In This Economy?

We need optimism now, more than ever.

Today is a bit of a different newsletter from me, because I’m writing with an announcement: this morning I launched a podcast, Optimist Economy. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, and we’re happy to show you the way there from our RSS page, or you can listen in full on youtube:

Optimist Economy is a labor of love. We don’t have any sponsors or backers yet, or a podcast company that is overseeing the show. My cohost Robin and I are absolute novices when it comes to podcasts, though we’ve hired an audio engineer to produce the episodes (she’s amazing!!!). We’ve been taping episodes for about a month, trying to build confidence and some production cushion.

So it was with incredible excitement that we finally shared what we’ve been doing with the world.

Kudos to one of my friend grouptext that one of the first reactions I got was a slightly sarcastic, “In this economy?” followed by a laugh and congratulations. Later I posted a video to my social media asking followers to send us their questions and worries about the US economy, and one of the first emails we got asked, “Is it appropriate to be optimistic right now?”

I think the answer to the question is an emphatic yes.

Why Optimism?

First of all, you deserve it. You deserve to feel like the US economy can be better than it is, that the best economic era is the one that we will build. You deserve to be informed about that future and empowered with that knowledge. Because it’s true!

The last 45 years have seen a stall in economic progress, as the wages of the bottom 60% stagnated. And the last 25 years have seen a near total failure of economic leadership in Congress to enact policies that help Americans and improve the economy. We have so many solutions waiting for their day in the sun and so many problems that were given too free a rein.

On Optimist Economy, we’ll talk about how to build that future, one problem and solution at a time.

Second, Trump and the destructive policies that he’s putting in place thrive on cynicism, of both his supporters and his detractors. He capitalizes on anger and frustration like no politician I’ve ever seen. I’m sure you’ve heard the reaction to the Department of Government Efficiency that rings with a cynical defeatism: the government was already corrupt and not working so might as well destroy it.

And his agenda blossoms with cynical apathy. Everything awful that he wants to do is much easier to accomplish when you’ve given up. Again, I’m sure you’ve heard the reaction or comment: …that’s assuming we even have elections in four years, which we won’t.

Y’all, giving up is giving permission. He doesn’t deserve it.

His whole movement is built on lamenting a lost past. So the best way to counter him is to focus on the bright future. He has no answer for informed optimism.

Third, in addition to being an economist I am also a human and the news is really hard to read some days. And hard to live. I live in a middle class community in DC and child’s birthday parties have turned into a hellscape of federal government layoffs that have put most of the families in my community at risk, if not out of the job already. Plus, the federal government is one of the largest employers of PhD economists and my LinkedIn feed is populated with news of layoffs and leave hitting my friends and classmates.

I need a place where I can counter the bad news, to make it seem small in comparison to what I know is coming. Elon Musk on his best day won’t accomplish a fraction of what free school lunch will do, or paid family leave, or new work rights and standards, or a renaissance of unionization. They will transform the country, and whatever he does will be reversed and erased. And if I need to repeat that to myself, I may as well invite y’all to listen in.

Keep the faith, keep the fight, and remember the only way to make sure your voice is powerless is to say nothing at all.

We’re at optimist.economy@gmail.com, send us your economic questions and worries.