How thinking like economists holds us back (with Elizabeth Popp Berman)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When it comes to crafting economic policy, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, choice, and competition have reigned supreme among policymakers for decades. Sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman says that this style of economic reasoning—prioritizing efficiency above all else—makes good ideas seem like bad policy. She walks us through how that short-sighted style of thinking took hold in DC and explains when policymakers are right to lean on purely economic thinking—and when they should reject it in favor of prioritizing more fundamental values. Elizabeth Popp Berman is a sociologist at the University of Michigan and the author of “Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy”. Twitter: @epopppp Economics: Looking Back to Move Forward https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/64/economics-looking-back-to-move-forward Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691167381/thinking-like-an-economist Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	We often talk about the rise of neoliberalism has made it so that neither party is actually
0:05.9	working in the best interests of working people in this country.
0:09.0	There's sort of an economic style of reasoning that a lot of people have picked up on and
0:13.0	that has spread a lot.
0:14.0	Basically, a micro-economic econ 101 kind of approached a problem.
0:19.0	Thinking like an economist, that probably would have been taken as a positive instruction
0:25.0	30 years ago, but today not so much.
0:31.0	From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics,
0:38.0	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
0:42.0	It's so exciting to have civic ventures president Zach Silk co-hosting the podcast with me this week.
1:01.0	Especially since Zach, I understand you just got back from our nation's capital.
1:05.0	It's true.
1:06.0	Yeah, so how's the swamp?
1:08.0	Are we getting all the big progressive changes we wanted?
1:12.0	It's all working like clockwork there?
1:15.0	Well, I would say it's complicated.
1:18.0	We met with a lot of people.
1:20.0	In some ways, it's the most promising time that I can remember after spending a lot of time in the Obama and Clinton years
1:31.0	talking to Democrats about how to help the government improve our lives.
1:37.0	That was not so promising.
1:38.0	Those were hard meetings, very challenging, very difficult.
1:42.0	The meetings now actually are much more promising.
	...

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