When GameStop’s stock skyrocketed early this year, Wall Street was pissed. A group of Redditors had manipulated the stock market—and everyone knows only professional hedge fund managers are allowed to do that! We couldn’t ignore the market news that took the world by storm, so Nick and Goldy called up CA Congressman Ro Khanna to talk about what happened with GameStop, what it means for financial regulations, and what the government’s response signals about a changing tide in our country’s leadership.

Congressman Ro Khanna is a Representative of California’s 17th District. Rep. Khanna sits on the House Committees on Agriculture, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform. He is the Deputy Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; serves as an Assistant Whip for the Democratic Caucus and is the Democratic Vice Chair of the House Caucus on India and Indian Americans.

Twitter: @RoKhanna

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Further reading:

A leading progressive Democrat slams Robinhood’s move to restrict trading on some stocks after Reddit-fueled surge: https://www.businessinsider.com/ro-khanna-slams-robinhood-trading-restriction-reddit-traders-amc-gamestop-2021-1

Lawmakers call for regulation after Robinhood halts trading: https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/lawmakers-want-regulation-after-robinhood-halts-trading/

Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com/

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

 

David Goldstein:

A subreddit called WallStreetBets decided to try to drive up the stock of GameStop.

Nick Hanauer:

I think the thing that antagonized people so much is for once, the little guys had the big guys on the run and powers that be stepped in to stop that.

Ro Khanna:

And you wonder why they stopped them and the clearinghouses still allowed the head funds to trade.

Nick Hanauer:

As usual, it’s just not fair. Hedge funds manipulate stocks for a living, professionally.

David Goldstein:

Right.

Speaker 6:

From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

Nick Hanauer:

I’m Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

David Goldstein:

I’m David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.

Nick Hanauer:

Today, we get to have a really fun conversation with our friend Ro Khanna, who is a US representative from California’s 17th district, which is Silicon Valley, to talk about the GameStop debacle and what it means for financial regulation. And hopefully we’ll also get to connect that conversation with what’s happening in Congress, with the stimulus generally with economic policy.

David Goldstein:

Which is interesting, because they’re kind of two separate conversations. There’s the COVID stimulus package, which is about the real economy. And then there’s the GameStop debacle, which is about Wall Street, and what’s essentially the fake economy, the financialized speculative economy that really, as we’ve seen over the past year, has no connection whatsoever to the real world.

Nick Hanauer:

Right. And the lives of most people.

David Goldstein:

Right. And there’s really no better example of that than GameStop.

Nick Hanauer:

Yep. So for folks in our audience who did not follow the GameStop thing, why don’t you tell us sort of what happened, Goldie?

David Goldstein:

Right. So through a subreddit called WallStreetBets, folks there decided to try to drive up the stock of GameStop and they took advantage of-

Nick Hanauer:

And what is GameStop?

David Goldstein:

GameStop is a retail store where you buy and sell video games and video game cartridges. I know I’ve done that. I have bought used Pokemon cartridges for my daughter in the past. And of course, it’s kind of like the old Blockbuster Video, something which was a big thing because people did buy and sell used game cartridges. And now most video games downloaded. So having a physical store to sell cartridges that don’t exist anymore turns out not that great a business model even before the pandemic.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. So GameStop, not one of America’s fastest growing companies.

David Goldstein:

Right. And so there’s efforts. There’s been efforts to try to revive it and move it online and so forth. So you had a stock that was trading for a few dollars a share and some big hedge funds decided, “You know what? This company is going to fail. We’re going to heavily short sell it.” So they made a big bet that the price was going to go down. And these folks on WallStreetBets looked at that, some people say they took offense to it, but really they saw it as an opportunity because there’s this thing about short selling. What you’re essentially doing is borrowing somebody else’s stock, paying them interest and making the assumption that in the future you will be able to buy it at a lower price to return the stock and make a lot of money. Right? So when the stock price goes up, it actually increases the cost of the people who’ve borrowed the shares.

And it’s this cycle that tends to push the stock price up even higher. So what you had was a couple of big hedge funds with billions of dollars versus hundreds, thousands of people on this subreddit-

Nick Hanauer:

Of individual small investors.

