Politicians and business interests have lied to the American people for centuries in order to protect their power and profits—and they tell the exact same lies every single time. Nick has co-written a book titled Corporate Bullsh*t with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen, which reveals this trickle-down duplicity as plain as day by placing egregious past quotes from corporate executives and politicians next to equally outrageous contemporary arguments—all of which justify outcomes that line the pockets of the wealthy and powerful while harming everyone else. Joan and Donald join the show to discuss why they wrote this book and to explain why it’s a must-read for anyone who’s tired of getting conned, bamboozled, and ripped off.
Joan Walsh is national affairs correspondent for The Nation, the co-producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and the author of What’s the Matter with White People?
Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of the research and policy center In the Public Interest and the co-author (with Allen Mikaelian) of The Privatization of Everything.
Pre-Order Nick’s new book, Corporate Bullsh*t https://www.corporatebsbook.com
Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
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Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer
Goldy:
Welcome podcast fans to the first episode of Pitchfork Economics with Goldy. That’s right, just me today running the show. And that’s because I’m very excited, we’re interviewing the authors of a brand new book that I think you’re all going to love. It’s called Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America. With me today are three of the four authors, Donald Cohen, the founder and executive director of the Research and Policy Center in Public Interest, and the co-author of The Privatization of Everything. Welcome, Donald.
Donald Cohen:
Thanks for having me, Goldy.
Goldy:
We have Joan Walsh, the National Affairs Correspondent for the Nation, the co-producer of the Emmy nominated documentary, the Sit-in: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Welcome, Joan.
Joan Walsh:
Thanks, Goldy.
Goldy:
Really a pleasure to finally get you on the podcast. And my final guest, I don’t know, some of you may have heard of him, it’s Nick Hanauer, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, the founder of the public policy incubator, Civic Ventures, and the co-host normally of Pitchfork Economics. My boss, Nick, welcome to the podcast.
Nick Hanauer:
Thank you for having me, Goldy.
Goldy:
The three of you along with Zachary Roth have co-authored this book. And Nick, this is really a topic that is close to our hearts. I remember very early on coming to work with you, you pointed out that a lot of the things that people were saying on the minimum wage, specifically, oh, it’s a job killer, it’s just going to hurt the people you’re trying to help, that they don’t say this because it’s true. They say it because it works, and they say it again and again and again. When did you have that realization, Nick?
Nick Hanauer:
I don’t know. I mean, for sure, my exposure to this trick, or whatever you want to call it, was mostly through our work on the minimum wage. Because in the absence of any empirical evidence, people kept on saying the same thing again and again and again. It’ll be a job killer. It’ll harm the very people it’s intended to help. But oddly, they never said this other thing, which is, well, if we paid those workers more, our profits and our bonuses would be less.
Goldy:
Weird.
Nick Hanauer:
Which is weird, right?
Goldy:
Not as great an argument in the public policy realm.
Nick Hanauer:
No.
Goldy:
No.
Nick Hanauer:
And you’re like, but clearly the thing you really care about is your profits and your bonuses. Why is it that you don’t say that? Why is it that the public argument you mount isn’t an honest reflection of clearly what your priorities are? And the more you think about that and the more you unpack the social and psychological dynamics of why the argument unfolds in that way, the more interesting the problem gets.
And then of course, I had the good fortune to be introduced to Donald Cohen who had had many of the same experiences.
Goldy:
The same intuition that in fact these things are said over and over again and in fact, go back a long way. Donald, how did you get into this? I know I was introduced to the website, the Cry Wolf Project. How did that come about?
Donald Cohen:
Well, just as what Nick said, I was dealing with job killer bills in California for many years and hearing the same arguments over and over again for everything that we were trying to do, and everything that everybody else was trying to do. I noticed the pattern. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember thinking, well, let’s go see what they said before the things that we now take for granted, like social security, the end of child labor, the Clean Air Act. And it turns out they were saying the same things. So I raised some money from a foundation and decided to create what we called the Cry Wolf Project and created a website.
