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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Inequality and coronavirus (with Heather Boushey and Michelle Holder)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The burdens of this pandemic are not borne equally. Economists Heather Boushey and Michelle Holder join the show this week to expose how the coronavirus is exacerbating the already-deep inequalities in our society. Heather Boushey is the President & CEO and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and a leading economist who focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. Her latest book is Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It. Twitter: @HBoushey Michelle Holder is an Assistant Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. Prior to joining the John Jay faculty, she worked professionally as an economist for over a decade in both the nonprofit and government sectors. Her research focuses on blacks and women in the American labor market, and her economic policy reports have been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Amsterdam News, and El Diario. Her first book African American Men and the Labor Market during the Great Recession was released from Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. Michelle’s educational background includes master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the New School for Social Research in NYC, and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University. Twitter: @mlholder999 Further reading: Unbound: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674919310 The coronavirus recession and economic inequality: a roadmap to recovery and long-term structural change: https://equitablegrowth.org/the-coronavirus-recession-and-economic-inequality-a-roadmap-to-recovery-and-long-term-structural-change/ The “Double Gap” and the Bottom Line: https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RI_DoubleGap_Report_202003.pdf Before COVID-19, corporate America shortchanged black women $50 billion annually: Why all women should care: https://msmagazine.com/2020/04/07/before-covid-19-corporate-america-shortchanged-black-women-50-billion-annually-why-all-women-should-care/ Inequality and poverty were destroying America well before Covid-19: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/inequality-and-poverty-were-destroying-america-well-before-covid-19/ Our uniquely American virus: https://prospect.org/coronavirus/our-uniquely-american-virus/ Black Americans face alarming rates of coronavirus infection in some states: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html The coronavirus pandemic and the racial wealth gap: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2020/03/19/481962/coronavirus-pandemic-racial-wealth-gap/ Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0

The inequality

0:04.1

that we've talked about has helped contribute to a crisis that is now making inequality worse.

0:07.7

How do we improve the condition of workers in general such that a pandemic like COVID doesn't result in disparate outcomes.

0:16.6

The decisions that we as a country have made has not created the kind of resiliency that we need.

0:22.2

Coronavirus has uncovered how one of the richest economies in the world remains incredibly

0:27.0

fragile.

0:28.0

From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics,

0:38.0

with Nick Hanauer.

0:40.0

One American capitalist's desperate attempt to save us from ourselves.

0:43.2

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

0:51.8

I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.

0:57.0

So the past few episodes, Nick, we've been focusing on the coronavirus pandemic and it's not surprising that the theme that keeps coming to the surface is inequality.

1:15.8

Yeah, and you know the really interesting thing.

1:18.6

I've been, of course, and lots of people

1:20.4

have been thinking really carefully about the coronavirus's impact on our society.

1:26.4

And I think it's really clear that it basically magnifies the underlying vulnerabilities and conditions that made our economy fragile

1:41.2

and less resilient.

1:43.2

And we're just seeing what happens when you take jobs away from millions and millions of

1:51.8

families that had been underpaid for 40 years and therefore

1:56.8

had no savings.

1:58.5

And you know an economy that was less unequal where many more families had more economic

2:07.6

resilience, we'd be in a very, very different spot. To say nothing of the other

...

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