David Goldstein:

Individual small investors using apps like Robinhood, which allow you to trade stocks and pieces of stocks for free. And it was kind of like the AI came alive. They suddenly realized that, “Oh my God, if we all act together, we have the power to drive up the stock, force the hedge funds to sell-

Nick Hanauer:

To cover there-

David Goldstein:

Cover their positions. Essentially buy stock to cover their positions-

Nick Hanauer:

Which drives the stock up even more.

David Goldstein:

Which drives up the price even more, which forces them to buy more stock.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah.

David Goldstein:

Anyway, so you had this stock that went from nine, it was pushed down a few dollars and then they get into it and it’s up over $300 a share, which is kind of funny.

Nick Hanauer:

And completely untethered from the actual value of the business.

David Goldstein:

Untethered from value entirely.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah.

David Goldstein:

And due to the nature of these trading apps like Robinhood, it created a liquidity crisis for them because essentially, they’re borrowing money to do these transactions and they put a halt on their trading.

Nick Hanauer:

In the meantime, the hedge funds were losing billions.

David Goldstein:

Right.

Nick Hanauer:

And the other thing people need to know about shorting is that, look, if you buy a stock normally and that stock is trading for $10, the most you can lose is it going to zero.

David Goldstein:

Right.

Nick Hanauer:

Right.

David Goldstein:

You lose $10.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, you lose $10. It can’t go to minus 300. But if you short it at $10, it can absolutely go to 300.

David Goldstein:

The potential losses can be infinite.

Nick Hanauer:

Which makes it a very, very dangerous game. And so obviously in this case, some powerful people had their feelings and their bank accounts hurt, and the powers that be stepped in to halt the trading. And our friend Ro Khanna, as well as Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez jumped in on the side of the little people and pushed back on that because as usual, it’s just not fair that hedge funds manipulate stocks for a living, professionally.

David Goldstein:

Right. And let’s be clear, a short squeeze, shorting the stock, what they were doing was nothing but manipulation. So they were doing exactly what the WallStreetBets people were doing, but in the other direction. This isn’t about investing. It’s not about creating value.

Nick Hanauer:

Yes.

David Goldstein:

It’s not about taking this struggling company and somehow reviving it.

Nick Hanauer:

No, pure speculation.

David Goldstein:

Right. A shit ton of money off of speculation.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right.

David Goldstein:

Which by the way is basically what Wall Street does.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. And so with that introduction, let’s talk to Ro.

Ro Khanna:

I’m Ro Khanna, I represent the district in Silicon Valley and Congress. I’ve been there, now it’s my third term. And I’m on the oversight committee. I chair the subcommittee for the environment and on the armed services committee and the agricultural committee.

Nick Hanauer:

So why don’t we get right to it. Tell us a little bit about the GameStop situation and the ways in which it exposed this really interesting deep flaw in our financial system. From your perch as a lawmaker, what happened and what happened in Congress after Robinhood banned trades of GameStop?

Ro Khanna:

The first think I think is it was a reminder of the over financialization of our economy. The fact that so much attention is being paid to this gambling where 50% of Americans, as you know, aren’t in the market and were having that activity as opposed to investing in building things, battery storage plants or electric vehicle plants. I think it just makes us pause about what’s going on in our economic system and why.

The second thing is when it seemed like the retail investors actually were doing well, Robinhood pauses the trading. And even if you don’t think there’s any nefarious motive, my sense is it was a liquidity issue and they didn’t have the money required to meet the clearinghouse collateral requirements. You wonder why they didn’t have to have disclosure. They had no disclosure to their investors. They took no provisions to have loans or others, capital required there available if they ever ran into that situation. And you have a situation where Robinhood is basically creating data. People were buying stocks there to Citadel and to hedge funds. So you have enormous conflicts of interest. I’m not suggesting that that conflict of interest drove that particular decision, but it does create questions about whether these conflicts of interest should really exist and whether people should be allowed to trade on your data when you have a relationship with someone who has a different financial interest than the investors trading on the site.

David Goldstein:

I think most people don’t understand where a company like Robinhood makes their money. Since they don’t charge for the trades, they’re actually being paid to funnel those trades through these exchanges so that the exchanges have advanced access to the information of who’s trading what.

