Building Economic Security: A Book Talk with Arindrajit Dube and Carrie Joy Grimes

<div class="header alignfull header--article has-background has-tonal-black-background-color"> <div class="header__layout"> <div class="header__content"> <div class="header__metadata"><div class="header__metas"><div class="header__meta header__meta--taxonomy header__meta--tax-category"> Podcasts, and Videos</div></div></div> <h1 class="header__title has-h1-variant">Archives</h1> <div class="header__metadata"><div class="header__metas"><div class="favorite-block"> <button class="favorite" data-id="321472" data-state="" title="Favorites are not currently available" disabled><span class="favorite__on">Unfavorite</span><span class="favorite__off">Favorite</span><svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-bookmark" role="img" height="15" width="11"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-bookmark" /></svg></button></div> <div class="header__meta header__meta--date"> October 15, 2026</div> <div class="header__meta header__meta--taxonomy header__meta--tax-program_tax"> Economic Opportunities Program, and Future of Work Initiative</div></div></div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe loading="lazy" title="Building Economic Security: A Book Talk with Arindrajit Dube and Carrie Joy Grimes" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vob5RWNHoEU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure> </div> <div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-00f60e24 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vob5RWNHoEU">Watch Video<span class="wp-block-button__effect"></span></a></div> <div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" href="https://pod.link/1503944129/episode/YmU0MTRkZDUtOTUwZS00MTRlLTg5MTQtOTkxM2QyNGIwNmRi">Listen to Podcast<span class="wp-block-button__effect"></span></a></div> </div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <details class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary>Transcript</summary> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[silence]</p> <h3 id="h-liba-wenig-rubenstein" class="wp-block-heading">Liba Wenig Rubenstein</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:00:09] Good morning, good afternoon, depending where you&#8217;re here from. Welcome. I&#8217;m Liba Wenig Rubenstein, and I direct the Future of Work Initiative here at the Aspen Institute&#8217;s Economic Opportunities Program. A lot of our work comes back to one question, &#8220;What will it take for work to reliably and equitably deliver a good life in America?&#8221; For much of the post-war era, there was an implicit deal. If you worked hard and the economy grew, your paycheck would grow with it, and you&#8217;d have access to a middle-class lifestyle and maybe beyond. That deal was never extended to everyone, but over the last four decades, it has frayed for just about everyone.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This fall, we&#8217;ve been hosting a series on forging a new social contract around work for the 21st century, especially as AI forces some fundamental questions about what work means to our humanity and whether work can continue to be the main way Americans share in broad economic gains. Today&#8217;s conversation sits really perfectly between the two parts of our social contracts conversation. It takes this broken bargain and looks at it from two perspectives. What it feels like day-to-day at the kitchen table, and what it would take to rebuild it more structurally through the labor market. Spoiler alert, they might be related.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">There&#8217;s no better person to guide this conversation than my friend Natalie Foster. Natalie has been a senior fellow with our program for a decade, and she has spent her whole career making the case for economic security as a foundation that everyone deserves. That includes her work on guaranteed income, which turns out to be an interesting place where these two books may meet. Before I hand it over to Natalie, I&#8217;m going to do a quick review of our technology. All attendees will be muted throughout. Please use the Q&amp;A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions. If you have non-questions, perspective, ideas, examples, resources, or experiences you want to share that are related to the topic, you can use the chat function for that.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We do encourage you to post about this conversation on the social media platform of your choice, and our hashtag is #talkopportunity. For any technical issues that arise during the event, you can message us in the chat or email eop.program@aspeninstitute.org. The event is being recorded and will be shared via email and posted on our website. Closed captions are available. Just click the CC button at the bottom of your screen to activate them. Without further ado, I will hand it over to you, Natalie.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-foster" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie Foster</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:02:54] Thank you so much, Liba. We are so lucky to have you at the helm of the Future of Work Initiative. Thank you to everyone for being here. It&#8217;s a delight to get to spend this hour with you on such an important topic. I want to start out with a number, and that is $30,000 because if American wages had kept rising alongside productivity in the way they did the decades after World War II, the typical worker would have $30,000 more per year to spend per worker. That gap between what we have today and what would have been possible is where we start this conversation.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We have two authors with us who come at that gap from really different perspectives. The kitchen table and the labor market as Liba said. It&#8217;s my honor to get to introduce them today. Carrie Joy Grimes, first, is the founder and CEO of WorkMoney, a national nonprofit with millions of members around the country. Before that, she was a labor union organizer with SEIU, the Service Employees Union. That&#8217;s where I got to know her, when she was running the Fight for $15 campaign, which seemed so audacious at the time, and now feels like table stakes for anybody who believes wages matter in America.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">There are people pushing beyond $15 at this day and age. It&#8217;s just really exciting to have CJ with us. Her new book, The Joy of Money, is a national bestseller, and it&#8217;s a practical guide to taking control of your finances, from building an emergency fund to paying down debt, to planning retirement. CJ&#8217;s going to bring in the kitchen table to today&#8217;s conversation. Also with us is Arin Dube. He&#8217;s Provost Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is one of the country&#8217;s leading researchers on wages and the minimum wage. Paul Krugman called him the go-to guy on minimum wage. His new book, The Wage Standard, asks why pay stopped keeping up with productivity and argues that the answer isn&#8217;t just technology or globalization, but power, what we&#8217;ve chosen to do or not do with it, that it&#8217;s the labor market.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">These two books are really approaching the same problem. I&#8217;m going to hold them up right here because everybody should buy them. These two books are really approaching the same problem from opposite ends, the kitchen table, the labor market, but they land in the same place. Grimes&#8217; final chapter, which we&#8217;ll talk to, is literally called Demand More.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Dube is a data-driven economist whose conclusion I read to be ultimately about power and democratic choice.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s a conversation about the individual and the structural, and the argument is you can&#8217;t really fix one without the other. It feels especially urgent right now when affordability is at the center of our politics day in and day out, and that AI is forcing us all to ask whether work can still deliver the good life, the good life that CJ, you lay out at the beginning of your book so beautifully. That question is also at the heart of what we do here at the Economic Opportunities Program.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We&#8217;re going to talk for 40 minutes, and then we&#8217;ll turn it over to questions. Please input them on the keyboard and join me in a virtual welcome of Carrie Joy Grimes and Arin Dube. Carrie Joy, let&#8217;s turn it to you first. You were a union organizer, as we&#8217;ve said, before you founded WorkMoney. This is your first book, right?</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-joy-grimes" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie Joy Grimes</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:34] Yes, very first.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:36] Why was your first book a personal finance book rather than a policy book?</p> <h2 id="h-carrie" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h2> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:06:42] That is my favorite question. I love talking about this so much. I spent 1,000 hours plus of my life as a union organizer sitting at people&#8217;s kitchen tables, and bars, and union halls, and churches, and parks, bowling alleys, you name it. What became really clear to me through that period of time was that people were struggling to know basic stuff about budgeting, and everybody felt like there was some secret money club that they weren&#8217;t part of. If you didn&#8217;t have a lot of money, it was because you&#8217;d done something wrong. There was this sort of shared miasma of people feeling like money wasn&#8217;t a thing that they knew about or had access to or had the right to feel that they could fix their own money lives.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I was going through this myself personally. I had this really unique opportunity as an organizer to struggle with credit card debt and budgeting myself and to realize what most people don&#8217;t have the chance to realize, which is that it&#8217;s not just me, like a lot of people. That really helped break my shame bubble about it. Then once I got my personal money together, which I spent some time doing, and the book is a lot about that, I was also at the same time working on structural change.