Most personal finance advice starts with the same basic premise: you’re doing money wrong. But Carrie Joy Grimes, founder of WorkMoney and author of The Joy of Money, says that misses half the story.
Yes, people need real tools to budget, save, pay down debt, and plan for the future. But no amount of discipline can fix an economy where wages are too low, costs are too high, and working people have lost power over the rules that shape their lives. This week, Nick and Goldy talk with Grimes about why money is “math and feelings,” how shame keeps people stuck, why so much financial advice is written for people who already have money, and why the best thing we can do is not teach people to be better at being poor — but build an economy where fewer people are poor in the first place.
Carrie Joy Grimes is the founder and CEO of WorkMoney and author of The Joy of Money. Before founding WorkMoney, she spent two decades as a union organizer fighting for higher wages, better benefits, and stronger worker power.
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Carrie Joy Grimes
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Further reading:
The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money—No Matter How Much You Have
WorkMoney – Provides free tools, tips, and resources to help people lower their living costs, find financial assistance, and increase their overall income.
MoneyFinder – A bill-negotiation service launched by WorkMoney.
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Nick Hanauer:
The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
Goldy:
The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven’t worked, but what’s the alternative?
Nick Hanauer:
Middle out economics is the answer.
Goldy:
Because the middle class is the source of growth, not its consequence.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
Announcer:
This is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out. Welcome to the show.
Nick Hanauer:
Goldy, today on the pod, we have our old friend Carrie Joy Grimes, who is both the founder of WorkMoney, which is I think now the nation’s largest nonprofit devoted to the economic security of working Americans, and is also the author of a new book, The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money― No Matter How Much You Have. Carrie Joy wrote this book to help folks navigate the challenges of money, and it’ll be really interesting to hear how she merges the two interests of being better with money, but also the fact that most people don’t have enough.
Goldy:
Right, because unlike most people who write on this topic, she’s actually talking about both sides of the equation.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Goldy:
It’s not just what do you do with your money, which if you watch all the financial advice shows on the morning TV, or on PBS or something, it’s all about investing. How to invest, in some cases also how not to spend, a bit. You want to spend more wisely, et cetera, so you don’t go into debt, and pay off your debts first and all that stuff. But she also talks about the other side of the equation because it is, of course, double entry bookkeeping. It’s a balance sheet. You have both income and outcome. So she doesn’t just talk about the outcome, she talks about the income, and it’s not just like, “Do what Goldy did. Quit the alt weekly job and work for a rich guy, and he’ll pay you more.” It’s about society collectively, as a whole, where we’ve gone wrong and where we’ve fallen down on the wage side. That has allowed so many people like you, Nick, to become so wealthy-
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
Goldy:
… while everybody else’s incomes have stagnated.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. Well, anyway, let’s talk to Carrie Joy about her new book, The Joy of Money.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Hello, I’m Carrie Joy Grimes. I’m the CEO of WorkMoney. We are a nonprofit that helps people navigate their money, kind of like the AARP, but we’re about money and finances instead of about aging. And I recently wrote a book, called The Joy of Money, which is meant to help people figure out how they can get some joy with their money.
Goldy:
Nick, you are the most joyful person I know then, if you could equate joy with money. So we should let you guide this conversation.
Nick Hanauer:
So Carrie Joy, tell us a little bit about how you came to write this book. Give us the sort of history of WorkMoney and first your desire, then the actualization, of a book.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I mean, you’ve written books, you know.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I don’t know anybody who…
Nick Hanauer:
Terrible.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
It’s such a process. And so I will say that, it wasn’t like I… My husband is an author, and he’s compelled to write, from inside himself. And I felt compelled to write from outside, meaning, we just got so many questions from our members over the years. And the same questions. And at some point it was like, “Oh, for crying out loud, we should put this stuff on paper.” Because it turns out that there aren’t a lot of places everyday people can get basic money information about what’s in their self-interest.
And WorkMoney was started in 2020 during the pandemic, where a lot of folks were calling me up or emailing and saying, “Hey, how do I handle this crazy financial moment?” And so I made a website with some folks, and then it just took off. And now WorkMoney is an organization of nine and a half million members, we help people navigate money in all different kinds of ways. I mean, you know, Nick, you’ve been a supporter for a long time, and a collaborator of mine off and on over the years. And the book kind of came out of having the same questions asked over and over and over again.