Ro Khanna:

Well-put. Exactly right. It’s the same type of manipulation that a lot of tech companies, frankly, in my district engage in where it looks free, but they basically get your data. And then they construct social profiles or target you in numerous ways, thousands of points of data about you. And here, as you put it, it’s that they’re giving advanced information to companies like Citadel, that then can make decisions about shorting or buying long. It’s deeply problematic.

And then the whole hedge fund industry where people may short a stock and then go on television or subtly promote sales or buying up that stock. It’s just a system run amok. I’m all for efficient allocation of capital and I understand people come here to this country because you can get funded for a small business. And if we have businesses that are totally inefficient, obviously there needs to be a movement of capital. But that’s not what’s going on. I don’t think anyone, in good conscience, can defend Wall Street saying this is just about the efficient allocation of capital, as opposed to a whole lot of speculation that’s wasteful and hurting people.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. And the truth is that it’s a game built for and by a small group of powerful people that takes advantage of little people. And I think that thing that antagonized people so much, is for once the little guys had the big guys on the run and powers that be stepped in to stop that, effectively. I mean, that’s the way it felt.

Ro Khanna:

Exactly. And you wonder why they stopped them and the clearinghouses still allowed the hedge funds to trade. The little guys, obviously, the first time they were trying to make money, they got stopped and there was no breach of the contract. And then you think about the hedge funds, this is something and people say, “Well, they’re talented and they’re making money and they’re being productive.” Here’s what I tell people. How would we feel if all the Harvard and these MBAs said, “What we really want to do is become a fundraiser for politicians, and we’re going to be extraordinary at it. We’re going to have databases and programs, and we’re going to make you the greatest fundraiser ever.” And I’m sure they could. And that was their productive use, that they were just raising money for politicians. It would seem pretty absurd. I’m not questioning their skill, I’m questioning the activity that they’re engaged in and whether it’s adding value.

Nick Hanauer:

Right. So the place we want to take this conversation though, is connecting legitimate, righteous anger about the GameStop situation or debacle or whatever you want to call it to, from our perspective, the very exciting things going on in Congress right now to actually turn the economy right side up. The thing that’s been so bad in the last 40 years is that anything that benefited rich people was an unalloyed good and anything that benefited working or middle-class people was this scary thing, fraught with risks.

Ro Khanna:

Right, exactly.

Nick Hanauer:

One of the most profoundly frustrating things in the world to me personally, is no matter how big the bonus pool at Goldman Sachs gets, that’s an unalloyed good. But God forbid we get some money to working and middle-class people and then inflation, risk, moral hazard, all this crazy stuff. And it’s super exciting to see people in Congress like yourself and President Biden fighting, for the first time really in my lifetime, for things that can really benefit ordinary people.

Ro Khanna:

Well, you’ve been a big part of this, and I agree with you.with the owner. This is the COVID-19 team, the, the, the relief bill, the 1.9 trillion is one of the most progressive bills in decades. The child allowance that would give up to $3,600 to families with kids would, according to a study by Colombia, cut child poverty by half. One of the important things that people need to realize is it’s not just lobbyists and special interests and nefarious groups that kill these types of things. It’s actually worse because at least you could call that out. It’s a pervasive ideology of neo-liberalism that has just taken hold from everyone from a Senate staff person to a committee person, to a journalist. And it’s a culture that people actually believe those paradigms. And so you’re operating, and it’s one of the things you realize when you get to Congress, there’ve been times when the president wants something or majority [inaudible 00:14:42] wants something.

It seems the speaker wants something and things aren’t moving. And I’m wondering what is going on. But it’s such a complex web of systems where literally a junior staffer on some subcommittee can kill something, and that’s all been indoctrinated for 40 years in this thinking that basically in unregulated markets or that it’s all cost, this is a cost. The middle-class, working class has been treated as friction, as cost, as things that we have to get around.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah.

Ro Khanna:

And that’s what’s led to the situation and now it’s being reversed. But we have this absurd situation, because of the rules, that the Senate parliamentarian, who by all accounts is a person of integrity. I don’t question her integrity, I don’t question her confidence. I do question why one person should have the faith of millions of people in terms of a minimal wage increase and why her decision to whether it meets some obscure rule is going to determine how we govern.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah. It is really crazy. And again, what’s both frustrating and exciting is that for the first time, really in decades, political leaders are really trying to get some things done that are good for the majority of citizens. What we in our shop called true centrism, right? Actually helping people at the center of the income distribution.