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">It just became so clear to me the both end of individual behavior and structural change. It was like a light bulb over a period of years. When I thought about how individual people can actually feel better about their money and have materially more financial security, it just became clear. Playing the hand of cards that were dealt and using every tool we have to make sure that the deck that is dealing the cards is a fairer deck, that the deal is fair.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-0" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:08:26] That&#8217;s a great answer. How about you, Arin? Why did you write this book? The productivity wage gap has been known to economists for years. What&#8217;s new in your account of why it happened, and what do you want most non-economists to take away from it?</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-dube" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit Dube</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:08:47] Thanks for asking that because I have been doing research on how the labor market works, policies like the minimum wage or the structure of the labor market, employer side, wage-setting power, and lots of other policy topics. Most of that work lived in economic journals, which is a good thing to do. I do it all the time, but I wanted to have a broader conversation because these issues fundamentally touch all of us.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">If we cannot have an informed discussion of this question, then fundamentally all those journal articles that I may be writing or other people may be writing really have more limited value. You&#8217;re absolutely right that the gap in between productivity and pay, that&#8217;s not news. What is news is understanding how it happened. More and more in the research that I did and others did, we are starting to find that the way we think about how pay is set in your introductory textbook is incomplete. A lot of times when we think of, &#8220;Well, why is pay not rising as much,&#8221; we may think that has to do with productivity and skills. Maybe the answer is getting more education. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, education is absolutely an important thing. However, we also have been seeing an understanding that actually employers have a lot more choice than we sometimes think, based on impersonal forces of supply and demand.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Really, there&#8217;s been a blossoming of research in economics that really show and better understand how pay is set. That felt like a really important conversation to bring to the broader electorate, broader citizenry, and to really understand better because a lot of the choices that I argue in the book, that we may have to make have to do with our making these decisions collectively. That&#8217;s what got me to really thinking about having this broader conversation just like we&#8217;re having right now.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-1" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:11:16] That makes sense. Will you give us an example of what you&#8217;re finding as to how pay is set? Give us an example with companies we&#8217;d know.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:11:27] Yes. Let&#8217;s take an example. FedEx and UPS. FedEx and UPS do the same thing, move packages, similar revenue per worker per company. Here&#8217;s the thing, at UPS, 63% of workers earn over $20 an hour. At FedEx, it&#8217;s 40%. This is not just one example. Here&#8217;s another. Target pays about 25% more than Walmart, even with actually lower revenue per worker. Why am I talking about this? Because in the textbook, where basically companies are competing for talent, in a hyper-competitive market like that, there&#8217;s really no room for those gaps. There&#8217;s no room for companies following a high-wage strategy or low-wage strategies. If you paid a lower wage, workers would just quit in droves, and wages would converge.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">What we have actually found, especially with the advent of really high-quality data, where we can actually track workers going from one company to another, is that there are really persistent and sizable gaps, really resulting from the fact that companies do pursue sometimes very different strategies when it comes to setting pay. That agency, that choice that actually companies are exercising, it&#8217;s part of a story that gets lost when we think of broad forces like technology and supply and demand. Again, all of these are important, but I argue in the book that so are choices we&#8217;re making.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-2" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:23] When we talk about the economy as weather, something just happens. The natural forces set the pay, then we really misunderstand that it&#8217;s actually like a house, where we build. Every step of the way, it&#8217;s choices we make, and we get the rooms that we planned for. The low-wage economy we have today was planned for, and choices were made to bring us there, is what I hear you saying.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-0" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:13:48] Yes. One of the things I started to lay out is why we have made really different choices as a society, starting from way back in 1930s and &#8217;40s to &#8217;50s and &#8217;60s, and then changes in the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s. There&#8217;s a social construct underlying some of these changes, but within that, there are active choices being made. Those choices are by major businesses. As citizenry, we are making choices with policies that we may or may not pass. We&#8217;re also making choices as individuals. We&#8217;ll come to this as well in a little bit later, probably.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Workers are making choices with their feet, again, constrained, but nonetheless important ones. How all that comes together to actually explain why wages have so often not kept up part of the story. Here&#8217;s the other thing I&#8217;ll say. The book, just so people don&#8217;t think that it&#8217;s a full doom-and-gloom story, it&#8217;s not just about what went wrong? I also talk about what actually has gone right because there are places where we&#8217;ve done well. This shows us that we can do better. Yes, wages have failed to keep up with productivity over the last broad arc of almost 50 years. Nonetheless, there have been stretches that we&#8217;ve done better.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">In fact, in some ways, what spurred me to write the book was partly the early pandemic, post-pandemic period where we actually saw very fast wage growth, especially for low-wage service workers for the first time in decades. Why did that happen? I had been talking about the importance of a full-employment economy, and where we have a very tight labor market and actually making the market work a bit more like the textbook. That, in fact, happened right there.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">To really try to understand what are some things we can do, what are policy tools we have used, and what are some institutional changes we can do, including looking around at our other peer countries, because there&#8217;s a real diversity of ways where we actually set pay around the world, including in high-income countries. There&#8217;s a lot to learn, and there&#8217;s a lot to be hopeful about. The book is ultimately a hopeful one and not a doom and gloom story.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-3" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:16:27] Carrie Joy, that&#8217;s also how I found your book, like a hopeful one and not doom and gloom. You&#8217;re like coach in people&#8217;s ears. You can do this. Despite the casino economy, you can do this. Talk to us about what metaphors are you finding for the economy that are working across the country? You have this pretty extraordinary vantage point of being in conversation right now, both through WorkMoney, but also through this book tour of talking to millions of people about their financial lives. Is what Arin&#8217;s saying something people know? What are the metaphors that are working, and what are you finding in those conversations?</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-0" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:17:09] Look, it&#8217;s been hard to succeed in this economy for a while. It&#8217;s been getting harder over [sound cut] for too many folks. I don&#8217;t think anybody who looks at numbers would disagree with that. I think the thing that has really changed in the last few years is that people feel like it&#8217;s hard, and an increasing number of folks think that there&#8217;s not a way that&#8217;s going to get any better. Obviously, it just breaks your heart when people are like, &#8220;Well, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and no matter how hard I work, retirement&#8217;s not in reach. Heck, sometimes even just paying all my bills isn&#8217;t even within reach.&#8221;</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">These are people who work in full-time jobs all over the country between the costs of healthcare, housing, and childcare. We can talk about rising costs and income not quite keeping up with some of the big-ticket items, depending on where you are and what stage of life. What is really interesting to me is that the piece that I think is creating most of the feeling that it&#8217;s never going to get any better. It&#8217;s not a math problem for most people. I always say this, money is math and feelings.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The math part is pretty easy. Money in, money out. You want to make more than you have to spend, and you want to make enough that you can save enough to support yourself in a good retirement and live in a system where you feel reasonably sure that that can continue. People are not just because of the uncertainty around AI, but because it has become so much harder over time, and it got a lot harder post-pandemic for a bunch of people. I think that there&#8217;s a sense that it won&#8217;t end. What I found is the knowledge that you are not the only person trying to get up that hill has been the most important thing for significant numbers of people.