And I’ll just say, money is not rocket surgery. There’s just not that many hard choices to make when you have the information. The problem for most people is that they don’t have the information from somebody they trust. And a lot of us don’t have enough money. And so the book is really meant to help people solve those two problems.
Nick Hanauer:
Right, yeah. And we’ll get to all of this. Obviously, you can handle money poorly, which will create problems.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
But obviously, an intrinsic part of the challenge for most Americans is they’re just not paid very much.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yes.
Nick Hanauer:
So if you have only a little, it’s very hard… You have to be perfect, effectively.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Goldy:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Right? You can’t make any mistakes.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
No.
Nick Hanauer:
Right? There’s no cushion.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
You have to stick the landing every time. You have to get a 10 on every single attempt. Yeah, that’s right.
Goldy:
And I’ve talked about this before, Nick. I’ve been working with you for 12 years now, and you pay me a very decent wage. But before that, I was a weekly reporter, and before that, just an unpaid blogger living off tips and a little bit of ad revenue. And I did not know how financially stressed out I was until I was not financially stressed out at all. And the difference between the pre-Civic Ventures Goldy, in terms of my life versus The Post, is just night and day. It is so much less stressful. Obviously, I’m not rich like you, Nick, but I am comfortable. I don’t live day to day, I don’t live month to month anymore, and it is so much easier.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I mean, Goldy, that’s just such a common experience. Part of why I wrote the book is that it was hard to find financial information for people who know the feeling of pulling out their debit card, not even a credit card, and hoping it goes through at the grocery store. Like, that moment, which I had as a young person. And then had a kid, I was a single mom, I have really had to navigate money when I didn’t have any. And there aren’t a lot of places you can go to find out, “What do I do when I don’t have quite enough? What do you do? What are the trade-offs?” And the places where you… Because most financial information is meant for people who have a lot of money to make a lot of choices-
Nick Hanauer:
Yes, right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… because somebody makes money off of those choices.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And so, having a nonprofit you can trust, who’s really just trying to help you figure it out, it’s like a big gap in the financial information landscape. And that moment where you go from, and this is the joy of money part, I think. Is that moment… You know, the absence of stress isn’t joy, but it is required for joy.
Goldy:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And so the idea is, when you ask me, “What’s your financial security goal? What is a good life for you?” And I always say the same thing, which is, “It starts with just knowing that I’m probably going to be okay when I wake up tomorrow and so are the people I love dearly.” And right now in this economy, that’s pretty hard for a lot of folks. So the joy of money is like, “Okay, how do you individually do everything you can to get your hand of cards the right, how do you play the hand you’re dealt in the best possible way? But then also, how do we do the work to improve the hand of cards we get in the first place?”
Goldy:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Because both things are what get us, I think, towards more joy.
Goldy:
And not everybody can just go to work for a billionaire to solve that problem.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
No, not unless you’re willing to hire all of America, like Nick and billionaires who are out there. That’s-
Nick Hanauer:
Not likely.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… yeah, unlikely.
Nick Hanauer:
Not likely.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Right?
Nick Hanauer:
One of the things that you just said, CJ, that really struck me, that’s worth saying again is, if you go to the store and try to buy a book on money, financial advice. I mean, I haven’t gone to the store and looked for those books in a long time, but-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
You haven’t needed that book in a long time.
Nick Hanauer:
… I am morally certain that what you say is true. That 99% of those books are written for people who have a lot of money, by people who will make money, by advising the people who are buying the book. It’s all part of this financialization game. And what you were trying to do is fill the space for 90% of Americans, or whatever it is, who don’t have a lot of money. And for whom, there probably isn’t a business model in helping them manage money.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
No, that’s-
Nick Hanauer:
Right?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… that’s right. That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
There were a few things that were really surprising to me. From my young years until now, when I really figured out how to do money, that’s my language. I do money, and I do money very well. I’m doing very well for myself, because I learned how to do money. And look, if I can learn, anyone can learn. I’m not one of those… My husband is like this, he can do all the math in his head really fast, and he’s the kind of guy who can figure out cryptocurrency and all that jazz. I mean, look, if I applied myself, I have no doubt I could. But it’s not like I’m a natural.
