Pod Insights Optimist Economy All We've Tried is Nothing! About this episode Who are we and what in the world is an “optimist economy?”
For our first show, we (economist Kathryn Edwards and editor Robin Rauzi) introduce ourselves, explain how we met, and lay out our goals for our new podcast.
We want Optimist Economy to empower listeners to understand the economy we have, but also the one we can have so they feel good about the future. The truth is, America’s best economic era is yet to come. It has to be, because there are so many good solutions out there that U. S. policymakers have never tried.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy were about as different as two politicians could be. The lanky businessman and the stout old senator, the conservative darling and the liberal icon. But did you know they once teamed up to tackle an elusive challenge? Universal healthcare.
0:18 Speaker 00 In season four of the Big Dig podcast, we tell the story of Romney Care and the odd couple alliance behind it. Find Mitt and Ted wherever you listen.
0:30 Speaker 01 Okay, are we doing this?
0:32 Robin Rauzi? Are you asking me?
0:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was asking you if we're doing this.
0:36 Robin Rauzi? Let's go. Let's do it.
0:38 Speaker 01 Let's go.
0:42 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to The Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.
0:45 Robin Rauzi? I'm Robin.
0:46 Speaker 01 And on this show, we believe the US economy can be better and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.
0:59 Speaker 01 Okay, so, Robin, what are we doing?
1:02 Robin Rauzi? Well, apparently, in this episode, you explained to me that we need to introduce what we're doing and why we're doing it and let people in on our little backstory, who we are, what we're about, why the optimist economy.
1:19 Speaker 01 Why the optimist economy and why we're starting a podcast.
1:22 Robin Rauzi? You know, I like to get in at things like after they've peaked, like this is actually very right on brand for me, newspapers, podcasts.
1:31 Speaker 01 I'm getting in on the ground floor. I've read. Okay, well, all right, well, then we'll introduce ourselves. I am Catherine Ann Edwards. I'm an economist. I'm a writer. You probably know me better as Keds on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram and Twitter and Blue Sky and all the other things that we have to do to be on social media. I am Keds Economist. I do have a PhD. I went to the University of Wisconsin and I'm a research economist, but I'm also You know, a public facing communicator of economic issues, and I do that in formal ways, like having a weekly column at Bloomberg News and testifying in front of Congress,
2:11 Speaker 01 but then in informal ways, too, as a, I think, one of the first economics influencers, and now podcaster.
2:21 Robin Rauzi? So I'm Robyn Rousey. I'm an editor, and I have a few side hustles. But like I mentioned before, I'm sort of a refugee from the peak days of newspapers. I had a number of jobs in newspapers, but my last one was as an editor on the opinion pages. And that kind of led me into a freelance career of helping people who are experts, people like Catherine, explain stuff more clearly. That's what I've been doing for probably the last 15 years.
2:46 Speaker 01 She's so good at it.
2:48 Robin Rauzi? You don't know me from social media.
2:49 Speaker 01 We met in this capacity of Robyn being an editor that helps experts find their voice and clarity in talking to people. And Robyn truly taught me how to write opinion columns and really how to write, you know, informatively and persuasively about things that I know a lot about. And it was really hard, but she was very good.
3:14 Robin Rauzi? Oh, that's so sweet. You're a natural. But okay.
3:17 Speaker 01 I mean, some of those first columns, though, there were like, we should probably maybe not give a three paragraph introduction to the Bureau of Labor Statistics every time you sign a number. We even have a nickname for how I like to start opinion columns, which is throat clearing.
3:35 Robin Rauzi? I don't think that. I think that's, that's pretty common. But you, it's more like, the earth cooled, and then creatures came out of the slime.
3:44 Speaker 01 I think, you know what, people who follow me on TikTok would probably agree with me that like, I cannot give an answer to a question without giving the appropriate backstory. I don't think that that's necessarily an economics thing. I think that's like a southern thing. Where I'm like, listen, I'm not going to talk to you about someone and tell you their entire family history. Like, we have to go through the whole tree, and then I'll tell you how they're doing. So it's that, it's that instinct shining through.
4:06 Robin Rauzi? Oh, I think it's an academic thing, too. It's like, you have to say, Newton discovered gravity, and then everything that happened since then, before I can tell you what I'm thinking about now.