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I will just admit, I came into building WorkMoney as a pretty mathy person. I was like, &#8220;We&#8217;ll get more money in, better outcomes for people.&#8221; The atomization that we experienced during the pandemic, especially if you&#8217;re an older American, that atomization has really translated into a sense that it&#8217;s bad and it&#8217;s not going to get any better. I have no personal way to overcome the hand of cards I was dealt. The bad news is more people feel worse. The good news is it&#8217;s not that hard for people to regain a sense of agency. If things can just get a little bit better and people understand that they are not alone, that we together have enough power to make things a little bit better for ourselves.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think that really unlocks thinking about some&#8211; I would argue, pretty significant change that&#8217;s possible in this economy. The coming of AI is obviously a huge challenge in a lot of ways. We haven&#8217;t had an excuse or a reason to have a conversation about what this economy is for and what it does. I think AI is creating an opening for us to really lean in and talk about what is hard work, how do we value work in this economy? I think that Americans are really ready to look at one another and choose for ourselves what kind of economy we have going forward.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-4" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:20:11] I think that&#8217;s right. I was really struck by, and you certainly note this in your book too, the way in which people who feel as if they aren&#8217;t making it in today&#8217;s economy. There&#8217;s a shame that people feel because the dominant story we&#8217;re told is that it&#8217;s your fault. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That shame has implications in democracy. When they feel like they&#8217;ve messed up, they don&#8217;t trust in the same way, they don&#8217;t participate in the same way, there&#8217;s a real implication that ripples out way across checkbooks. Do you experience that as you&#8217;re talking to people? Then, how do you flip that script? I know you&#8217;ve mentioned that, but say one beat more about how you can flip that script so that people understand it is, yes, I&#8217;m reading this book about how to save for my own 401(k), and also, it is not my fault that I live in this casino economy.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-1" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:21:09] Shame gurus. Perimenopause, I can feel myself getting a hot flash thinking about it. The shame gurus that tell people that it is their fault, that they can latte celibacy, like not buy that cup of coffee, that will magically make retirement possible. Oh, it sends me through the roof when I hear people saying that. Then, when I hear other folks reflecting it back. You are not poor because of avocado toast. Look, everyone can make different decisions with their personal money.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I feel it&#8217;s very important for folks to take full responsibility for their personal money because that actually builds agency towards something bigger. It is one of the ways to undo that shame. I think the shame is useful to the current system. The shame serves a purpose. Think about when you don&#8217;t open that credit card bill. Credit card interest rates are outrageous. I don&#8217;t want to brag, but I&#8217;ve got incredibly good credit. I get credit card offers for 28%, 29% interest with credit that is outrageously high. Think about what happens if you don&#8217;t open that bill, you just pay that minimum, and you hunch down. The financialization of shame is something that I think that everyday Americans are really starting to grapple with in a way that there&#8217;s whole industries built on it, which is part of why when I say money is math and feelings, I think that the feelings part often drives&#8211;</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-5" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:22:42] Oh, man. Carrie Joy, you&#8217;re leaving us on a cliffhanger. The feelings part drives. We&#8217;ll come back to you. We&#8217;ve been in the emotional landscape of people&#8217;s financial lives, but I want to turn it back over to the structural challenges. One of the things you talk a bunch about is monopsony, which I think is really important for us to understand. Could you explain what it is to us? I&#8217;m sure there are lots of economists with us today, but to economics-adjacent and non-economist folks. If we can still switch jobs, why are people underpaid? How does monopsony impact wages?</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-1" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:23:25] Yes. That&#8217;s a great question, one I&#8217;d love to talk about. Monopsony is a funny word, but it&#8217;s a very simple idea. The idea is that employers have some degree of power over pay because leaving a job is sometimes much harder than we actually assume in the textbook. We&#8217;ve talked about, for example, &#8216;Oh, FedEx pays differently, pays lower than UPS, that Walmart pays lower than Target.&#8221; Yet these pay gaps persist. They persist for long periods of time.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The question is, why? Why don&#8217;t workers just leave? After all, if we think that we have a market economy where it&#8217;s a well-functioning labor market, why can&#8217;t workers just switch jobs? It turns out that they do. They do switch jobs, but it is costly to do so, and it happens much less frequently than we actually may want to believe. The question is, why is that? This is what I go into in the book. There&#8217;s three big reasons. One is that searching for jobs is hard.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">There&#8217;s resumes, interviews, rejections. All the while, you have to show up for your current job while you&#8217;re looking for another one. That&#8217;s not easy. Workers who are paid less, it turns out do search more. For example, let&#8217;s put some numbers. Workers paid, let&#8217;s say, 10% lower, will spend about 5% more time looking. Yes, in the right direction, but not nearly enough. Not nearly enough to actually be able to make that market work like the textbook ideal of competition. The other thing is that it turns out workers, especially those workers who are particularly not great-paying jobs, often underestimate what options are out there.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is an important point, but I hope we come back to because it also touches on the question of personal choice and what we can do when people&#8211; if we actually understand that there&#8217;s more opportunities out there, maybe that 5% more time looking is going to be more like 10% or 15%. That could be an important avenue, for example, but the reality is even with all of that, jobs are just not as easy to switch out of.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then again, on top of that, it&#8217;s the case that jobs are not just interchangeable. One person&#8217;s commute to the same job may be 10 minutes, the other person could be 40. Maybe your kid&#8217;s daycare is right next to your job, and it won&#8217;t be if you switch to another one. For all these reasons, jobs are not quite interchangeable, which also means that if an employer pays somewhat lower, they&#8217;ll lose some people, but other people may still stick around.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then the third reason is perhaps the most obvious one that in some cases, there just aren&#8217;t that many employers who are hiring people with particular qualification in the local labor market. This is somewhat surprising. It turns out that most Americans are in labor markets where there&#8217;s maybe three to four equivalent of employers who are actually hiring people like them, which is surprising. All of this adds up to mean that employers have considerable amount of power to set wages.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">On top of that come what I call monopsony by artifice. What do I mean by that? It&#8217;s that some employers actually manufacture monopsony. Apple, Google, and other major tech companies in Silicon Valley secretly agreed to not recruit from each other&#8217;s. Basically, there was a no-poach agreement, completely illegal, by the way, but nonetheless, it was actually in place. When Google recruiter called an Apple employee, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, got really mad and emailed Eric Schmidt at Google. Eric Schmidt fired that recruiter within the hour, and Jobs replied with just a smiley face. This actually was evidence in a federal case.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The agreements turned out to cut salaries of Silicon Valley engineers. These are people who are pretty high-ranking workers by about 6%. This is just the tip of the iceberg because we have a lots of ways and employers actually make it harder for workers to go and get another job, including by having them sign non-competes, which basically says, &#8220;Hey, if you leave this job for the next six months, a year or two years, you can&#8217;t take a job within this many miles for this industry, and so forth.&#8221; 30 million workers were actually under non-competes in 2014.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is a very important issue. We&#8217;ll talk about choices we make, policies. This is absolutely an area where we can and have tried to do things. The previous administration actually moved to ban non-competes. At this point, it was held up in court, and it&#8217;s not being pursued. It&#8217;s in unknown territory. This goes to show that there are important levers that we have when it comes to making the labor market work better or worse.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-6" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:40] Carrie Joy, as you&#8217;ve been talking to folks, how do you hear people metabolize all of the economics that Arin just laid out. How do they metabolize things like monopsony?