I thought, one of the biggest surprises I’ve had in doing this was, from when I was young and I was figuring out my money. I know how to do money. I learned it myself, because I thought I was really bad at money. I just thought, “Hey man, this is a natural-born problem that I have. I am inherently bad at it.” And it was very surprising to me to realize, I was so lucky to be a union organizer, where I was just talking to thousands of people every year, basically about their money. About why they wanted a raise, or why they needed a raise. And it turned out that I wasn’t the only person who thought that.
And the second surprise for me was realizing how much my mental mindset about that changed what I could do. Let me be really clear. This is not one of those things where you buy yourself a crystal and you wish that you could be good at money, and then magically, money falls from the sky. That’s not how it works. There are real things to learn, there’s real math involved with money, but the part where I was in my own way was a really big surprise for me.
The second surprise, those are two surprises. A, that I’m not the only one that’s alone and B, that I could fix it. The third big surprise was, that there is really basic math to do. It’s not that complicated. Most of us don’t make enough money to max out our tax advantage retirement accounts. For the everyday American, doing that, put your money, have an emergency fund, don’t get into high interest debt. We could talk about all the steps and levels, but the real banger is, just max out your tax advantaged retirement accounts. And after that, there’s some pretty basic stuff to invest in. Things like low cost index funds, to track the market, or the S&P. The math on the money side was not nearly as complicated as I thought it was.
The part that actually makes most people succeed or fail is the mental rig that they carry around.
Nick Hanauer:
The emotional stuff, in other words.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah. I have this little line I use which is, “Money is math and feelings. And the feelings are what get you.”
Nick Hanauer:
So let’s talk about the feelings. What are the feelings? Let’s talk about our feelings. My wife would be so proud.
Goldy:
Aw.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I know, you guys love this. I mean, this is-
Goldy:
Yeah, Nick and I, we’re very feelings people.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
You guys really are.
Goldy:
That’s what we usually talk about on the pod.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Anybody who has pulled that card out, or avoided opening that envelope, knows that money feelings tend to come in the form of worry, anxiety. Mostly I hear avoidance.
Goldy:
Shame.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
There’s a lot of that. And people are not crazy for doing that. Our brains are hardwired to avoid bad stuff, because it will kill us, because we’re animals at a certain point. And so when something makes us feel like we’re in danger, our brains are like, “Get away, get away.” So it’s like a normal biological response, it just isn’t really well suited for an environment where you have to do the uncomfortable thing. So I often say to people, “Discomfort is not danger. And avoidance makes the problems bigger.” I mean, this is all such basic stuff. Honestly, most people listening to this podcast are like, “Yeah, I know.” The reason the book exists is because yeah, you know, and there are some things that people can do about it.
And so I talk a lot about understanding what happened for you, in your life, that gave you whatever your money feelings toolkit is. Like, what’s your background? And then how to sort of pause and choose how you want to behave in moments when you feel those moments of stress. But I want to say one thing, which is everyone has to learn to play the hand of cards they’re dealt. That is necessary. We each have a personal responsibility. And I’m not here to say, “If you do all of that, then you will be a bajillionaire.” You know what I mean?
Goldy:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
There’s a second part of the equation, which is figuring out how we create the rules that benefit more people. And I don’t mean more people like special groups here and there. I mean the most of us, because right now, I think it’s pretty clear who the rules are benefiting. No offense, Nick, but it’s folks mostly in your class.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And so, we’ll get to that, but the only reason I bring that up here is that the feelings part can be tricky, because it really convinces us that we individually are the problem.
Goldy:
Yes.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And that’s really reinforced by media and the outside world.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
So breaking that spell, I think, is really helpful for folks in getting themselves up and going on their own money stuff.
Nick Hanauer:
Right. And there’s a kernel of truth to the idea that if your money stuff isn’t going well, it’s your fault, because there’s always a level of discipline that is available to you that you don’t quite get to. Right?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
In every circumstance. “Yeah, if I had just done 500 more pushups,” blah, blah, blah, whatever. “And if I just not bought that, or gone here, or done-“
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
… “X, Y, and Z, then I’d be better off,” blah, blah, blah. So there is a kernel of truth to that. And so, it has to be true that if your money circumstances are screwed up, some of it may be your fault.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
But to be clear, the reason that the majority of Americans are barely getting by, is most definitely not their fault.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Correct.
Nick Hanauer:
Right? That is most-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Correct.