Ro Khanna:

That’s good.

Nick Hanauer:

And the resistance, it’s so interesting and gratifying to hear you identify is so deep in the culture of these institutions.

Ro Khanna:

Exactly. That’s a good way of putting it.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. I was in a marvelous conversation with the former NEC chair, Gene Sperling.

Ro Khanna:

Yeah, he’s a very thoughtful guy.

Nick Hanauer:

And he was talking to a group of us about the challenges of getting this stuff done. He said, “Look, let me be clear. The problem are the economists.”

Ro Khanna:

Schumer and I are doing a bill together for a hundred billion dollars of investment, with two Republicans and sort of leading technology industries, which would lead to manufacturing jobs across America and different tech hubs, help raise wages for new industry and make us competitive with China. And this is part of President Biden’s plan. And some of the opposition is these scientists who don’t want to think about or concerned about whether this is going to change pure theoretical science.

And some are these institutions and some staffers. And it’s not that they’re bad intention. And then there’s concern about deficits. So there’s an entire cultural framework that operates in Washington that is very, very concerned with a challenge to the status quo. And in part, being from Silicon Valley, it’s sort of like America may be is the IBM or the Microsoft. And there’s a reason why we should be somewhat concerned, okay, if some random Congressman comes and wants to change the whole trajectory, because we are by and large an extraordinary nation. But the problem is we won’t remain competitive against China. And we certainly aren’t going to deal with the sort of intimated quality by being that cautious. And so we have these appropriate safeguards for a great nation, and yet we’re meeting a time which requires transformation. And the two are in conflict.

Nick Hanauer:

Again, it’s been super interesting to watch the narratives unfold as the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress try to actually get something done. And I was just reading this headline that the Republican Party is galvanizing around opposing the stimulus on the basis that it’s corrupt. And it just cracks me up because of one, a couple of trillion dollar tax cut for rich people. No problem.

Ro Khanna:

Yeah. You can’t make this stuff up. You literally can’t make this stuff up, the corruption. So much of what they do, it’s coded in raise, right? It’s this vision that, well the money is really going to poor black and brown people, which is actually not true. It’s actually going a lot to rural communities. It’s been a lot of their frame, the cultural frame. Arlie Hochschildbook, listeners who haven’t read her book, Strangers in Their Own Land, it’s just brilliant. But she talks about this idea that people are concerned that the money is going to go to women and to black and brown communities and to public service workers, not to people like them.

The interesting thing is that’s basically the defining philosophy of the Republican Party these days on it. If you were to be honest about it, it’s a philosophy of grievance where we’re against the things that are changing our culture. And the spectacular failure, I fear that Trump possibly could have gotten reelected after the pandemic, but what happened is you have this pandemic and you have now in Texas this catastrophic failure of power. And a politics of grievance doesn’t work when you actually have crisis. And I think that’s what’s really shattering the Republican brand.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah. I’m putting you on the spot a little bit, but can you describe the change in the perspective of democratic members of Congress and the Senate on issues around economics and political economy? Because the difference between where the party is at today and where it was at during Obama’s years is profound.

Ro Khanna:

It’s night and day. I don’t want to keep tooting your horn, but you and others like you have had a huge impact on it. When I came into Congress in 2016, the idea for a $15 minimum wage, the idea of Medicare for all, the idea of being for free public college, the idea of talking about student debt relief were considered fringe ideas. Now, I’m not saying the whole caucus agrees with it, but there’s no one. The majority of the caucus is on Medicare for all, or almost the majority on free public college and nearly the unanimity on a $15 minimum wage. There is a huge recognition that inequality has to be tackled. And the is that maybe now they won’t say, “Okay, that’s a crazy idea.” They may say “I disagree with it,” but it’s very much part of the political mainstream.

And Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and all of the movements deserve credit, but it’s a shift and Biden adopted. I mean, that’s the thing we forget, Biden adopted a lot of the policies that progressives wanted and his platform. And so I tell people that if we can just get President Biden to implement 80% of what he ran on, that’s a huge, huge win for the progressive movement.

Nick Hanauer:

It is. And for ordinary Americans.

Ro Khanna:

And for ordinary Americans. Yeah.