</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-2" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:29:54] Most people think about the economy. There&#8217;s a bunch of different words which I can talk about to describe it. Think of MacGyver, for those who are old enough to know who MacGyver is. In order to survive this economy, you have to be very crafty because it&#8217;s a super tricky place. It&#8217;s like a dark, scary forest. You&#8217;ve got to know how to get around it, and it&#8217;s hostile. A lot of times people don&#8217;t want to talk about the economy, and people&#8217;s understanding and perception of the economy varies widely.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">People tend to think about their job or their local housing market. Sometimes people will think about the stock market. One thing that folks don&#8217;t automatically come to and it&#8217;s much easier for them to come to this understanding or conclusion if they&#8217;re around other people who are talking about it this way, but most people don&#8217;t perceive the economy to be a series of choices that are made by people we elect and businesses we use or frequent or invest in.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Many people think of the economy as this like natural weather system that just happens to you. You just hope you have an umbrella when it&#8217;s rainy or sunscreen when it&#8217;s sunny. Especially those of us like me who aren&#8217;t like this. Most folks tend to feel like it&#8217;s a hostile place, an environment of which they have no control. That, I think, it contributes to people&#8217;s general sense that there&#8217;s nothing they can do about it. What&#8217;s interesting is it doesn&#8217;t take much to pierce that veil.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s part of why starting with individual money, where you can do things that have an impact on your experience of your own security and having even just one other person you know who says, &#8220;Yes, you can be good at that,&#8221; and, &#8220;We can make this deck of cards dealt a little bit better.&#8221; Just those two things can be a really transformational experience for most people. Look, I&#8217;ll be honest. Most people don&#8217;t want equality of outcome, but they do want equality of opportunity. They want to know that when they put the sweat and the grind and the time in, that it&#8217;s going to end up for them in a good place, and particularly in a good place for their kids.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think that the bad news is most people feel pretty bad about this current economy. Many folks have views of it that are pretty tuned to the horizon where they&#8217;re feeling anxiety or pain. The good news is it doesn&#8217;t take that much for people to look up. People are pretty smart. They really understand the fundamentals, but they tend to want to take action when they believe it makes sense, which I think is a pretty common-sense approach.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-7" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:32:39] Carrie Joy, there&#8217;s a critique that says, and I think many of us on here have thought this before, that financial literacy work can often put the burden on the individual. It&#8217;s their job to budget their way out of structural problems, which is like, that doesn&#8217;t work. How do you answer that critique?</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-3" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:33:05] Oh, it&#8217;s 100% right. Financial literacy on its own is not the problem. Look, I&#8217;ll be honest. Part of why I wrote the book too is that money is not that complicated. It&#8217;s not rocket surgery. 90% of people, there is a set of things everybody can do, and if they do those things, that is highly likely going to be the best possible decisions. It feels complicated because there&#8217;s a whole industry that makes it complicated so that you pay the money either because you get stuck in a complication or because you need help getting out of one.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think that the reality is that it is not. I will say that ignoring financial literacy and ignoring the fact that people don&#8217;t know the basic math. It&#8217;s not because people are dumb. People are really smart. The reason that people don&#8217;t know is because, again, there&#8217;s an industry that keeps them from it. It is like the both, and I think is really required for structural change, because I don&#8217;t believe that structural change happens unless lots of people decide to make it so.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">To make sure that people understand that they have&#8211; it&#8217;s not that they have agency, like we&#8217;re handing it to them. We inherently have agency as constituents, as market power. Look at Costco. Costco is a great example of what happens. You get a bunch of people together, and you can bargain for cheaper stuff. We have agency as audience. We can decide what kind of content we listen to, or we watch. We could set the narrative. We can decide what we want to be debated by politicians and by regulators.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We can invent things for ourselves. We can decide if there aren&#8217;t financial products that work for us. Why can&#8217;t we make our own? Why can&#8217;t we serve ourselves? I really think that those five levers, constituent power and market power and audience power, and, of course, labor power. The power of being able to set your wages and working conditions on the shop floor, and entrepreneurial power, the power to invent things.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">That&#8217;s the way that we actually get to structural change. I don&#8217;t believe that unless people understand at the individual level how they can see improvement, it is vastly easier for people to take those first steps to get themselves into the best possible place for them to then help put their shoulder to the wheel of structural change.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-8" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:35:24] That&#8217;s a great reflection. Let&#8217;s go back to the structural change question. The types of things that, when people are invested in, let&#8217;s say, WorkMoney or some fighting force for structural change that they could be fighting for. Some of the things I got excited about, Arin, wage boards, sectoral bargaining. I think those are things that are probably unfamiliar to a lot of WorkMoney members, for example, but could really change people&#8217;s lives. Talk to us about what a wage board looks like, where it&#8217;s working, and how do you make sure that the least powerful workers, care workers, domestic workers, have a real seat at the table?</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-2" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:36:06] Yes. Maybe one way to start thinking about what this wage board is, is to think about start with something that&#8217;s more familiar: a minimum wage. What does the minimum wage do? The minimum wage comes and says, &#8220;You know what, because of these problems we just talked about, like monopsony power, employers of choices, you can have a low-wage strategy, paying really low wages, or a higher-wage strategy.&#8221;</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Maybe we want to actually really incentivize companies to do better by workers by setting floor and taking wage out of competition in the sense of paying lower wages in order to compete in the product market. We could do that by setting a minimum wage. This is what we do, at least at this point, in about half the country because 30 states have state minimum wages. Unfortunately, the 20 other states have the federal minimum wage, which is basically like not having a minimum wage because 725 is that low.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We can set a higher minimum wage to reach more people, but there&#8217;s a limit to that because you&#8217;re basically having jobs, sometimes pretty different types of jobs, all sort of paying that same floor. There&#8217;s limits on how high we can plausibly go. I think there&#8217;s certainly room to do more, but at the same time there&#8217;s limits. Then the question is, how do we actually help people who are not quite there? For example, maybe those working in nursing homes, LPNs, childcare workers oftentimes make somewhat more than the minimum wage, even a relatively high minimum wage.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The question is, can we actually have similar standards, but not just for those at the very bottom, but throughout the economy? Now, if that sounds like a radical proposition, here&#8217;s the thing: most of our high-income peer countries do something like that. I was in Sweden a couple months ago, and I&#8217;ll actually be in Austria in a few weeks. Both Sweden and Austria, almost everyone is at a job whose wage has a floor. Doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re exactly at that floor. Maybe they have negotiated something higher.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">However, they can&#8217;t be paid any lower than that. It could be someone working in the nonprofit sector, someone who is an academic economist, or someone who&#8217;s a janitorial worker, someone who&#8217;s working in the hospital. Almost entirety of the workforce actually is covered by something like that. A lot of times it&#8217;s done by collective bargaining. Now we don&#8217;t have collective bargaining laws in this country that would easily allow that, but here&#8217;s the good news: we can actually make other choices, and we can actually do this at the state level.