Nick Hanauer:
… definitely-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
… not your fault.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
The reason that most Americans can’t get by, or can barely get by, is because over a long period of time, we changed the rules in ways that made it really hard for normal people to get by, and really easy for a tiny minority of people at the tippy top to get by.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s 100% right.
Nick Hanauer:
And that’s the main problem. And so, what’s challenging about your work and this book is, managing the intersection of those two things. The legit, “Your fault, you should get your act together better” stuff, blended with actually, even if you stick every landing in these circumstances, you’re still screwed.
Goldy:
I’d like to phrase this a different way, Nick, because I hate using the word fault. I think it is clearly, a lot of, if you want to say poor people, financially struggling people, could do a better job at being poor. There’s things they could do better. And this book is a handbook, in part, for that. But the best thing we can do is not make so many people poor.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes. Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah. Well, I’d argue that it’s not even poor. I mean, this is a middle class problem.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I mean, we have folks at WorkMoney, who are members, who make money that we would all assume is middle class. I mean, ask anybody, “What do you think middle class living is, and do you aspire to it?” Anyone with a later age teenager is going to tell you that, I mean, all of us, I have a 19-year-old, I know you both have kids. How they navigate this economy and world is a little bit befuddling. And are they going to afford… Like my kid tells me all the time, “Well, I’ll have a house when you die or give me one.” And I’m like, “Whoa. That’s not… I want you to believe you can do that.” And she’s like, “Yeah, whatever, Mom. Yeah, good luck to all of us. Thanks, boomer.” Like, “I’m not a boomer. It’s not me.”
Goldy:
Right. That is a joke I’ve long made, that my daughter, the only way my daughter will ever own a house in Seattle like the one she grew up in is if I die in it.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah. I mean, that’s sadly also my family’s joke, which tells me it might be a lot of family’s jokes.
Goldy:
Yes.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, right. Really.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And I will say that, some language I use, is that we’re all responsible for our individual money. And we are also all responsible for our collective money. And getting your individual money figured out is table stakes. You got to do that. And getting our individual money figured out doesn’t solve enough of the problem to just do that. And so part of what the book does is it says, “Okay, here are the basics of individual money.” It’s not rocket surgery. It mostly ends up being behavior. And the one thing that I say to everybody, including my kid, “If I could install,” you know The Matrix, where you can plug into the back of the head, and you can just give a skill in there? The one skill I would put in everyone’s head is the ability to course correct after you make a mistake. Is to get up off the floor once you fall. To get back on that horse.
Because that’s the thing. We’re all going to make mistakes. It’s impossible to stick the landing every single time. Think about the greatest athletes that you know, they don’t stick the landing every single time. And all they do is think about how to stick that landing. And so, we’re not like LeBron James or Damian Lillard, to talk about my favorite basketball player. So I really mean this. The one money skill everyday people, if I could impart, it’s just to know how to correct when you make a mistake.
Because what happens is, when I used to make mistakes I was like, “Oh, more evidence that I’m bad at money.” Just the shame, and the feelings of like, “Ugh, I can’t do this,” would just kind of take… I’m like, “Yeah, well, I guess when I go to Target and it’s 8:45 at night, and I go in with a list, and I have all these extra things that weren’t really on my list or in my budget, I used to think, “Well, I’m bad at money anyway, so might as well just blow up my budget.” And so the figuring out how to make that mistake and say, “Oh, you know what? Actually, I made a mistake. Lots of people make mistakes. I know I can do better,” and get back on. That is the one individual skill.
And then the one collective skill, which is a weird thing to say, I don’t think you can have a collective skill. I think that’s a strange turn of phrase, I just made it up but, is getting yourself into an organization of any kind that’s really trying to figure out how to shape the system so that working and middle class people can do better. And I don’t need to tell you all this. I mean, and anybody who’s listening to this podcast has already heard about how healthcare costs, how education costs, housing, energy costs. I mean, childcare, you name it, all going up so much faster than wages. And in this kind of an economy, figuring out how we create conditions for everyday people to be able to afford more, which I would argue is about controlling costs, but it’s also about raising people’s incomes.
Goldy:
Right. Both sides.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Both sides. I think that that is the stuff that makes personal finance more possible, financial security more possible.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. I feel even stronger about that. I think that-
Goldy:
About the wage side, Nick?
