bonus content, then you're pretty hardcore. You might

just be a policy wonk and our office has deep

deep affection for you. This quick pitch is about the middle class tax cuts that

never were.

My name is Zexhilk and I'm the president of Civic Ventures. I'm Stephanie Irvin. I run a lot of our advocacy and campaign work here at Civic Ventures.

Civic Ventures is a shop of political troublemakers. We're trying to make a difference in the world

and make sure that we have a big impact on the social fabric of the country and

improve people's lives. We've been brought together to take on the big challenges that are often left unaddressed by others.

We work nationally and locally.

We have a very specific way of approaching problems and we try to

understand them as structural problems and what are underneath rather than

attacking the symptoms. We're trying to get at the disease.

The most important work we've been doing is related to what we call political economy,

which is the intersection of politics and economic policy, and inside of that we've done a lot of work.

We were at the early stages of the fight for 15.

We've worked on overtime at the national national level at the local level.

We've been incubating new policy ideas on how to create labor

standards for the 21st century.

...