Q&A Part 1: Tax Philosophy, Liberal vs. Conservative Economists, Marriage vs. Poverty and More
Optimist Economy
Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi
4.9 • 829 Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the first of two mailbag episodes, economist Kathryn Edwards answers questions from optimist listeners on taxation on wages vs. investments, whether student loans are regressive, how bona fide economists wind up on opposite sides of policy debates, and what it really means when a Montana Congressman calls the CBO “historically wrong.” Yeah, this episode has a long title. But there was a lot of talking. And that’s why Part 2 is coming in a few days.
Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Robin. |
| 0:09.0 | On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better and we talk about how to get there, |
| 0:13.0 | one problem and solution at a time. |
| 0:23.8 | Today is a very special episode. |
| 0:26.0 | It's our second mailbag episode. |
| 0:28.1 | The second mailbag episode to review. |
| 0:30.3 | I have not seen the questions. |
| 0:33.4 | Robin is hitting me cold and we'll see how I do. |
| 0:35.9 | But before we get into them, we should let you know. |
| 0:38.4 | We might know it, but y'all should also know that we have a website, optimisteconomy.com. And through that, we send out newsletters. We take your money |
| 0:45.4 | through Substack and buy me a coffee. And you, of course, can always email us, Optimist.com |
| 0:50.4 | at gmail.com. Yeah, I wanted just also to say we broke a thousand newsletter subscribers this week, |
| 0:56.8 | and Substack sent me this note saying we have subscribers in 49 states. |
| 1:02.0 | So, of course, I wanted to know who wasn't in the fold, and it's North Dakota. |
| 1:06.3 | So North Dakota, get on the stick. |
| 1:09.0 | Somebody find a friend in North Dakota. |
| 1:13.6 | Phone a friend. I have a friend in North Dakota. Phone a friend. |
| 1:17.7 | I have a friend in Nebraska. I don't have a friend in North Dakota. We do well in Nebraska. We do well in Nebraska. We do that from our last, our last Q&A. Didn't we have two questions from Nebraska |
| 1:23.2 | last time? I love it. Okay. So we're going to skip through our normal chapters and just go straight |
| 1:28.9 | into each question. You know what? Actually, I had a term and condition that I did want to just |
| 1:33.3 | mention. Oh. So we don't skip our chapters and don't go straight into the questions. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.