Nick Hanauer:
… yeah. I mean, I think that there’s a narrative out there that we have an affordability crisis, and I think that that’s nonsense. I mean, we do not have an affordability crisis-
Goldy:
Well-
Nick Hanauer:
… we have a wage crisis.
Goldy:
… it is an affordability crisis-
Nick Hanauer:
But you can’t-
Goldy:
… but it’s as much due to-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
It’s solved by money.
Goldy:
… stagnant wages-
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, yeah.
Goldy:
… as it is rising costs.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. And the problem with understanding the problem as an affordability crisis, is it points you towards policy interventions to lower prices, which do not exist.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
Those policy interventions do not exist. There is no policy that will enable you to lower the price of gas, or lower the price of housing. I mean, over time you may be able to do some interventions, but the big interventions are wage interventions.
Goldy:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
Those are the things that you could do, we could do tomorrow-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
… and make everybody’s lives better.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah. Look, I love a good market. I love a good market economy, where people can participate, and I don’t want to have to tell companies how to price their stuff. That is so suboptimal in so many ways.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I think that the obvious solution is paying people more.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And I think we can afford to, in the general sense. And I think you and I have talked several times about this over the years. And Goldy, I know you’re well steeped in this as well. When we began to, between NAFTA, and the financialization of everything, and share buybacks. And all of the, just the dismantling, the things that had some controls, where working people and middle class people could have a voice in the policies that get set in the economy. Over the last 40 years, working and middle class folks have lost not only our share of income, we’ve also lost our share of power to change things.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And I think that, watching that erosion, you can just clock it. As we got less access to decision makers, and less access to the decisions that got made, the decisions that got made benefited the people that were already benefiting. And I just will say this one thing, and Nick, I know you’ve said this a million times. So I’m kind of quoting you to you, which is a little weird, but I’m going to do it anyway. Which is, “The economy is not the weather. The economy is not some crazy natural system that we just have to hunker down and endure.” It’s decisions, made by people in business, whose businesses we invest in, we shop at. It’s decisions made by people we elect, or the people that they appoint that we elect. We, and by we, I mean the majority of everyday people, we do still have some levers here. And no one is going to invite us to join the table where the decisions get made.
I mean, heck, if I had all the decision-making power I wouldn’t want to share it. I’m not even mad at the folks who are doing that, they’re just doing what they do. But we’ve got to be grownups here and take responsibility, and pull our chair up to that table, and make sure we get what we think makes sense. And I want a growth economy where businesses are booming, I’m not out here trying to take from businesses, and shake my finger at them. I know how jobs work, and I know what a healthy economy looks like, but this is not a healthy economy.
Nick Hanauer:
Right. So in the last chapter of your book you outline, in some ways, the things that people can do to be engaged in this broader problem-solving effort to try to make the economy work for more people. Tell us a little bit about what you think people should do.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Oh, this is my favorite question.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Well, referencing the thing I just said, there are a bunch of different levers that everyday working class people have, like middle class people. We have a bunch of different levers that can shift, I think, how the economy works and how we individually get better cards into our hands, our better money cards. And the biggest one is pretty obvious. There’s market power, where we can come together, and we can bargain for cheaper stuff and things. And it takes many tens of millions of people to do that. That’s part of why you’ll hear me talk about WorkMoney, the nonprofit that I run, workmoney.org, for those who want to check it out. Part of what we’re doing on purpose here is trying to get to 50 million people, so that we can start to bargain for cheaper stuff.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Everything from cell phone plans to auto insurance, to… I mean, heck man, mortgages, health insurance. There’s lots of ways we can band together and create a market. And that is the biggest, you want to really shift business behavior, get together and then negotiate. They do it all the time. There’s no reason why we can’t. So the market power is my favorite one to talk about.
Then there are some other obvious ways that we can get together and use our big, like a lot of people in a big group, get what we want. There’s constituent power. Obviously, we all vote. And I’m just going to say it, this is not about left and right, I don’t think either political party has the answer here. I think we have to decide for ourselves what makes sense regardless of party, I think we’ve got to go for the person and the policies that we think are right. So I’m very disinterested in one party over the other. I think we got to take responsibility and demand from everybody. So there’s constituent power, and there’s obviously market power.