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">One really interesting example comes from Australia, where actually they have a wage board system which sets floors exactly like this throughout the economy that basically workers could negotiate up from, but they can&#8217;t be paid lower than that. The really interesting thing is that we have a number of states here in America who are experimenting with this. Great example: Minnesota nursing home workers have wage floors now for workers of different occupation in the state of Minnesota. Hospital workers in California. There&#8217;s also just the next month, Washington State Childcare actually has a sectoral board that will set its floor as well. We&#8217;re actually starting to see this, and I can give you other examples. For example, Uber drivers or gig workers in Massachusetts have the right to actually a particular floor as well as the right to collectively bargain. These are changes we&#8217;re actually making now here in this country. This is part of what I was saying that this is a hopeful book because we actually can see the green shoots of what it looks like to rebuild a wage standard in a variety of way, be it from corporate policies, corporate choices, but also policy choices and policy choices that don&#8217;t require us to wait to solve politics in Washington DC because, as we all know, that can be sometimes a little hard.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The good news is we don&#8217;t have to wait for that. We can do it here and now, and we can do it locally and experiment by looking at and drawing from the evidence around the world.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-9" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:41:04] I really appreciate that reminder. I&#8217;m also, as you&#8217;re talking, thinking about how important the floor is going to be. I think as the tsunami of AI comes at people, having a floor where people can stand is going to be even more important. I guess my question to both of you is, how does AI change your argument? Does it strengthen the case? Does it open up the politics more? Does it even threaten the very bargaining power that you&#8217;re talking about needed at the state level? CJ, let&#8217;s go to you first and then to Arin. Talk to us about how AI changes your argument.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-4" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:41:44] Oh, I think AI is a terrible opportunity for all of us. I think the next 36 months are going to be determinative in the kind of economy that we have going forward, the kind of economy that my daughter, who&#8217;s in college right now and will hopefully have graduated in the next three years, but by the time she gets out of college, I think it&#8217;ll be a fundamentally different place. Even if it takes longer than that, the opening to have the conversation and to set the policy and expectations that we citizens expect, I think, is happening right now.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think a lot about policy as an outcome; it&#8217;s just frozen power. It&#8217;s not the solution. It&#8217;s the outcome of what we collectively do when we elect people, and we bargain, and we use our market power, and we create the conditions of expectation. I think that right now, when the K-shaped economy is so very K, and a lot of people, not just low-income folks, economic security and precarity is all the way up the income ladder, which I&#8217;m sure folks on the Zoom are aware that the experience of people not being able to make ends meet isn&#8217;t just happening for a small number of Americans.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">It&#8217;s all the way up into the 75th, 80th percentile. Especially if you look at families and wages and how much care costs right now in our society. I think that AI is this moment that makes it incumbent on all of us who want an economy that is centered around the financial well-being and the financial security of all the people who live in it. I think we have an obligation and an opportunity to mobilize folks into state campaigns and to narrative work where we make sure we educate the decision-makers what we expect when we put them in office.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is not a left or right thing. This is a right and wrong thing. I think that most of America is with us, and I think in particular the data center build-out is an incredible chance for all of us to understand how this works for everybody. Because I think there&#8217;s an absolute way to build data centers that ensures that there are good-quality jobs, electricity rates don&#8217;t go up, that grid enhancements are the costs that are borne by the companies that will profit from these, that communities get more revenue, get richer, that the environmental concerns which communities are raising that make a ton of sense. These are all solvable problems.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think there&#8217;s an opportunity for us to get together, both companies and citizens and working people, and say, &#8220;Hey, here&#8217;s the deal that we want.&#8221; I think it&#8217;s a great chance for us to show, not tell, what happens with AI more generally. “WorkMoney” is thinking a lot about how do we help our members and how do our members anchor in America, not just a conversation, but activity, action, expectation into the policy solutions that we expect.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-10" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:44:38] Arin, how about you?</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-3" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:44:40] I think I completely agree with all of that. I think AI really raises the stakes for the arguments that we&#8217;re talking about. I think it is important to understand that technology has never set wages by itself. It always happens within the context of particular institutions, which lead to how that actually gets absorbed. Now, the interesting thing is that this AI moment is actually having us have that conversation that actually hasn&#8217;t happened as much when we have been confronted with major technological change.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">We didn&#8217;t have exactly anything like this in the last several rounds of major technical change, be it introduction of robots and automation, starting in the &#8217;80s, especially, or go back even further, electrification, et cetera. It&#8217;s actually quite remarkable that this is a highly salient issue and that everyone around is talking about, &#8220;Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing?&#8221; Forget about prediction. There&#8217;s way too much emphasis on people trying to predict what&#8217;s going to happen. We have agency in these matters. We absolutely can both choose to direct how this technology actually evolves, how it is adopted, and how it influences the labor market.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This is actually one place where I think it&#8217;s particularly important to have some of these sectoral commissions and sectoral boards that is not just for setting wages but also figuring out how best to actually adopt and implement the technology that complements human expertise as opposed to substituting for human expertise. There&#8217;s a lot of decision to be made. We need those governance structures and institutions which allow us to democratically have a voice to make sure that AI development is pro-worker. It&#8217;s pro-citizen, pro-human, and just all of the things that we actually can control.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The good news, again, is I feel like that this is something that really offers a way to bring us together because people across the country, people across the partisan divide, care a lot about this. This is actually an important moment that could be really transformative in a positive way. I actually think that even though there&#8217;s a lot of risk out there, I&#8217;m also excited about the possibilities.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-11" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:47:24] Great. I&#8217;ve turned to a couple of questions from folks who are with us today. One of them is: does the wage floor correlate with the cost of living for each city? Which I think brings up a question I&#8217;d even turn to both of you, which is, how much is there a national floor versus geographically specific floors? Let&#8217;s turn to you, Arin, first, and then, CJ, if there&#8217;s anything you want to reflect on with that question.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-4" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:47:52] That&#8217;s a great question. Look, cost of living is certainly quite different across different parts of the United States. As it turns out, both cost of living and general wage levels have converged slowly over time, but that convergence is imperfect. As a result, we do have quite a bit of difference across places.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Now, this comes up, by the way, talking about whether we should have a single federal minimum wage or not. Now, I think they are a good argument to have a single floor as a starting point, allowing for states then to further increase beyond that, which is essentially what we have done in this country. Could we do something somewhat different, like having different floors based on cost of living? Absolutely. We could do that. One example is the state of Oregon, that has three different minimum wages: one for Portland, their major metro area, one for smaller metro areas, and then one for rural area.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think there are different possible ways that one could go about it, but fundamentally, having a floor is critical. Also, having at least ability to match the floor and the cost of living, possibly through more local state-level action, is also an important way to go.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-5" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:49:16] I&#8217;d say having run and won wage board campaigns in places&#8211; living in Oregon, by the way, and having run a campaign to raise a national minimum wage, that Arin has it 100% right. What he&#8217;s saying makes sense to people. It&#8217;s like a very common-sense approach. That there should be something that we can all count on no matter what happens, no matter where you are, because whoever&#8217;s in charge of whatever they personally feel, whatever party feels about something in a state, shouldn&#8217;t create a dramatically different standard of living from somebody in a different state with different politics.