Nick Hanauer:

I can understand how people can be confused about the economics. I mean, neoclassical economics doesn’t accurately describe what happens in planet earth, but it is internally consistent, mathematically elegant and persuasive. And so it’s not totally surprising that people of good faith can believe that stuff and actually believe for instance, that if you raise wages, it kills jobs. It’s not true, but it is plausible. What I could never understand is how the politics of it couldn’t be more clear because the thing is, if you actually get elected and do things for people, they may want to vote for you again. And if you do nothing for them, you’ve got a big kind of hard road ahead of you. And so finally the Democratic Party is throwing down around things that will materially affect people’s lives and really improve them. And the politics of that I think are fantastic. Do you think there’s a shift in their political understanding too? I’m just interested in that.

Ro Khanna:

I think that’s what’s driving it perhaps more than the regulation of different economics. One, that President Biden and his team are acutely aware of the fate of the last two democratic presidents, where they both lost in the midterms overwhelmingly. We lost Congress, we lost 100 seats almost in those elections, or in the high sixties at least. And so they want to avoid that. And I think there’s an understanding, at least Ron Klein’s very smart about these things and we have to deliver. We have to get things done for people. And so that political sentiment is definitely on the minds of the leadership and to their credit, they’re really being much more aggressive than we have been in the past.

Nick Hanauer:

So we have this question, a question we call the benevolent dictator question, which doesn’t quite apply to a sitting member of Congress. But let’s pretend that there were no political constraints. If you were in charge, what would you try to get done?

David Goldstein:

And just to circle back to the top of the conversation, in that if you could tell us what needs to be done to prevent another GameStop debacle.

Ro Khanna:

So what I would do, I’m deeply influenced by the writing thinking of [inaudible 00:23:45], an economist. And he said, one of the observations he had is in developing countries, there’s often a tension between creating wealth and investing in the basic health and education for people. And in the United States, we actually don’t have that tension. We have so much wealth, so much incredible innovation and wealth generation that we literally could invest in every American’s health and education. And we just choose not to. And it’s this profound it’s what makes it inexcusable. So I would say if I was in charge, I would have Medicare for all or healthcare from the day you’re born until the day you die is a guarantee by the government. And I would have education starting from the earliest age. In fact, looking at what certain Scandinavian countries do with babies and education for parents, and the oldest studies that show reading and interaction at that age makes a difference all the way up through finishing a post-secondary education, whether it’s a vocational or whether it’s in college.

And just those two fundamental investments in my view would give people a much, much better shot at a meaningful, meaningful life. The third thing I would do is I’d look at what the land-grant universities did and the extensionships and preparing us for an agricultural and industrial economy and see how we use that to prepare for a technology economy, digital economy. And by that, I don’t mean let’s make everyone a coder and have them work at Facebook or Google. But technology is impacting everything, from farming to manufacturing, to construction, and we haven’t adapted to having the institutions to empower people. And so many people, I think, view it as disempowering is automation or globalizing their jobs. And we have to figure out how we make that empowering for local communities.

Nick Hanauer:

Yeah, that’s a great answer.

Ro Khanna:

So on GameStop, there are a few things. I’ve said that we need to have more regulation on hedge funds. I personally believe we should have some small transaction tax. It it would reduce the speculation and it’s not going to hurt efficiency if it’s on day trading. And then I’d say I think we need to have the uptake rule again, so that you don’t have the situation of shorting stocks to the extent it was. I think Robinhood and those types of platforms have to have clear expectations of what they can do with retail investors. And they shouldn’t be able to shut down these sites. They should be required to have the capital and if they can’t afford the capital, they can certainly create financial arrangements to be able to cover the capital in extraordinary circumstances. You shouldn’t be allowed to just shut down on the site when retail investors are doing well. What do you think? I’d be curious on your ideas on this, because this is actually an area where we could legislate and possibly even get bipartisan consensus.

Nick Hanauer:

From my perspective, a couple of things. Step one, eliminate the carried interest loophole, the idea that all these hedgies pay taxes at this ridiculously low rate-

Ro Khanna:

Completely agree.

