Wall Street’s War on Workers (with Les Leopold)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mass layoffs have become a routine corporate strategy—not because companies are struggling, but because Wall Street demands it. In Wall Street’s War on Workers, labor educator and author Les Leopold exposes how stock buybacks, deregulation, and financialized capitalism have made job cuts a tool for enriching CEOs and hedge funds at the expense of workers and communities. He joins Nick and Goldy this week to explain how this happened, why both political parties have failed to stop it, and what we can do to fight back. Les Leopold is a labor educator, author, and co-founder of the Labor Institute, where he has spent decades advocating for economic justice and worker rights. He is the author of several books, including Runaway Inequality and Wall Street’s War on Workers, which exposes how financial elites have rigged the economy in their favor. Social Media: @les_leopold Further reading: Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America Les Leopold’s Substack Civic Ventures Produced Comic on Stock Buybacks: Trillion Dollar Heist Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: The Pitch

Transcript

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0:00.0	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:11.0	The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven't worked. But what's the alternative?
0:16.0	Middle-out economics is the answer.
0:19.0	Because the middle class is the source of growth, not its consequence.
0:23.1	That's right.
0:28.7	This is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out.
0:36.9	Welcome to the show.
0:44.4	So I was forwarded a link to a review of a book.
0:49.3	I think you might be familiar with Nick.
0:51.1	It's called corporate bullshit, something or other like that. Yeah.
0:57.2	You know what I'm talking about? I do. Our book Corporate Bullshit that everybody should buy.
1:02.5	That's right. Corporate bullshit, exposing the lies and half-truths that protect profit, power, and
1:09.7	wealth in America.
1:11.5	And it turns out this was on a site called Labor Notes,
1:16.1	and they were reviewing two books at the time.
1:20.3	Your book that you co-wrote with Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen,
1:25.2	and a book by Les Leopold, which seemed right up our alley, titled
1:31.9	Wall Street's War on Workers, How Mass Layoffs and Greed are Destoring the Working Class,
1:38.8	and what to do about it. Yep, absolutely. And, you know, Les has clearly been at this for a long time
1:47.3	and, you know, identifies a lot of the same sort of things that we identify as the problems
1:54.3	that, you know, non-economic elites face in the country. But, you know, stock buybacks, other things like that.
2:02.1	But let's talk to Les about what he thinks and how to fix it.
	...

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