I was fortunate to get a fellowship at Georgetown for a while, so I spent some time in DC and access to all research. I read every hearing on the minimum wage since the 1930s, and what I found is that it was common across many, many issues, many issues. And I interviewed all sorts of folks doing different work on clean air and toxics and workplace safety, and this wasn’t new. And then realized that not only is it not new, but they’ve been saying the same things for 100 years. And that’s how the book is organized. I’m sure we’ll get into that.
Goldy:
So the idea came, I remember in the office that let’s turn this website, this database into a book because oh my God, it’s filled with some of the most amazing quotes. And that’s where, Joan, you got pulled into this project. I’m curious, what did you think when you first saw this huge database of quotes?
Joan Walsh:
I was terrified, to be honest. It was a lot. But what I loved about it was that it did cross lines. It was not organized by climate change, smoking laws, et cetera. It really was documenting the way that they use the same things over and over. That was the fun part about it, was to see that we are fighting the same battle over and over, and if we can organize, inform other people that these are the arguments they use, we will do better than we’re doing now. I just think progressives, people who want positive change, we come at everything anew and we need to come at things knowing the background. And I feel like this is a handbook for people who care about any of these issues.
Goldy:
You know how I think of this, I think of this as a vaccine. It’s a vaccine against these dangerous mimetic viruses. And so what it is we’ve chopped up all this stuff into little bits, and you read these quotes and you see how they’re used over and over again, and it immunizes, that’s my hope, is that it immunizes readers so that the next time they hear one of these things, it’s like, oh, no, I’ve got an antibody to that. I know that they said that. What they’re saying about the minimum wage now, they said about child labor in the 1890s.
Nick Hanauer:
And before that about slavery.
Joan Walsh:
And they’re still saying it. And they’re still saying it. DeSantis has those guidelines that say slavery was beneficial to some slaves.
Goldy:
That’s right. It taught them skills and they had it much better than the free labor in the north.
Joan Walsh:
Oh, definitely. [inaudible 00:07:25]. It goes on and on.
Nick Hanauer:
Goldy, one of the things that I think is really important that we don’t really go into in the book but is important for people to know is, in organizing my thoughts about this project, I talked to my friend Molly Crockett, who’s one of the world’s leading neuroscientists and psychological researchers, and she does tons of work on human moral reasoning. She said this incredibly important thing to me, which is, that with respect to humans, moral reasoning in humans, intention is everything. Which is to say, that if you purposefully in a premeditated way kill somebody, that is something that you will get in a lot, a lot of trouble for. But if you’re just driving your car and someone hurls themselves off a bridge onto your car, you are blameless, even though the person is just as dead.
Humans make these very clear distinctions between people who mean to harm other people and people who don’t mean to harm other people, which is why it is so important for people who are clearly doing harm to other people, to clothe their intentions in pro-social acts. This is why it’s so important for businesses to say some form of, “Well, we would raise your wages, but that would be bad for you.” In other words, to disguise anti-social intentions in pro-social language. Because if they merely said, “We don’t give a rip about you, the only thing we care about is our profits and our bonuses, and that’s why we’re keeping your wages low,” people would burn the businesses down, because their intention would be so clear. I think that that’s the thing that people need to hold in their heads is that this is all about disguising intentions, because in the absence of that, there’d be riots in the streets. Because once you know that somebody is deliberately trying to harm you, then you’re not afraid anymore. Then you get angry and the bad shit will happen.
Donald Cohen:
There are really hilarious quotes that we will now think of as hilarious in this book, but there is a seriousness. Now, there’s some early quotes that we found about how lead was good for your health from the lead industry, when they knew that it wasn’t. I mean, I’m talking 100, nearly 100 years ago. People died. People were harmed by the lead industry and the gasoline industry’s refusal and obfuscation and denial of problems about lead in the atmosphere, in our paint, in our toys. So there’s a seriousness here when the intention… I think that one of the things that we hope to do is expose that intention and the impacts of it.