Nick Hanauer:

Is egregious. It’s stupid, it’s unfair. And by the way, it provides all the wrong incentives. Why in the world would you want to make it more lucrative for a highly talented person to rub money together to make more money rather than go crack some medical problem, or invent some gizmo that could actually increase human welfare? I believe the carried interest loophole, is it still at 15% or 20% or something like that? It’s 15. Why should a person who works for a hedge fund pay lower taxes than a person who works at a research institution trying to solve real problems? It’s completely insane.

And so there is absolutely no reason why the people who run private equity firms and hedge funds and so on and so forth to pay the same tax rate that a firefighter would have to, or anyone else would. That’s the first thing. And the second thing is, I think you’re absolutely right about a financial transactions tax. There is no value created on earth by this high-frequency trading and all this speculation. The only thing that’s good for are speculators, and they are not creating value for anyone except for themselves.

Ro Khanna:

I think your voice is so important on this, and others like you, because I think what you do well is make the argument about why this is good for economic growth and job creation or economic productivity. And I think the left is because our instinct is so much about fairness and morality, and we often make a passionate case, but then we kind of see this entire ground. And then the argument becomes, well, what the left is saying it may be more fair, but the right is saying is better for American growth and productivity. And that’s really what we have to overcome, and you do that in your argument.

Nick Hanauer:

Absolutely. And what I’m always trying to remind my progressive colleagues is if we say fairness and they say growth, we lose two to one because for every one person who cares about fairness, there are two people that care about growth. And if you’re not winning the growth argument, you’re not winning elections or changing policy. Yeah. But I do think that anything we can do to reduce the amount of financialization in the economy. It will harm the income of places like Goldman Sachs, but it will broadly benefit the rest of the country, which should be the goal of policy. That’s what I think.

Ro Khanna:

Absolutely. I agree completely. Well, this has been great.

Nick Hanauer:

As always, fantastic to talk to you. Please, if there’s things that our team can do for you to help you in your efforts, to get legislation through, please reach out.

Ro Khanna:

You have it. You’ve been great, appreciate your analysis because this is a time where there is a false deference. Our country gives a lot of deference and expertise to people who have succeeded in terms of wealth and people who are economists. That’s just the reality of it. And so to the extent that we can have more economic arguments, and having more business leaders supporting our agenda or people who have business sense, that is one of the biggest ways we’re going to win. The first attack, like you go on Fox News or you go more right side. And the first way they attacked me, it’s not my idea. They’ll say, “Well, you haven’t ever run a business.” And actually I was part of a business. So the attack is I’m convinced Donald Trump won because people thought he was a businessman who knew how to do things. Right? So we have to understand the cultural value of the economic business arguments.

Nick Hanauer:

That’s right. I’m absolutely with you.

David Goldstein:

Okay. Thanks for joining us.

Ro Khanna:

Thank you.

Nick Hanauer:

It was fantastic.

Ro Khanna:

Thank you Goldie, thank you Nick. Take care.

Nick Hanauer:

We’ll talk soon. Well Goldie, that was such an encouraging conversation, wasn’t it?

David Goldstein:

Oh my God, just the tone of Congress has changed over the past four years.

Nick Hanauer:

So much. And it’s just so great to have people like Ro Khanna fighting for the right stuff today.

David Goldstein:

And for the right reasons.

Nick Hanauer:

And for the right reasons. And to be clear, five years ago, six years ago, you could find people in Congress who were trying to do that. And even 20 years ago, here and there they were there. But to see change is really, really remarkable. And it’s just very hopeful that finally, sort of the institutions of Congress and the government of the United States is going to start to push back against 45 years of neoliberal economic policy. And the other really cool thing about that conversation was the way in which Ro articulated how the culture of this all, right?

It’s not a few malevolent people stroking white cats plotting against them, ordinary Americans, although there are a few of those. The problem with neo-liberalism is just sort of deeply ingrained in how people think and where they see risk and where they don’t. And for the last 45 years, anything we did good for working people was fraught with risk, according to this way of thinking. And anything that happened good for wealthy people was an unalloyed good. That was just like, that’s a sign that everything is going well. And hopefully we’ll turn this whole way of thinking back right side up because it’s been upside down for a really long time.

So on the next episode of Pitchfork Economics, we’re going to talk to our old friend, David Sloan Wilson, the evolutionist about his new book, Atlas Hugged.

Speaker 6:

Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium at Civic Skunk Works and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram @PitchforkEconomics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.