And there’s things like audience power. We decide, we watch a lot of stuff. I mean, I don’t know how much content y’all are consuming, but I bet you it’s not zero. And so figuring out how to make sure that we demand or create the kinds of things we want to watch.
And then I’ll say two other things. One is, there’s obviously labor power, as an old union organizer, so I know what that looks like. But the last one, the one that I think is really, really interesting, is entrepreneurial power. We can invent our own self, especially with technology being where it is. If something doesn’t exist in the market, we can make it. Like WorkMoney just built our own company to negotiate people’s cable, cell phone, and internet bills. It’s called moneyfinder.com. You can go there, and we will negotiate down your cable, cell phone, your internet bill, and we’ll do it for way cheaper than anybody else. Because we’re not doing it to-
Nick Hanauer:
For the money.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… no, we’re not doing it… No, we’re not trying to rip people off. We’re trying to literally build the stuff that we need to continue in this country, and to save us a little bit of money. So that’s it. I think there are five big levers, and that’s why I’ll just say one last thing here. An organization is the way that all those things kind of come together.
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s why WorkMoney, the nonprofit exists, is to figure out how we get people into enough of a formation that we can exercise all those different levers of power.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, and I guess, those organizations used to exist. A third of Americans used to be in a labor union. Right?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
And even if you weren’t in a labor union, you benefited from the policy changes that labor unions pressed through.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
Today, I mean, very few people are in a union. And I think it’s true, even if you wanted to be in one, it’s not really available. Right?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
No, it’s pretty hard.
Nick Hanauer:
So in many ways, I guess WorkMoney is your best, nearest alternative.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Right? It’s something you can join-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
… that is trying to accomplish the same kinds of things, but just because your workplace doesn’t offer it doesn’t mean you can’t have it.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
And I guess that explains why the organization has grown from zero to almost 10 million members pretty quickly.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, I think that’s right.
Nick Hanauer:
Because there’s a lot of people out there who feel like they’re being taken advantage of.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah. And it turns out, everybody likes money. One of the things I get so excited about is that, A, WorkMoney is growing like a weed. Everybody just wants things to get better, which is great.
The other thing, and this is something you both are very well steeped in, is that it’s not like there aren’t a bunch of good ideas for what we can do.
Nick Hanauer:
Correct.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Right? This is-
Nick Hanauer:
We know what to do.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… this is not an unsolvable problem.
Nick Hanauer:
We know what to do.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yes, this is not an unsolvable problem.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s not complicated.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
It’s just about will and power.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s all we need here. Will and power. But we have a ton of options for how to raise wages, how to manage costs in some cases, how to make sure people get a fair shot. Look, I don’t believe in equality of outcome. I do believe in equality of opportunity. And that’s what we don’t have. And I think there are innumerable policies, ideas, programs that we could put into play, to make life better for working in middle class people. It’s just that everything is stuck because the incentives, both for business, I think, and for government, have not really been for us.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I’m curious if you two have reactions to that, because I know both of you have thought a lot about this.
Nick Hanauer:
No, I mean, I think that’s basically true. Right?
Goldy:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Goldy?
Goldy:
Right. Yeah. In the end, I mean, we talk about this a lot on the pod. One of the things that is missing from orthodox economics is power. The market, there’s no power. The market just settles all that. It’s just efficient, don’t worry about power, it’s not a thing. That Nick has more power than me, and I really… No, no. Supply equals demand, and that’s what sets my wage, and I’m paid exactly what I’m worth. No, as Nick has often said, “Employers don’t pay you what you’re worth. They pay you what you can negotiate.”
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Goldy:
And we have had this huge shift in power over the past three, four, five decades, that has resulted in this upward redistribution of wealth and income that has left so many people financially stressed.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right. And especially when we’re facing these really uncertain and turbulent economic times ahead, not just because the market’s going like this, or it feels disconnected from what is real value. And we could talk about bubbles or not, but also just the transformation that AI might have on the economy, and how many people already were feeling like they didn’t see a path for themselves or their loved ones. And now to face even more confusion about what comes next, if ever there was a time to make sure that we built and exercised the power of many-
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
… to steer what happens next, it is now, I feel.
Goldy:
And this is what democracy is for, right?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah, that’s right.
Goldy:
AI is just a tool. It’s a technology. It doesn’t have to be used to immiserate and disempower people-
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Correct.