Goldy:
But let’s get to some of the hilarity, because it is actually a hilarious book. Let’s be clear, this is not a heavy tome, this big encyclopedia with serious discussions around everything. It is fun. It’s a coffee table book. It’s laid out in a fun accessible way. You don’t need to read it all at once. You get to pick it up, kind of randomly turn to a page and go, oh my God, they said that about that? Joan, what are some of your favorite quotes from this book? The quotes that you discovered from this database that even shocked you?
Joan Walsh:
I mean, that women having the vote would mean that men wouldn’t marry them and babies would die. That was one. The lead one was really impressive. Smoking being really good for you. I did know that that was a thing in our lifetimes, actually. It was the approach to this whole nightmare that really drew me, that you have to, you’ve got to laugh. You’ve got to laugh sometimes. We’ve got cartoons, and it’s really laughable. It’s ridiculous what they have been doing. I mean, I know that we are discovering something that has been known, but subterranean and it’s so important to bring it out.
Nick Hanauer:
Can I just share one quote about women’s right to vote? It’s just so good. So let me read this to you. “Women’s participation in political life would involve the domestic calamity of a deserted home and the loss of the womanly qualities for which refined men adore women and marry them. Doctors tell us too, that thousands of children would be harmed or killed before birth by the injurious effect of untimely political excitement on their mothers.”
Joan Walsh:
That’s it. That’s perfect.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s just unbelievable how far you will stretch to not have to say, “We want to have power, and we don’t want them to have any power.”
Goldy:
It’s at once horrifying and funny because, in the moment they meant it seriously.
Nick Hanauer:
Oh, absolutely.
Goldy:
And we can look back at that and laugh now,
Joan Walsh:
Some of them believed it, let’s be honest.
Nick Hanauer:
On slavery, let me just, “The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some senses, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all. The women do little hard work and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters.” It’s just…
Goldy:
Oh, I know that quote. That was from a speech that Ron DeSantis gave just last month, right?
Nick Hanauer:
No, it just staggers the mind the degree to which folks will go to protect their interests and the things that they’ll say. Again, what’s just shocking is the quiet part is never said out loud. The powerful, never advance the arguments that obviously are motivating them. It’s so funny. It’s always this pro-social language about, well, no, no, no, it’s good for you.
Goldy:
What I think is both funny and interesting about the book is the way that there are similar arguments that are used again and again, but not always on the same topic, how you see these themes that run throughout the political polemic over the years. If you could maybe go through what some of these are.
Donald Cohen:
First, it’s not a problem. Smoking doesn’t cause cancer. I’ll do it, and then you can fill in, Nick. And then secondarily, it’s not our fault. It’s your fault. A coal mine fell because workers were irresponsible, not the coal operator creating the conditions. Job killer and everything, the disaster. Socialism, or you’re going to lose your freedom. Then the one I think that Nick likes the best is that, this will hurt you. How do we say it in the book, Nick?
Joan Walsh:
He’ll make things worse. Is that how we say it?
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Donald Cohen:
Again, minimum wage will hurt. I think Reagan said something like, it’s the most anti poor piece of legislation on the books, so this will hurt the very people you’re trying to help. And we see these over and over again. And earlier, Goldy, you said, look, as inoculation or a vaccine for going forward, the next time people are going to see those arguments is in tomorrow’s newspaper. I see them every day.
Nick Hanauer:
No. If an industry spokesperson is saying something, they are using one of these lies. I mean, it’s uncanny. It’s just uncanny. And again, I think what’s so important is to see the patterns. Because in and of themselves, when the new lie surfaces about the new circumstance, it always sounds plausible. It’s plausible that by regulating this behavior or charging more for whatever it is, that the whole society will collapse. Until you realize that they’ve said that about everything for 200 years. The context makes such a difference.