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Having a baseline that everybody can count on, I think, is a really important part to being able to take things up from there. Then because some just cost so much more in different parts of the country. Housing costs are obviously very different at different places. What small businesses can afford to pay, what they&#8217;re paying for rent, everything can be so different that I actually really, really agree with Arin. We&#8217;ve seen people do it.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This also isn&#8217;t just like pie in the sky. This is the way we&#8217;ve done it. In the last 10 years, we&#8217;ve seen this happen in New York City. Arin&#8217;s examples are more recent than the campaigns that I won, but this was true even 10 years ago. It does feel like this is the obvious answer, is yes, we should have both. Also, it&#8217;s like, what the heck is taking some places so long? We&#8217;ve had this ability and technology for a pretty long time. I&#8217;m pretty excited that a lot of people seem to feel like this is a no-brainer.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think there&#8217;s a lot of political will being built and policy will being built to take seriously the fact that part of why we have an affordability crisis is because people don&#8217;t have enough money. Costs are only too high when you can&#8217;t afford stuff. I think that there&#8217;s a lot of really interesting solutions to that that are going to be determined by the politics and the wages and the incomes and the costs in a particular area. I think that approaching minimum wage from a variety of angles, we know, Arin could talk more about this, has a disproportionate of&#8211; it lifts everything else up on top of it. I think it&#8217;s a great starter.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-12" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:51:22] This next question is one I appreciate given my work with Economic Security Project, and it&#8217;s on cash transfers. The person writes that there&#8217;s some evidence to show that pandemic-era payments strengthened low-wage workers&#8217; bargaining power through the stimulus checks and the child tax credit checks. How does cash transfers or non-labor income fit inside a wage standard? Does it complement? Does it substitute? What&#8217;s your take on that, Arin? Then CJ, you can reflect as well.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-5" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:51:59] I absolutely think that they are complements and not substitutes. I think that we absolutely need to have a strong social safety net, along with making sure wages are adequate and livable. There&#8217;s a couple of reasons for that, partly because, in general, leaning too hard on any one strategy almost always is not the most effective way to go. Look, we&#8217;re not going to be able to reach everyone just with a high enough wage. The obvious group is people who don&#8217;t have a job. What happens if you lose a job? What happens in that period between? What happens if you have some personal injury? The list goes on. For all those reasons, it is, I think, quite important to have a strong safety net.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here&#8217;s the other reason. When you have a strong safety net, it also allows you, actually, to search a bit longer, to maybe get a better job that actually absolutely can raise workers&#8217; leverage in the labor market, just as having enough savings can. This is also where the personal and the structural intersect. All of that means that we want to think holistically about making sure people can be helped in a variety of ways.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">One reason not to only lean on transfers as opposed to workplace standards is that if you only do that, some of that gain, some of the transfers could actually end up putting downward pressure on wages. If that basically does a good thing, more people are willing to work, but then that can actually put a downward pressure on wages unless you actually have a floor. That&#8217;s a perfect reason why, for example, I think the Earned Income Tax Credit and minimum wage go very well together, hand in hand.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">As broadly, I think having a society which both rewards work, making sure it pays well, that actually can also help us build political support for having safety net. There&#8217;s also a lot of evidence that voters strongly support predistribution, making sure work pays well. I think that when they believe that is the case, there&#8217;s more willingness to actually support for certain types of safety net programs. There&#8217;s even a political aspect of why these are complementary. It&#8217;s easier for us to deliver more well-being when we use multiple arrows from our quiver instead of relying on only one.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-6" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:54:57] Anyone who&#8217;s willing and able to work full-time and can&#8217;t get enough work that they can afford a good life shouldn&#8217;t be penalized for that because the system isn&#8217;t providing people enough of what they need. I will just be really clear about this. Most people that we talk to don&#8217;t love the idea of cash transfers. In a society where you could work full-time in a minimum wage job and still qualify for public benefits, something has to be done.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I would argue that it shouldn&#8217;t be on the backs of the people who are willing and able to work full-time, that those folks shouldn&#8217;t have to bear the burden and figure it out in that way that people are so smart and so capable, and people use their networks, and they figure it out, and they go without here and there. I don&#8217;t just mean folks who are living below the poverty line. There&#8217;s a lot of us figuring out how to hold our breath and care for our moms and care for our kids and living what we would have thought were middle-class lives.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">I think that it&#8217;s an incredibly reasonable question, and I think that we have a responsibility as an incredibly wealthy economy to make sure that if people are able to work full-time, that they do get to have that good life. Right now, I think that is not true for enough people. It&#8217;s incumbent on us to figure out what are the range of policy solutions or outcomes that we can reach for. Until we get to a place where we&#8217;ve really figured out how those who are able and willing to work have enough income to care for themselves and their loved ones, I think that we have to talk about safety nets and cash transfers because I think right now our society isn&#8217;t doing the greatest job of making sure that all that hard work is rewarded.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-13" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:56:29] That certainly makes sense. Everything could change so dramatically over the coming years with artificial intelligence.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-7" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:56:35] Yes, that&#8217;s exactly right.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-14" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:56:37] Let&#8217;s close it out with this because we just have a few more minutes. If everyone here had that $30,000 that they were owed per worker, according to EPI, Economic Policy Institute, who, by the way, has a cool calculator where you can go in and put your wages and show how much you should be making if wages had kept up with productivity. If everybody had their $30,000, what&#8217;s the one thing they should do for their own personal finances on Monday or tomorrow? What&#8217;s the one thing they should push for politically from where you two sit? CJ, Carrie Joy Grimes, we&#8217;ll go first to you and then to Arin.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-8" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:57:13] I&#8217;m going to cheat, and I&#8217;m going to say two things that you should do with your personal money. The first thing, this is to choose how you think about your money. For a long time, I would think I&#8217;m bad at money, and I made it so hard to change my money behaviors. What I did is I changed my story from I am bad at money to I can be good at money. Let me be clear: this isn&#8217;t some burn a candle, hold a crystal nonsense. This is behavioral science from sports psychology. You can&#8217;t hit the ball if you&#8217;re not thinking you can hit the ball. You are much more likely to hit that ball if you practice in your mind, hitting it over and over and over again. Decide your money story.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then the second thing I tell everybody to do is whatever that one small thing is that you&#8217;ve been avoiding doing, just do it. Go log into your bank account, log into your credit card balance, go look at the thing, and while you&#8217;re doing it, tell yourself, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to die.&#8221; There&#8217;s no lions chasing you. You&#8217;re just checking on your stuff. If you can do a thing, if you can make a payment, if you can just even absorb what you might have to be considering, take one small action and then notice that you are still alive and everything is okay at the end of it. That is my, your personal money suggestion for folks.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Politically, this is not going to surprise anybody who made it to this point in the Zoom. I would say you should join WorkMoney. Go to workmoney.org and sign up. It is for everybody. We are doing two different things. We&#8217;re making sure that everybody has the individualized information they need to be good with their money, and we&#8217;re figuring out what is the way we can put our collective shoulders to the wheel and push for the outcomes that make that deck of cards fairly dealt to anybody who wants to work hard and succeed in this country. Figure out what your money story should be. You can be good at money. Do one thing that you&#8217;ve been putting off: open the envelope, check that balance. Then number three, go to workmoney.org and join WorkMoney.