Optimist Economy

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?

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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.

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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.

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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]

“Trump Accounts” might evoke the president’s other side hustles, like gold-plated mobile phones or meme crypto coins. But these investment accounts for children are one of the actually beautiful things to come out of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." More than 30 years in the making, these accounts have previously been pitched as KidSave, Baby Bonds, the ASPIRE Act, 401Kids. They’ve been proposed more than a dozen times by Democrats and Republicans alike. Economist Kathryn Edwards explains the long journey, what the research says about why auto-enrollment is everything, and why the name won't last but the policy should.

Read more:

Every child deserves a Trump Account: Here’s how to make it happen 
Op-ed by Ray Boshara and Michael Sherraden in The Hill [2026].

“Check-the-Box” Enrollment Will Limit Participation in Trump Accounts: Lessons From Asset-Building Research — Center for Social Development at Washington University [2025]

Why Automatic Enrollment Is Essential for the Success of Trump Accounts: Lessons from SEED OK — Center for Social Development at Washington University [2025]

The (Unknown) Children’s Savings Accounts Federal Policy Landscape 
— Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis [2024]

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]