Hey, pitchfork listeners. Last week, Nick and I had a great conversation with Wendy Bach about how punitive and difficult to navigate our social safety net is.

And if you haven't listened to it, I encourage you to go right back into our archive and listen to it now.

Done? Okay. Well, that reminded us about a great conversation we had back in 2019 with Felicia Wong, the president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, and Civic Ventures alum Hannah Brooks Olson about why it's so difficult to climb out of poverty.

We think it's a great companion piece the last

week's conversation, so we're sharing it again. And while I have you, I just want to let you know

about our new weekly newsletter, The Pitch. In a recent pitch, Zach Silk explains to Democrats

why doing popular things is popular. Who knew? So if you're

interested in the latest economic data and analysis, please subscribe to the pitch at

civicventures.substack.com, where you can find a link in the show notes.

What we've long understood, though, is that some communities have consistently had the odds stacked against them.

That already low poverty line, the vast majority of the people who fall below that are working poor.

Over half the jobs created by the economy since the 2008 financial crisis were poverty-level jobs.

So I hope this conversation continues, not as a question of whether, but of how we can work together to grow opportunity.

Hugely what I have seen among people is a feeling of a loss of control over their future, over what they can do.

A loss of agency. Yeah, just at the mercy of whatever, like, rich dudes do next.

Poverty isn't like a scratch or a bruise. We're talking about a really cancerous tumor,

and Band-Aids are really not the solution to the problem.

We all want our country to be one where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded. We want a place where you can make it if you try.

From the offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer,

a pointed conversation about who gets what and why with one of America's most provocative capitalists.

My name is Hannah Brooks Olson.

I am a writer.

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