Goldy:
… and concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. It doesn’t have to be used that way.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Goldy:
If we say, “Well, the market. If the market says so, then that must be the best…” No, no, no. We have a democracy for a reason, and that is to rein in the market when it’s not serving the needs of the majority of people. We can have AI that works for everybody, if we choose to do so, as you said, collectively.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s right.
Goldy:
We can use our collective power, through our democratic institutions, which I suppose explains why people like Musk and Thiel and Trump are so intent on dismantling our democratic institutions and norms.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I really think that you said something important, which is, AI could be a real banger for everyday people. It really could. You can see application of it. And I don’t just mean curing cancer, which is great, or flying cars, hello Jetsons. I mean stuff like, the stuff of life. I mean getting access to medical care when you need it, getting access to support for your kids when they need it, getting access to… I mean, I don’t know about you, but if I have to figure out what to make for dinner after a long day of work, and figure out how to go to the store and get that stuff and make it, it’s like one of my… There’s lots of ways that AI could change our lives. We could work less. We could be paid more. There are so many ways this could go well for us. But without a demand for that, it’s just going to go a bad way.
And I’ll say, I am a little worried because what I hear a lot of. I did a lot of, I said before, union organizing. And I bargained contracts. And when you are bargaining to avoid a pay cut, you can probably do some good, and have less of a pay cut, that’s great. But you don’t get a raise, you don’t get retire… You don’t get the good stuff. And right now, the AI conversation I hear in America sounds a lot like some of us bargaining to avoid a pay cut. Do you know what I mean?
Nick Hanauer:
Right.
Goldy:
Right.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Rather than making demands and… Or, I don’t mean demands even in a tin-eared kind of way, like crazy, nonsense stuff. I mean, let’s actually figure out, what do we want? And I think there’s real open space here, for us to create the conditions where the kinds of AI businesses that succeed and policies that get passed, are good for everybody. For the companies, for the people in it. But without there being a real push for that, I worry that it’s going to go… Either we’re going to leave money on the table for working middle-class people, or the Musks and Thiels of the world will sort of decide that the philosopher king mentality is the thing that we need. And then we’ll have less and less power over time. But I think there’s a chance we could have something pretty great, but it’s going to take us getting together and pushing. I’m curious if you two have reactions to that.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Again, the technology itself isn’t to be feared. It’s the economic system that we have embraced, which traditionally socializes the losses and privatizes the benefits.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Yeah.
Goldy:
And also, Nick makes sacrosanct property rights, that if, “Well, if Musk owns the AI, and this is what he chooses to do with it’s his property. If he monopolizes all of the benefits, oh, well. There’s nothing we can do about it, because it’s his. Property rights are sacrosanct.”
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
So what’s the number one thing you would do, CJ, if you could, if you were-
Goldy:
Our magic god.
Nick Hanauer:
… our goddess emperor.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Ugh. I could do anything I want?
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Goldy:
Yes. No political constraints whatsoever. What would you do?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
Okay. Well, I would not buy myself the horse I want and the land to keep it on, because that would be selfish. But I will admit I would have to remind myself not to do that.
But what I would actually do is, I would double everyone’s wages.
Goldy:
That’s so retro of you. You would just go back to 1975. And distributions.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I mean, I know we all know this.
Goldy:
We were more equal. Yeah.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
We all know this, but if our wages had kept pace with our share of the pie from that era, median wage would be double.
Goldy:
Yeah, I know.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
That’s median. By the way, that means some people, more. I would just greatly increase people’s incomes. That’s what I would do.
Nick Hanauer:
And I think if we did that, then the country would be in great shape, and there would be a few thousand really sad rich people, but that would be it.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I mean, you think about the small business booms, think about what would happen. And look, the slow transfer of responsibility around retirement from employers and the government, over to individual people. There’s so many things that get solved if we just increase incomes, that are commensurate with where they were in the ’70s. I’m not even asking for more than that. I just want to go back in time to the 1970s, except for the clothing, but I did love the music.
Goldy:
Yeah, okay.
Nick Hanauer:
There you go.
Carrie Joy Grimes:
And I would like to just say, we make… That’s what I would do.
Goldy:
I think, Nick, if you only had $500 million instead of a billion dollars, you would still get an awful lot of joy out of your life.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, no. We could raise wages a lot. And final question, why do you do this work?