4:18 Speaker 01 I think there's a question I have for both of us of why are we doing this? Not just we together, but you and I separately. You know, why'd you agree to do this?
4:29 Speaker 01 And why did I want to do this? But I think it's in part because, you know, I have a lot of knowledge over certain issues in the economy and you have the ability to draw it out of me in a succinct way that focuses on the story that people can understand. And if we can do that, we should share it.
4:48 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, I think that that relates to my goal, especially about why do this as a podcast? You know, obviously, I'm an editor of print. But I do think that conversations, much like writing, are a way that you figure out what you think about something and why you think what you think. Doing that is, I mean, that's sort of my thing, right? But as an editor. And so I'm really excited to try to see how that works in a kind of conversation format.
5:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, I mean, the impetus for the podcast was truly people on TikTok commenting on my videos, I wish you had a podcast. And I have always said, you know, since I took this more public facing turn to my career, that I would try to meet people where they were, even if it made me uncomfortable. So the kind of people saying you should have a podcast, the millions who asked. There's like three people who commented on TikTok. They're like, whoa, she took me seriously.
5:46 Robin Rauzi? Well, I will gather in this, when we used to work together more regularly before, my, my wife could sit and hear us have these conversations on Zoom or whatever in the next room. And she already said this was her favorite podcast. Robin Talks to Smart Ladies podcast episodes, the one, the one with Catherine were the best.
6:08 Speaker 01 Oh, we have our number one fan.
6:11 Robin Rauzi? We do.
6:12 Speaker 01 All right. So that's who we are. That's, that's why we're doing this. Robin, what is your goal from having the, being part of the Optimist Economy podcast?
6:24 Robin Rauzi? Well, I mean, I hope, again, I'm kind of about knowing what you think and why you think it. So my hope is that we can give the people who are listening sort of the tools and the language to articulate what it is that they want to need from their representatives or their economy or their bosses. Most of us didn't take Economics 101, and we need to have an understanding and a language to articulate those things. So I'm hoping we can, we can give people that.
6:51 Speaker 01 I think I'm, I'm, I'm the natural companion to that, which is I want people to be informed, but empowered and informed. I don't want to tell you what to think. I don't want to convince you that we, we need to do X or we need to do Y. I'm thinking that if you had all the information in front of you, you would, you would form your own opinion. I like to be informative and not necessarily persuasive, although that might just be a difference that only I put any emphasis on. I, I sell hard, but I'm not trying to, I'm trying to sell the story and the process and maybe not just the conclusion. I don't know, I just, I kind of hate it when people are so authoritative and declarative of like, we have to do this. And my profession in particular, it can be so loathsome of like, I'm an economist, we
7:36 Speaker 01 have to do this. And it's just, it's so condescending and it's so, it just, it like robs people of the process of coming to their own conclusions. And so even if I'm just letting you in on how I think about things, hopefully that will help you think about things in a way that makes you feel empowered instead of disempowered. Because after the 2024 election results came in, one of the most disturbing kind of findings from the exit polls for me was that the vast majority of Trump voters indicated that they thought America's best economic days are behind it. And that is just, that is just such a depressing thought if you let it sit in your head for too long, but it's, it's also just, it's not true. It's categorically not true.
8:20 Speaker 01 Our best days are not behind us. I mean, I read that and thought, my God, y'all, we don't have paid sick days. Like, how, how great did you think the economy used to be? I mean, we've, I mean, we've tried nothing. This is my point of an optimist economy, is that all we've tried is nothing, and we can do better. And that is what I'm hoping to tell people about, is, is not to say we have to follow this vision, but to convince you that there is something in the future worth fighting for, and not just this perpetual lamentation over the past.
8:53 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, I think that people think of the economy like the weather. It's something that is totally beyond their control. And one of the things that I've taken away from working with you in the past is that it's not totally beyond our control, that there are things that we can do to shape the way that the economy treats us. And maybe it's just an umbrella and maybe it's a raincoat, but we have so many of those things that we have not tried.
9:19 Speaker 01 At the moment, we don't even sell umbrellas or tell people they exist.
9:23 Robin Rauzi? And people don't know what an umbrella is. And we were here to tell you that. So, Gethin, who's this for? Obviously, you're TikTok followers, but who else is this for?
