Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Crypto is back—new hype cycles, rising prices, and fresh promises that this time cryptocurrency is changing the financial system for good. But the questions haven’t changed: is this innovation or just another wave of speculation, scams, and financial fraud?

That’s why we’re revisiting this conversation with actor and author Ben McKenzie—whose bestselling book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud and new documentary, Everyone is Lying to You For Money are once again fueling the debate over crypto’s real impact.

What started as curiosity became a deeper look at how the crypto boom blurred the line between investing and gambling—and what that reveals about an economy increasingly driven by speculation instead of real value. McKenzie joins Nick and Goldy to pull back the curtain on the hype, the believers, and the system that made it all possible.

Ben McKenzie is an actor, author, and director best known for his roles on The O.C., Southland, and Gotham. A graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in economics and foreign affairs, he has emerged as a leading critic of the cryptocurrency industry. He is the co-author, with journalist Jacob Silverman, of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and has expanded that work into a documentary, Everyone is Lying to You For Money , examining the rise—and risks—of crypto.

Social Media:

@benmckenzie.bsky.social

mrbenmckenzie

@ben_mckenzie

Further reading: 

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

When Prophecy Fails

Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me)

⁠Everyone is Lying to You For Money

New York Magazine: Congress Just Injected Crypto Directly Into the Most Stable Part of the Economy. What could go wrong?

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The social safety net wasn’t supposed to work like this.

Decades of neoliberal choices from politicians in both parties reshaped it—turning what was meant to support people into a system that often leaves them stuck.

This week, Jamie Keene, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former Biden White House policy advisor, joins us to break down how we got here—and why today’s anti-poverty system can actually reinforce the very conditions it’s meant to solve.

From requirements that trap workers in low-wage jobs to public programs that quietly subsidize those business models, we unpack how the system evolved—and what it would take to turn it into a system that actually gives people power.

Jamie Keene is a stratification economics fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a former White House policy advisor on equality and opportunity. She is also the author of From Safety Net to Power Base: Reimagining, Not Restoring, the US Antipoverty System.

Further reading: 

From Safety Net to Power Base: Reimagining, Not Restoring, the US Antipoverty System

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Would it be a surprise if we told you the rich don’t actually live in the same tax system as everyone else?

Tomorrow is Tax Day, when millions of Americans will be filing their taxes or applying for extensions, so Nick and Goldy sit down with Ray D. Madoff, Professor of Tax Law at Boston College, and author of The Second Estate, to pull back the curtain on how wealth really moves—and why so much of it never gets taxed at all.

Because here’s the twist: The system wasn’t supposed to work this way.

But over time, something changed. Now, the people who live off paychecks carry the tax burden… while the people living off wealth often don’t have to play the game at all.

Professor Madoff explains what happened and what it would take to fix it. 

Ray D. Madoff is a professor at Boston College Law School and director of the Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good. She is a leading expert on tax policy, wealth, and philanthropy, and author of The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.

Social Media:

@raymadoff

Further reading: 

The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy.

The Atlantic - How to Tax Billionaires

CNBC - Lawsuit over $21 million donor-advised fund highlights risks of DAF giving

Washington Post - A Signature GOP Issue Is Omitted From Trump’s ‘Big’ Tax Bill. Weird

New York Times - America Builds an Aristocracy

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Corporate profits are booming. So why haven’t most workers gotten a raise?

For decades, we’ve been told a simple story: work harder, become more productive, and your wages will follow. But what if that story was never really true?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Arindrajit Dube—one of the most influential economists shaping how we understand wages, and author of a new book, The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It —for a conversation that cuts to the heart of how pay actually works in America.

At a moment when the gap between what the economy produces and what workers take home keeps growing, this episode challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions in economics—and asks what it would take to build a labor market that actually delivers for working people.

Because if wages aren’t just set by “the market”… then they can be changed.

Arin Dube is an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the leading researchers on wages and labor markets. He is the author of The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It, and has advised policymakers in the U.S. and internationally on minimum wage policy and labor market dynamics.

Social Media:

@arindube.bsky.social

@arindube

Further reading: 

The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It

MBAs in management lead to lower employee pay, study finds

Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark

Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates

Using Contiguous Counties

NELP Research Brief on Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties

Minimum wage own-wage elasticity repository: a representative estimate of the own-wage elasticity (OWE) of employment from every minimum wage study published since 1992.

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What happens when the economic data says one thing, but people’s lives say another?

This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Matt Stoller about what he calls a “Boomcession”—the disconnect between headline economic indicators and how the economy actually feels for most people.

They go straight at the disconnect: why the numbers say everything’s fine… and people say otherwise. If the economy is supposed to work for people, why do so many people feel like it isn’t?

Matt Stoller is the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. He writes the Substack newsletter BIG, focused on monopoly power, corporate concentration, and political economy.

Social Media:

@matthewstoller.bsky.social

@matthewstoller

Further reading: 

The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom

Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy

Organized Money Podcast

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