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-15" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:59:05] Arin.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-6" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[00:59:07] For personal finances, I would say the first thing they should do is read Carrie Joy&#8217;s book. Go to the bookstore, get that book. Seriously, I think, when it comes to personal choices and personal things, the one thing we know is the biggest predictor of major increases in pay for most individual workers is quitting a job and getting another one.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">What&#8217;s really interesting is that people oftentimes who are stuck in particularly low-wage jobs they have a lot of challenges. There&#8217;s a lot of difficulties, but they also sometimes underestimate, systematically, what opportunities are out there. Just finding out about how does your pay compare with other companies, other employers in your area, talking to coworkers, talking to other friends who may be working at a competing company. All of these, just even finding out, like, what are the posted wages for jobs of the type that you have. Some increasing number of states actually require that. Just finding out more, and that sounds like, of course, a lot of people do know that they&#8217;re not, but they don&#8217;t have an ability to get another job. That&#8217;s true; that&#8217;s a real limitation.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Having that information can be useful because what that can also do is that it can lead you to, borrow Carrie Joy&#8217;s term, demand more. That could be demand better pay and actually negotiating. Oftentimes, people are just not ready to actually advocate for themselves. If you actually had that $40,000, what that gives you is more confidence in actually asking for a raise. This is another way in which having personal finances in place does allow you more leverage and more room to actually advocate for yourself.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Policy-wise, get involved with understanding how we can actually raise wages broadly, because, as I say, America deserves a raise. American workers should get a raise. There&#8217;s lots of opportunities out there, be it minimum wage on the ballot to starting looking at what&#8217;s going on and pushing for wage boards, talking to state legislatures, and really try to really ask, why are we not getting paid more, and what can you do about it? That is really something that requires all of us to work together. Let&#8217;s do it.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-16" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:01:54] Let&#8217;s do it. Thank you all so much for being here. We have Arin with The Wage Standard, grab it. Then we have Carrie Joy with The Joy of Money, grab it. We couldn&#8217;t be more honored to have you both with us today. Then, for everyone else, part 2 of our Work and Social Contract series is happening on November 18th, so mark the calendar, and we&#8217;ll have more information out on that. Just thank you all so much. Excellent questions, excellent thoughts from you, Carrie Joy, and Arin, and onward we go. Thank you for being here.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-9" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:30] Thank you so much. Aspen always does such-</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-7" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:32] Thank you.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-10" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:32] -a great job of connecting policy to real life, and it was such a joy and a pleasure to be here.</p> <h3 id="h-arindrajit-8" class="wp-block-heading">Arindrajit</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:37] Yes, it was great. Really enjoyed it.</p> <h3 id="h-natalie-17" class="wp-block-heading">Natalie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:41] Thank you all. Take care.</p> <h3 id="h-carrie-11" class="wp-block-heading">Carrie</h3> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:43] Thanks. Bye.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">[01:02:49] [END OF AUDIO]</p> </details> <details class="wp-block-details is-layout-flow wp-block-details-is-layout-flow"><summary>Resources</summary> <p class="has-h5-variant wp-block-paragraph">Books</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li class="">Dube, Arindrajit. “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708374/the-wage-standard-by-arindrajit-dube/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It</a>.” Dutton. Mar 31, 2026.</li> <li class="">Foster, Natalie. “<a href="https://nataliefoster.me/the-guarantee/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy</a>.” The New Press. 2024.</li> <li class="">Grimes,  Carrie Joy. “<a href="https://thejoyofmoney.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money—No Matter How Much You Have</a>.” Harper Business. May 19, 2026.</li> </ul> <p class="has-h5-variant wp-block-paragraph">Additional resources</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li class=""><a href="https://economicsecurityproject.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Economic Security Project</a></li> <li class=""><a href="https://www.epi.org/resources/wage-calculator/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wage Calculator – Economic Policy Institute</a></li> </ul> </details> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <h2 id="h-highlights" class="wp-block-heading has-h4-variant">Highlights</h2> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">For highlights from this discussion,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@aspeneop/">subscribe to our YouTube channel</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a type="link" href="https://pod.link/1503944129" id="https://pod.link/1503944129">subscribe to our podcast</a>&nbsp;to listen on the go.&nbsp;Check out our playlist or click below to watch.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <h2 id="h-about-this-event" class="wp-block-heading has-h4-variant">About this event</h2> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Economic security shouldn’t be a lottery. Yet for millions of working families, stagnant wages and precarious jobs collide with the daily grind of managing money on shaky ground — leaving stability feeling less like a plan and more like a gamble. Fixing that takes more than one lever. It takes structural reform and the tools people need to take control of their financial lives, working together.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">In “The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It,” Professor Arindrajit Dube maps out how to rebuild a labor market that actually works for workers. In “The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money—No Matter How Much You Have,” Carrie Joy Grimes flips the script on personal finance, showing that financial agency isn’t reserved for the wealthy. Together, their ideas offer something rare: a real blueprint for security that starts at the policy level and ends in people’s pockets.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This conversation — hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on October 7, 2026 — connected these dots and explored the big questions: What will it actually take to fix a broken labor market? How do practical financial tools build real agency, no matter your income? And what does an economy look like when systemic fairness and individual security aren’t trade-offs — but a package deal?</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Our speakers include Dube, Grimes, and moderator Natalie Foster, senior fellow at the Economic Opportunities Program, co-founder of Economic Security Project, and author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy.”</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">For more information about this event, including a transcript, speaker bios, and additional resources, visit:<br><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/building-economic-security-a-book-talk-with-arindrajit-dube-and-carrie-joy-grimes/">https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/building-economic-security-a-book-talk-with-arindrajit-dube-and-carrie-joy-grimes/</a></p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">For highlights from this discussion, subscribe to our YouTube channel:<br><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AspenEOP">https://www.youtube.com/@AspenEOP</a></p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go:<br><a href="https://pod.link/1503944129">https://pod.link/1503944129</a></p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This event is part of our Opportunity in America series:<br><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/series/opportunity-in-america/">https://www.aspeninstitute.org/series/opportunity-in-america/</a></p> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-74627b58 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained" style="padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--xsmall);padding-right:var(--wp--preset--spacing--xsmall);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--xsmall);padding-left:var(--wp--preset--spacing--xsmall)"> <div class="wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-00f60e24 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link wp-element-button" 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event-tabs__nav-link--upcoming"> Upcoming </button> <button class="event-tabs__nav-link event-tabs__nav-link--past"> Past Events </button> </div> </div> <div class="event-tabs__tabs"> <div class="event-tabs__tab event-tabs__tab--upcoming"> <div class="event-tabs__events"> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="604" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-800x604.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="What Employee Ownership Means to Workers" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-800x604.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-1500x1132.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-768x580.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-1536x1159.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-2048x1546.