How neoliberalism turned the work ethic against workers (with Elizabeth Anderson)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

The majority of U.S. workers aren’t compensated anywhere near the value that they actually create for society, while the few who make the most money often work the least and contribute very little. Decades of neoliberal thinking has twisted one of the foundational American beliefs—the idea that hard work eventually reaps great rewards—into a celebration of greed and a dismissal of those of us who work the hardest. Returning guest Elizabeth Anderson explains how we can reclaim the American work ethic in order to once again center workers as the true heroes of the American economy. Professor Elizabeth Anderson specializes in moral, social and political philosophy, feminist theory, social epistemology, and the philosophy of economics and the social sciences. She is the author of several books including Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives and, most recently, Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back. Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hijacked/E7E4A7D850C1E7289BA7AAF910455136#fndtn-information Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Nick Hanauer. As someone who's been in and around corporate boardrooms, my entire career,
0:07.1	there's nothing I know better than the extent to which many of my business colleagues will go
0:13.8	to lie to protect their power and profits. And in my new book, Corporate Bullshit,
0:20.4	co-authored with Joan Walsh and Don Cohen, we make this manipulative duplicity plain as day
0:27.2	by placing egregious past quotes from corporate executives next to the equally outrageous
0:34.2	contemporary quotes, all of which justify outcomes that lie in pockets while harming society.
0:41.2	Again, the book is called Corporate Bullshit and you can pre-order the book now wherever books
0:47.1	are sold. What people call the Protestant work ethic is so ingrained in American minds.
0:55.2	The work ethic is very much alive in the lives of many, many Americans. We work, we work more
1:01.5	hours than our counterparts in Europe. One of the reasons that the country is so upside down and
1:07.6	polarized is that the majority of citizens aren't compensated anywhere near the value that they
1:14.6	create in society. From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle,
1:24.0	this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what
1:29.9	and why. I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures. I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic
1:44.1	Ventures. Nick, one of the things that I missed during the pandemic is that since it came on,
1:54.8	you've delegated our annual reviews. I don't really get your feedback and I know you love my work,
2:03.5	the quality of my work else. You wouldn't be putting up with me, but I'm curious what you think
2:09.3	of my work ethic. Yeah, it's medium. Medium. You can see my nose, it's not to the grindstone.
2:20.9	No, it's not to the grindstone. I'm not earning you enough money. No, no, too slow and not
2:27.4	enough. I should be working harder. We joke, but the work ethic is what people call the
2:38.7	Protestant work ethic is so ingrained in American minds. It gets to know when we write about politics,
2:48.0	when we're trying to instruct politicians on how to talk about the economy. One of the things
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