One of the things that really animated my interest in this, you guys, I’m not sure if I ever told you, was that in my early work on the minimum wage, there was all this pushback. It’ll be job killer, it’ll be job killer, it’ll be job killer. And especially when we were doing 15 in 2012, and I called Larry Mishel, who worked at EPI then and asked him about an historical record. I’m like, “Well, has it killed jobs before?” And his analysis had only gone back to the late 1990s or something like that. And I’m like, “But we’ve been raising a minimum wage for 100 years. What happened in the last 50 times?” He’s like, “I have no idea. Nobody’s ever done that analysis.” So we hired an economist to go back and look at the employment data. At every single time the minimum wage had been raised since inception, is it 1928? 1938, Fair Labor Standards Act. And indeed, in zero cases, I think it was 24 times or something like that, that we’d raised the minimum wage-
Donald Cohen:
Outside of a recession. If there was already a recession-
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. If employment was already dropping in a recession, then wages went down. But in absent of that, there was literally zero evidence that there were fewer jobs after the minimum wage hike. And most consequentially, when you looked at the actual job data, the more affected the job was by the minimum wage, in fact, the more jobs there were created in the aftermath. It was absolutely fascinating.
Until you can look back historically and realize that at every single point, for 100 years, or whatever it is, 90 years, that people had tried to raise the minimum wage, that people who didn’t want it to be raised because their profits would be moderated, said the same exact thing. And in every single case it never killed jobs. You just have to say to yourself, why is it that we have to have this fight every time?
Donald Cohen:
So let me share. When I did the fellowship, one of the things I did was I looked at evidence after the fact on many of these laws, laws and regulations, and just like what Nick was saying. But realized that what we don’t need is a debunking, we need pre bunking.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s a great phrase.
Donald Cohen:
Because we’ll get into the fight about the minimum wage, and you’ll have your data, and I’ll have… We lose when we’re debunking. We accept their premise. We need to say, no, your premise is a lie. Your premise is a ruse, and that’s the direction that the project took. We need to ridicule these folks. And what I wanted early on, I told Nick and Joan, I wanted to get Reagan’s phrase. There they go again, and just dismiss it right out of hand as soon as they say it.
Joan Walsh:
Can I jump in about Reagan? Because in my life, not the most important, but a very important insight, realization was Ronald Reagan went from being the guy who talked about welfare cheats, welfare queens, young bucks buying T-bone steaks with food stamps, but then he moderated and he became the guy who said, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” And it gave people permission to just think that if we’re trying to help those people, we’re hurting them. And so we’ve got to come up with private sector solutions, we’ve got to cut things off. And I think to this day that, I mean, the modern Republican party is not Reagan’s party, I have to say. But I think to this day, for responsible conservatives that’s still active and it really changed our discourse.
Goldy:
What stands out to me, Joan, thinking back on the Reagan era, what Ronald Reagan was very successful at was ridiculing liberals. He helped turn the word liberal into a bad word that liberals were afraid to use so they started calling themselves progressives. He destroyed the brand, and it showed how successful ridicule can be as a political tool. That’s what I love about this book. It is turning the tables back on the other side. It is a giant eye roll at everything they say and have said and continue to say for the past 150 years.
Nick Hanauer:
And there’s another strategic element to this that you’re highlighting, Goldy, which I want to emphasize again, and that is the role, the essential role, of ridicule in these sorts of discourses. Because again, just circling back to one of the statements that you made early, they don’t say these things because they’re true, they say these things because they’re an effective way to prosecute their interests. If you think that you are going to talk the Chamber of Commerce out of saying that raising wages kills jobs by showing them the economic evidence, you are deeply, deeply naive.
Goldy:
This is the mistake that Democrats make.
Nick Hanauer:
Exactly.
Goldy:
They think that you can win on the facts. You can’t win on the facts.
Nick Hanauer:
No. They don’t care about the facts. They care about their profits. The Chamber of Commerce does not represent business, the Chamber of Commerce represents the economic interests of the owners of capital and the executives who run those companies, and the lower wages are, the higher their profits are. It’s that simple. It’s not more complicated than that.
Goldy:
What’s funny is at the heart of this, for what we would say are these immoral intentions, they’re winning by making moral arguments.
Nick Hanauer:
Exactly.
Goldy:
All of these arguments are moral arguments.
Nick Hanauer:
They are all moral arguments.
