Hi, I'm Ashley, one of the producers here at Pitchfork Economics.

Today, we're re-releasing an episode that we originally published in January of 2020

that tackles the issue of corporate parasites. Corporations have become richer than ever during

the pandemic, enriching CEOs and shareholders while stockpiling more and more money. It's not fair,

but it becomes even more unfair when you realize that every company you can think of

has benefited from a public investment, whether it's direct handouts through the tax code,

government research efforts, employee reliance on programs like EITC or TANF,

or even just plain old corporate tax avoidance. Taxpayers are subsidizing wildly profitable companies.

David Dan, the executive editor of the American Prospect, and Financial Times associate editor

Ronan Farouhar joined Nick and Zach on this episode to explain how we let corporate parasites

get so out of control and what we can do about it. Whether you're listening for the first or second

time, we hope you enjoy. What we're talking about is what we love to refer to as the parasite

economy. We have allowed concentrated corporate power to maintain such control over society.

And city fair, a lot of them are doing things that are perfectly leaked. For sure,

there's a few people winning and almost everybody else is losing. I gotta think we're gonna

have some major social unrest. You're basically gonna be sharpening up the guillotine.

From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle,

this is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what

and why. I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of civic ventures. Hey, I'm Zach Silk, and I'm the president

of civic ventures. So Zach, on this episode of pitchfork economics, we're gonna explore the

multitudinous ways that big corporations misbehave in the economy and take part in all sorts of

forms of parasitic behavior and violating norms and laws and rules that have existed in our

...