Carrie Joy Grimes:
I have a kid. I have a kid, and I got to know that she’s going to be okay. And I also really love people. I just think people are, I think we’re all okay. The kids are all right. We’re actually fundamentally pretty good. You know what I mean? We’re pretty good. That’s why. Because I really love and believe in people. And think about it. Collectively, I know lots of us are like, “Ugh, people.” But think about the people that you love and that you know. Most of them are trying to do a good job. Some of them are a pain in the ass, but most of them are trying hard. And that’s why. I love people, and I love my kid, and I want to make sure she’s going to be okay.
Goldy:
It’s really interesting, Nick, the way that Carrie Joy describes WorkMoney, the organization that she helped create and that she runs as kind of like an AARP, but for really, everybody else. Right?
Nick Hanauer:
Not old people, working people.
Goldy:
Right. AARP is for retired people, and WorkMoney is more focused on working people. People who are saving, rather than figuring out how to spend their retirement as joyfully and efficiently as possible. But there’s something else that AARP does, which is really, really important, that they have been tremendously successful at over the decades. And that is, advocating on behalf of retired people-
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
Goldy:
… advocating on behalf of seniors. And if you’re as old as we are, and we’re getting pretty old, we remember the days when there was a lot of senior poverty in this country. Where there were memes before we called them memes, of elderly people buying cat food, and eating that because the canned tuna in the cat food was cheaper than the canned tuna that was meant for people. This was a real thing, that there was a lot of senior poverty, a lot of senior hunger, a lot of struggling.
And to society’s credit, and AARP deserves a lot of credit for this-
Nick Hanauer:
Credit for that, yeah.
Goldy:
… as well, for advocating. We increased incomes, we increased Social Security. We provided a lot of support. We’ve done a lot, so that fewer Americans now retire in abject poverty than they used to, through Social Security and Medicare. Which, by the way, did not exist until the late 1960s. People forget that, that a lot of retired people, a lot of elderly people didn’t have access to healthcare, because we didn’t have Medicare. And we didn’t have Medicaid, either. So that’s what AARP has done.
What excites me about WorkMoney is not just the work they’re doing to advise people, and teach people how to better manage their money on both sides of that equation, but the potential that’s there. She says it’s 10 million strong already?
Nick Hanauer:
Almost, yeah.
Goldy:
Yeah, that is amazing. The potential there is to start to advocate, in the ways that AARP does. In a nonpartisan, bipartisan fashion, AARP is neither Democratic or Republican. It advocates for retired people, it’d be great to have an organization that could advocate for working people too, in the same manner.
Nick Hanauer:
Absolutely.
Goldy:
And hopefully with the same success.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes. In any case, it’s a great project for Carrie Joy, The Joy of Money. And again, I was just so struck by her observation that 99% of the stuff out there is written for people with a lot of money, written by people who want to make money off the people who have a lot of money.
Goldy:
There’s money to be made off of people without money, but that’s mostly charging them late fees-
Nick Hanauer:
Yes, exactly.
Goldy:
… and usurious interest rates, and stuff like that.
Nick Hanauer:
Exactly.
Goldy:
In any case, if you want to learn more, we will provide links in the show notes, both to WorkMoney so you can get involved with that organization and to Carrie’s book, The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money― No Matter How Much You Have.
Nick Hanauer:
Hey gang, if you like Pitchfork Economics, I recently joined a four-part IDEAS documentary series called The Billionaire Age, about how extreme wealth is shaping our economy and democracy. Three episodes are out now, and we’ll include a link in the show notes. Please take a listen.
Mary Link:
Today, there are more than 3,000 billionaires with a combined worth of $25 trillion, surpassing the GDP of every country except the United States. I’m Mary Link, with IDEAS, and I’ve been looking into the impact of this record-breaking level of wealth concentration at the very tippy top, including a deteriorating middle class and the expectation that there will be five trillionaires within a decade. To understand why this is happening, listen to my series, The Billionaire Age on IDEAS, wherever you get your podcasts.
Announcer 2:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to follow, rate, and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and threads @pitchforkeconomics. Nick’s on Twitter and Facebook as well, @NickHanauer. For more content from us, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Pitch, over on Substack. And for links to everything we just mentioned, plus transcripts and more, visit our website, pitchforkeconomics.com.
As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.