9:34 Speaker 01 I mean, this is just for anybody who wants to learn how the economy works in a way that makes them feel empowered and hopeful. The goal of all of this for me is for people to feel empowered and hopeful.
9:48 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. I mean, I would settle for just not despairing, you know? Like, I think that there's going to be a lot of rough days in the news. And people need space where they can think about how we're going to do things differently in the future.
10:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. Just you want to stay informed in terms of what's going on in the news, but it is really hard to pivot to positive action when you are, you know, drinking from a bad news fire hydrant. So this is a place where like, look, you come, we might mention what's going on in a given day, but really, we're building the future.
10:29 Robin Rauzi? Despair is paralysis, and I think that we can't be paralyzed in this moment either.
10:34 Speaker 01 Then we got the graphic designer, like, optimist economy, and I'm like, wow, so we really doubled down on optimism.
10:41 Robin Rauzi? Had an interesting time, yeah.
10:43 Speaker 01 It feels... Very aspirational, I think, in the current setting. But of course, that's the point, is that if we set up this really ambitious goal of like, no, you're going to listen to this show and feel good about the economy, we might not always succeed, but at the least, we would be a change of pace from what you're probably inundated with the rest of the time. For sure. I've definitely had forays into having a public persona of putting my name and thoughts and opinions out there and... You classified before Congress, like, I think very seriously. Oh, man, nothing can be, nothing can be harder than a five and a half hour hearing at the House Ways and Means Committee when you're the minority expert.
11:26 Speaker 01 The Democrats invited me, there were like four Republican witnesses, I was the only Dem. Like, y'all, it was an away game. I got him to go to the bathroom and one of the representatives made fun of me. He was like, oh, looks like the Democrat witness needs to run and hide.
11:43 Speaker 03 Did I scare the Democratic witness away? Must have.
11:47 Speaker 01 I mean, and also, I have laughably, like, comically large bottles of water in front of me, so like, obviously, I would have to go to the bathroom. But then, when I came back, he tried to catch me off guard with a question, and I clapped him back so hard, I never got a Republican question after that.
12:02 Speaker 03 Dr. Edwards, let me ask you just a couple of quick questions. We're talking about the not fair share, when the rich are not paying their fair share. So they pay 47%, the top 1%, what percent would you think is appropriate for them to pay?
12:15 Speaker 01 Y'all, I don't decide fair.
12:18 Speaker 03 No, I mean, that's what we hear all the time, pay their fair share, pay their fair share. And when the top 1% pay 47% of the tax burden, I want to know what, what would a Democrat witness say is the fair share?
12:32 Speaker 01 Well, speaking as an economist, and not as a Democrat, what I would say, sir, is that the top 1% have also seen the accumulations of income over the past 20 years. Part of their outsized burden of how much they're paying in taxes is also a fact of how much faster their income has grown over the past 40 years. And the top 1% income share is now at a 70-year high. It's not just the rate that sets the share, but also the total amount of income they earn relative to the economy.
12:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I would, you know, I'm not going to disagree, their facts are always your facts and my facts, and that's just the way life happens. Um, to what Senator Graham said earlier about.
13:10 Speaker 01 I mean, the, the, even the staff were like, they probably were instructing members not to try to interact with you.
13:15 Robin Rauzi? Don't mess with Catherine.
13:16 Speaker 01 So.
13:19 Speaker 01 That's who this show is for.
13:26 Speaker 01 I'm sorry, I was a little bit, I realize, I realize what happened there of like, this is for anybody who wants to be informed, but watch yourself.
13:36 Speaker 01 I'm a little intimidated. This feels a little ridiculous, like the whole setup, like the microphones and it's podcasting is its own culture now. And I, I don't listen to many podcasts, so I feel like somewhat like embarrassed, like I'm going to get up in front of the class and people are going to laugh at what I'm wearing. I have that feeling with me, but at the same time, pardon me is like, well, I mean, what's, what's to lose, right?
13:59 Robin Rauzi? Just your dignity.
14:00 Speaker 01 Just dignity.