Goldy:
When you read this book and you go back and you look the things they said about child labor, defending child labor, if we got rid of child labor, it’d be bad for the children. They’d starve. I don’t have the quotes in front of me. Maybe one of you can give us some of these. But in fact, they’re making these quotes today and about child labor. They’re still arguing for child labor.
Joan Walsh:
The Heritage Foundation has a spokeswoman, I forget her name, I apologize, but she’s like, “This teaches them discipline. They have to get up and dress correctly. They get some money that they learn how to manage money, and it’s so much better for them than not being a child laborer.” And when I found this, I sent this to Nick and Don, and I was just like, oh my God.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, there is no bottom. There is no bottom.
Joan Walsh:
There is no bottom.
Goldy:
But more importantly, there’s no end.
Nick Hanauer:
Correct.
Goldy:
There’s no end to this. They will continue. So this gets me thinking. I’m wondering, I don’t know if any of you know this. You’ve created this book, as I said, in order to immunize the public against these. We’re collecting them all in one place. You can see them in context. You can see how all this bullshit connects to each other, the logic behind it and why it works, the fact that they’re so consistent in saying these same things over and over again, do you think there’s a secret evil guidebook on the other side that maybe we haven’t discovered that, oh, when you get to child labor, this is what you say, or you get to minimum wage, these are the main talking points on how to increase profits, and-
Nick Hanauer:
They hand them out at the Harvard Business School.
Goldy:
It might be. Is it in the latest edition of Mankiw? I don’t know.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. When you graduate, they slip this to you in your diploma at Harvard. Don’t show anybody. This is our secret
Donald Cohen:
And law school as well. I mean listen, some of these things, they’re just protecting their interests by saying stuff and other times they are actively lying. Climate change, we are suffering from climate change now because the oil companies profligated doubt and lies. In some cases, it’s far more organized, the tobacco industry, the other industries. In other cases, it’s just the standard run of the mill greed.
Goldy:
But again, getting to that point when you connect these things, the same arguments that they use to create doubt over climate change were the same arguments they use to create doubt over tobacco, or the same arguments that they use to create doubt over lead. These same arguments are used. They’re recycled over and over again because they work. And by the way, silly me, I know there is a guidebook. We all know what it is that they use. It’s called Capitalism and Freedom.
Nick Hanauer:
A little bit, yeah.
Joan Walsh:
We got a little bit of that. It’s kind of like women have to learn that there are certain lies that men, bad men, let’s say, will tell you about what’s going on. It’s me, it’s not you or gaslighting you about their intentions. Women have a code of sharing these ideas and sharing their experiences, and it’s really deep and it’s really been important. For some reason, this set of traits and this set of lies has not been shared in a popular way until this book. I’m really proud of that.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, no, it’s really true. There is this, I mean, Goldy, it’s interesting the question you raised globally about is there a code book that gets handout that teaches people how to tell these lies? And I think the answer is, no. Although that’s not true. I am sure there are tons of professional PR people who are trained in these tactics, who absolutely go to work knowing how to spin this bullshit and are proud of their ability to obfuscate the truth and to lead people down antisocial paths.
Goldy:
Like the other EPI.
Nick Hanauer:
Correct.
Goldy:
The fake EPI that works for the restaurant industry. What’s his name? Saltzman, whatever, who just trots these out and gets quoted credulously by reporters and writes his op-eds, and he knows exactly what he’s doing because he does the same thing every time.
Joan Walsh:
I personally loved learning about the fight for the minimum wage in Seattle and how it was going to destroy the restaurant industry. I would not have any place to eat when I came there. When I’ve been there, there are some really great restaurants. It’s thriving. The whole restaurant industry is fine. It’s antisocial. I love that take on it. It’s antisocial and it’s a lie. And if you test out any of these claims, you know.
Donald Cohen:
Let me just make a point that in the last few years, disinformation and gaslighting has become a thing that we’re all talking about over the last few years, but it’s been about politics. This is a book that will turn this and say, but wait a second. We’ve been gaslit and been fed disinformation for 100 years to the end of corporate and personal wealth and interest. I think that’s really an important thing this book does, is it makes gaslighting and disinformation an economic reality that we’ve been facing for many years.
