This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that austerity is responsible economic policy. We’re revisiting this conversation now because the austerity playbook is still very much alive. The Trump administration and DOGE have cut federal agencies, pushed out public servants, and treated public infrastructure like waste — even though those are the systems we need most during a crisis. And if the economy turns downward, politicians will almost certainly reach for the same old answer: slash public support, make working people pay the price, and call it responsibility. Nick and Goldy talk with professor and political economist Clara Mattei, author of ⁠The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism⁠, about how austerity became one of the most powerful myths of modern capitalism, how economists helped sell it as common sense, and why it has always been about more than budgets.

We already know that many mainstream economists advocate against the economic interests of the majority of working Americans and for the benefit of a tiny handful of super-rich people and corporations. But Clara Mattei argues that economists are actually guilty of something even more insidious: By promoting austerity measures that destabilize working people and consolidate wealth and power at the very top of the income scale, economists have created the perfect conditions for fascism to take root around the world. Is it too late to rebuild our democratic institutions through a new economic understanding?