14:00 Robin Rauzi? Uh, yeah, I mean, this is so outside my comfort zone. I, okay, here's a little embarrassing admission. I have a degree in screenwriting. I didn't say that earlier. I, and so I went to film school. And in film school, everybody has to be in one another's student films, right? That's just part of the deal. So I was in somebody's student film my freshman year and then all of my peers saw me on screen. And then I was never asked to be in another student film ever again. So, um, I'm terrible. I'm really stiff. I am so far outside my comfort zone on this. Um, the fact that you wanted to put it on YouTube is just horrifying to me.
14:42 Robin Rauzi? But I will say this, I am, I do think that I always feel better after having a conversation with Catherine. And if nothing else comes out of this and I get to spend more time talking with Catherine, then, you know, like that will help.
14:55 Speaker 01 You know what? For my part, I feel like I have, I always know what I'm going to say after I talk to you. I'm like, okay, I want to write about childcare. I want to write about paid sick days. I want to write about, you know, why we can have the right to work part-time and I have all these ideas in my head. And after I talk to you, I, I'm like, oh, that's it. That's what I'm going to say. So I, yeah, I mean, if nothing else, we get to chit chat. I'll feel great. My mom's gonna try to listen.
15:21 Speaker 01 She's not very tech savvy. I don't think she's ever listened to a podcast.
15:25 Robin Rauzi? No.
15:26 Speaker 01 But she'll try.
15:26 Robin Rauzi? Should we tell people how we envision the show? I mean.
15:30 Speaker 01 Yes, this is a special episode because we should tell people who we are. I don't, you know, they can have a reference. But I think in general, we envision the show, each episode, playing almost like reading a magazine. You have the information broken up in ways that, you know, here's things we're reading, here's letters, here's the last page, here's the kind of certain beats that we expect to hit that aren't just the feature story, but also a feature story, kind of one main issue that we discuss in detail, the policy, the problem, the issue of the day, and we work around it to come up with the positive message for, you know, the stronger and better economic future. I mean, when I think about what the
16:14 Speaker 01 name of the magazine would be called, obviously, it's Optimist Economy. It just rolls right off the tongue.
16:19 Robin Rauzi? Right off the tongue.
16:21 Speaker 01 This is where being an economist really works against me because I'm a very literal person sometimes of like, oh, Optimist Economy. There are also two nouns. Have you put that together yet? I realized that earlier today. It's not an adjective noun clause.
16:34 Robin Rauzi? You can have an optimistic economy. Like, that would suggest that the economy itself was optimistic.
16:40 Speaker 01 And an optimist economy would be, you would have to put the apostrophe S, right? That's just too much. That's too many S's altogether. So here we are with just a double noun, Optimist Economy. But I think the other working title would be Win the Future.
16:56 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
16:57 Speaker 01 And that's what we'll do in every feature story. And then we'll talk about what's going on in the world and what goes on in our head and fund policy and economic thoughts.
17:05 Robin Rauzi? And we also, I think we want to hear from people the same way you have on social media about what questions they have that they want answered.
17:15 Speaker 01 It's a big motivator for me that has surprised me every time I've engaged with the world through social media as this expert, you know, coo influencer, trying to talk to people. I've always been just so surprised at how candid and interested and grateful people are to hear more about the world that they live in, but it put in a way that they can understand. So. You know, I've been particularly joyous when it comes to the TikTok followers. They're very funny. They're very supportive. And I think if we can reach more people and interact with more people, that's, I mean, that's one whole reason to do it is just to find our fellow optimist out there.
17:56 Robin Rauzi? And make some more.
17:57 Speaker 01 And make some more.
18:02 Speaker 01 Before we end our show, we would, of course, like to thank our sponsors. Now, technically, we do not have any financial sponsors, per se, in that we don't have any money for the show and we're not getting any money. However, we have proverbial sponsors, spiritual sponsors, if you will, of people who, without them, this show would not be possible, even if it was not necessarily a remunerative exchange. So, the sponsor, the spiritual sponsor I'd like to thank for this episode is Reliable Babysitters. They absolutely make the difference in your life and in your marriage. So, thank you to Reliable Babysitters.
18:35 Robin Rauzi? The spiritual sponsor I would like to thank is quality hairstylists who don't ruin your life by giving you a bad haircut.
18:42 Speaker 01 They're champions of the world. Optimist Economy would not be possible were it not for the Herculean efforts of our producer, Sophie. And we end by snapping her out.
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