Working Toward a Full Employment Economy (with Arnab Datta)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In its quest to combat inflation the Federal Reserve has seemingly done everything in its power to engineer a recession, which would throw millions of people out of work. Rather than question the Fed’s actions, mainstream economists cheered them on, claiming that we need multiple months of high unemployment to bring inflation down. But do we really need to immiserate America’s working class in order to save the economy? Today’s guest, Arnab Datta, and his colleagues at Employ America are producing research that suggests we should instead be using macroeconomic policies to steer the economy to high employment and robust wage growth—which would reduce inequity, spur economic development, and expand the availability of good-paying jobs for all Americans. Arnab Datta serves as the Senior Counsel for Employ America, which is an organization focused on economic policy research and advocacy that prioritizes full employment, wage growth, and economic stability. Employ America seeks to influence economic policy discussions and shape the narrative around employment and economic well-being. Twitter: @ArnabDatta321, @employamerica Website: www.employamerica.org The Fed Is Trying To Engineer A Recession https://www.employamerica.org/blog/the-fed-is-trying In The Right Context, Full Employment Can Support A Pickup In Productivity https://www.employamerica.org/blog/in-the-right-context-full-employment-can-support-a-pickup-in-productivity Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're in a moment right now of effectively full employment. That modality is what we should always be optimizing for.
0:09.0	A full employment economy is one where employment levels translate into bargaining power for a wide
0:16.4	swath of workers. The more people you fully include in the economy the faster and more prosperous it grows for everybody and
0:25.8	that's what full employment is all about. From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics,
0:38.0	with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
0:45.0	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:51.0	I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.
0:57.0	Goldie, I don't think there's been anything that has pissed me off more as we've run through, you know, coming out of the recession and seeing the phenomenal performance of this middle out economy then people
1:19.4	like Larry Summers and other economists effectively calling for the Fed to create a recession and
1:27.0	huge amounts of unemployment to deal with the problem that they call inflation.
1:33.9	Why?
1:34.2	Because they're completely confused about what the problem is.
1:37.8	The problem is not inflation.
1:39.0	The problem is higher prices and raising interest rates
1:41.6	is not going to solve that problem, it will probably prolong it and
1:44.9	make it worse.
1:46.8	But B, just the savage injustice of it all, the fact that the only policy lever we're willing to look at as a country to deal with higher prices is to throw millions of people out of work and hope that that decrease in demand will push prices down.
2:07.0	You know, there are so many other things that you could do to address the issue of higher prices, this whole, you know, market
2:16.2	fundamentalist let the poor suffer, you know, reflex. It just drives me crazy drives me crazy
2:24.4	Nick there you go again Nick just hurting the people you're trying to know I mean
2:31.1	look if if if Larry Summers says we need seven and a half
2:37.2	unemployment for a couple years in order to get inflation under control then you know
	...

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