Optimist Economy

Americans used to move a lot in search of opportunity. But in 2024, the share of Americans who moved at all hit a 76-year low. Barely 2% of us moved across state lines. Some of that is by choice: people are more rooted, and that's not nothing. But when workers stop moving, rich cities pull further away from poor ones, wages stagnate, and the gaps between thriving labor markets and struggling ones get harder to close. And when there’s a shock to a local labor market, moving is an important release valve. Fixing a fraction of this worker mobility breakdown could improve the labor market for everyone.

Chapters:
00:00:33  Opening
00:01:45  Retcon: Trump Accounts & Career Pivots
00:07:27  Terms & Conditions: Spatial Equilibrium
00:09:55  Big Pilcrow: Does it Matter to the U.S. Economy if We Don’t Move from Place to Place?
00:39:10  Executive Orders: Frances Perkins miniseries; Sleep Shaming; Election Day Weekend
00:43:07  Spiritual Sponsors: The National Consumers League motto ("Investigate, Agitate, Legislate"); ACFC’s winning start

READ MORE:
The increasingly mobile US is a myth that needs to move on | Aeon Essays
Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where’s Home? | Pew Research Center
Job Changing and the Decline in Long-Distance Migration in the United States | Demography | Duke University Press
The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions
Population & Migration | Economic Research Service
Stranded! How Rising Inequality Suppressed US Migration and Hurt Those Left Behind

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Fourteen questions. Zero softballs. Listeners from Tacoma to Montreal wrote in to ask about retirement savings, taxing capital gains, home-buyer assistance programs, corporate profits in the tariffs era, what one state employee can or cannot accomplish, and whether meaningful economic reform will arrive before Millennials drop dead. And more. The inbox did not disappoint. 

00:00 Announcements
01:59  Is a retirement savings crisis brewing? 
04:32  Tax credits for first-time home buyers… good idea?
08:10  What if tax breaks for capital gains only applied to new investments?
13:39  Explain the $1,700 tax credit scholarship program in OBBA?
16:23  Are institutional investors wrecking the housing market?
21:37  What quick policy moves could reverse worsening inequality?
27:32  Will meaningful reform arrive before Millennials retire?
30:56  Is a hotel tax the right way to fund a stadium?
33:05  Can I move the needle on labor policy from inside the system?
35:08  Why has the responsibility and risk for employment shifted onto workers?
37:50  Is fixing the care economy easier than we think?
40:47  Do rent caps work?
44:50  Can we prevent price gouging by companies?
47:53  If states roll out good policies, does the federal government need to do it too?

Still have questions, concerns, or worries?  Send them to [email protected]

Keep Optimist Economy podcasting: https://optimisteconomy.com

See our faces on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

Commune with fellow Optimists on our Substack chat.

We’re on  Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy. 

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https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy

The corporate income tax rate got hacked nearly in half by the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. So nine years later, how’s that working out? Corporations’ effective tax rate (about 9%) is lower than what the average American household pays (about 14.5%). After-tax corporate profits have hit record highs for the last four years — about 9% of GDP, a figure not hit since 1929. Workers' share of total national income, by contrast, is at a 70-year low. If corporate taxes go back up, some companies may threaten to reincorporate somewhere cheaper. Call that bluff. Someone else will deliver the toilet paper and make the coffee.

Donate to keep Optimist Economy going: https://optimisteconomy.com

Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

Consume leisure with us on Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat.

Feel like dis-saving? Our merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy

Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders?  Send them to [email protected]

Switchboard operators. Typists. Secretaries. Lots of factory workers. The economy has a long history of technology slowly eliminating not just jobs but entire occupations. The U.S. also has a long history of not doing a lot to help those thrown out of work by major economic shifts. Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards, who literally wrote her dissertation on unemployment insurance (her professional assessment: "it sucks"), makes the case for a wholesale rebuild that triages joblessness, distinguishing between those who need time to job hunt and those who need to pivot to a new career. 

Donate to keep Optimist Economy going: https://optimisteconomy.com

Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

Consume leisure with us on Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat.

Feel like dis-saving? Our merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy

Send your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to [email protected]

The popular narrative is that baby boomers rode cheap houses and 401(k)s to wealth, dismantled the welfare state behind them, and left everyone else to fight over scraps. But conflating boomers and conservatives lets the latter off the hook for 25 years of tax cuts and disinvestment in children. It erases the Black boomers, poor boomers, and pensionless workers who never got a slice of that wealth. And it lays the groundwork for the one policy outcome its loudest advocates actually want: gutting Social Security. Who really benefits when you decide your parents' generation is the enemy?

Support Optimist Economy by donating: https://optimisteconomy.com

Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠.

Follow us on Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack chat.

Optimist merch provides great utility: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy

Send your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to [email protected]