Goldy:
Speaking of the gaslighting industry, you actually have in the book a Mobile Oil ad from 19, was it in the New York Times from 1997, warning about that the science of climate change is uncertain. It would plunge the world into economic turmoil.
Joan Walsh:
Now we’re living through the worst year for the planet. Between wildfires and drought. Yeah. I mean, they did that.
Goldy:
Right. So you see the impact. Again, it’s a funny book in many ways. It’s also kind of a scary book because you can see throughout history how effective this corporate bullshit has been, which of course is why they keep doing it.
Nick Hanauer:
Again, I know we’re attempting to sell our book here, but I really do feel strongly that every citizen should acquaint themselves whether you are on the left or the right. You are harmed equally by these lies. Democrat and Republican children will both die from E. coli in equal measure if we do not properly regulate our food system. We are all equally-
Goldy:
That was a job killer, Nick.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah right. Exactly.
Goldy:
Getting E. coli out of the ground beef supply.
Donald Cohen:
Oh my God. Come on. [inaudible 00:30:58]
Nick Hanauer:
Right. I really feel strongly that this is a very easy way to create context for all of the things you experience every day in your life, and will allow you to process the information that is pointed at you in a much more successful way by having context.
Joan Walsh:
And can I just add, it’s really exciting that it’s coming out on Halloween because it’s scary. It’s spooky. Give it to your friends. It’s just perfect Halloween present.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. It belongs on the coffee table of every American family.
Goldy:
Well, as our regular listeners know, we always have one final question for our guests. I’m going to start with you, Donald. Why do you do this work?
Donald Cohen:
I do this work, and I was on once before, so maybe it was the same answer. I do this work because I hate hate and I hate greed. That’s why I do this work.
Goldy:
That’s a pretty, that’s maybe the most succinct answer we’ve gotten in a log time. Joan, why do you do this work?
Joan Walsh:
I was raised to do this work. This was what it meant to be Catholic when I was a little kid. You cared about people who were less fortunate. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen it more broadly, but really that’s the answer.
Goldy:
Okay. So social justice, Catholic, the best kind.
Joan Walsh:
Exactly. Very much so.
Goldy:
Finally, I get to ask this. I know you’ve tortured guests with this for a long time, Nick, why do you do this work?
Nick Hanauer:
That’s a darn good question. I mean, I think Don’s answer was succinct. I think for me, it’s slightly broader than that. I hate injustice. I find people who deliberately harm other people to be objectionable. And we grew up in a world where, as we’ve talked billions of times, we grew up in this neoliberal world, you and I, Goldy. We were in many ways actively encouraged to bring harm to other people. We were told that it was economically efficient to bring harm to other people. I just always knew that was bullshit. It is a great use of time, money, and energy to push back on that and try to bend the arc of history towards justice just a tiny bit.
Goldy:
Well, I’m going to add on to that, Nick, and I know you would agree with this, and I assume Donald and Joan will too. One of the reasons why I do this work is that I love winning. This is the type of book that it takes to win. It’s not the only thing we need to do, but it helps. Just making people aware of how the other side is trying to manipulate you, sometimes how your own side is trying to manipulate you. And that’s why I’m going to make an ask. I know, Nick, you’re going to make an ask.
This book comes out in a week, on Halloween. It’s important for the way the book industry works that we get some pre-sales. So we’re going to ask you all to go out and buy this book in advance, because that’s how you get on the bestseller list. And that’s how more people see this book. And the more people that see this book and read this book, the more people will understand the corporate bullshit that has been influencing our politics for the past 150 years, and really, if you think about it going all the way back, at least to the Romans.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes, correct. Correct. Couldn’t be more true.
Goldy:
Well, Joan, Donald and Nick, thank you for joining Pitchfork Economics. Of course, we will provide links to the book in the show notes. Again, we urge you to go out there and pre-order this. You can get it from your favorite local independent bookstore, or there’s always that big online monopolist that makes it convenient, so use the monopolies to help destroy them by making this book a bestseller.
Speaker 5:
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 at Pitchfork Economics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.