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-1444x1090.jpg 1444w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-1590x1200.jpg 1590w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-894x675.jpg 894w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-896x676.jpg 896w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/GettyImages-2174120916-300x226.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/what-employee-ownership-means-to-workers/">What Employee Ownership Means to Workers</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Thu Oct 29, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="534" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-800x534.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Metrics that Matter: Financial Tools for Evaluating CDFI Mergers and Acquisitions" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-800x534.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1500x1000.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1634x1090.jpg 1634w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1600x1067.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1012x675.jpg 1012w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-1014x676.jpg 1014w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2153656513-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/metrics-that-matter-financial-tools-for-evaluating-cdfi-mergers-and-acquisitions/">Metrics that Matter: Financial Tools for Evaluating CDFI Mergers and Acquisitions</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Tue Nov 10, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Work and the Social Contract in the Age of AI: Where do we go from here?" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-1500x844.png 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-1536x864.png 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-1600x900.png 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Where-do-we-go-from-here.png 1672w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/work-and-the-social-contract-in-the-age-of-ai-where-do-we-go-from-here/">Work and the Social Contract in the Age of AI: Where do we go from here?</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Nov 18, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Gouged — A Book Talk with Lindsay Owens" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Featured_EOP-OIA_December-8-Book-Talk.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/gouged-a-book-talk-with-lindsay-owens/">Gouged — A Book Talk with Lindsay Owens</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Tue Dec 8, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="event-tabs__tab event-tabs__tab--past"> <div class="event-tabs__events"> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Building Economic Security: A Book Talk with Arindrajit Dube and Carrie Joy Grimes" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/EOP-OIA_Oct-7-Building-Economic-Security-Book-Talk-Featured-Image.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/building-economic-security-a-book-talk-with-arindrajit-dube-and-carrie-joy-grimes/">Building Economic Security: A Book Talk with Arindrajit Dube and Carrie Joy Grimes</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Oct 7, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Work and the Social Contract in the Age of AI: How did we get here?" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Featured-image_EOP-FOW-Work-And-The-Social-Contract.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/work-and-the-social-contract-in-the-age-of-ai-how-did-we-get-here/">Work and the Social Contract in the Age of AI: How did we get here?</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Sep 23, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Disposable Workers: A Book Talk with MIT Sloan Professor Paul Osterman" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Event_09.09.2026-Disposable-Workers_BookTalk.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/disposable-workers-a-book-talk-with-mit-sloan-professor-paul-osterman/">Disposable Workers: A Book Talk with MIT Sloan Professor Paul Osterman</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Sep 9, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="534" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-800x534.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Metrics that Matter: Improving Financial Analysis of CDFI Small Business Lenders" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-800x534.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1500x1000.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1634x1090.jpg 1634w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1600x1067.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1012x675.jpg 1012w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-1014x676.jpg 1014w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2203913963-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/metrics-that-matter-improving-financial-analysis-of-cdfi-small-business-lenders/">Metrics that Matter: Improving Financial Analysis of CDFI Small Business Lenders</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Aug 26, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="534" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-800x534.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="The Impact of Foundational Skills on Workforce Success" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-800x534.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1500x1000.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1634x1090.jpg 1634w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1600x1067.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1012x675.jpg 1012w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-1014x676.jpg 1014w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/GettyImages-2147499455-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 36%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/the-impact-of-foundational-skills-on-workforce-success/">The Impact of Foundational Skills on Workforce Success</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Tue Aug 18, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="The Necessity of Employee-Centered Strategies: A Book Talk with Steve Dawson and Jerry Rubin" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Event_07.29.2026-BookTalk-1.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 52% 37%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/the-necessity-of-employee-centered-strategies-a-book-talk-with-steve-dawson-and-jerry-rubin/">The Necessity of Employee-Centered Strategies: A Book Talk with Steve Dawson and Jerry Rubin</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Jul 29, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="450" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-800x450.png" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Employee Ownership Ideas Forum 2026: Owning America&#8217;s Future" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-800x450.png 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-768x432.png 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-1200x675.png 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event-300x169.png 300w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/E-IF-2026-featured-event.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/employee-ownership-ideas-forum-2026/">Employee Ownership Ideas Forum 2026: Owning America&#8217;s Future</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Jun 2 &#8211; 3, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="489" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-800x489.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Ownership During the AI Revolution" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-800x489.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1500x918.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-768x470.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1536x940.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-2048x1253.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1782x1090.jpg 1782w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1600x979.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1103x675.jpg 1103w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-1024x626.jpg 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/GettyImages-1155114338-300x184.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/ownership-during-the-ai-revolution/">Ownership During the AI Revolution</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Wed Jun 3, 2026</time> <small>|</small> Washington, DC</p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="533" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-800x533.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="When Work Isn&#8217;t Enough: Improving Job Quality for ALICE Households" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-800x533.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1500x1000.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1635x1090.jpg 1635w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1600x1067.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1013x675.jpg 1013w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-1014x676.jpg 1014w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1085691710-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/when-work-isnt-enough-improving-job-quality-for-alice-households/">When Work Isn&#8217;t Enough: Improving Job Quality for ALICE Households</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Tue May 19, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card dyn-card--event event-tabs__event"> <div class="dyn-card__wrap"> <div class="dyn-card__media"> <figure class="dyn-card__image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="419" src="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-800x419.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Investing in Job Quality in the South" srcset="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-800x419.jpg 800w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1500x785.jpg 1500w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-768x402.jpg 768w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1536x804.jpg 1536w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-2048x1072.jpg 2048w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1920x1005.jpg 1920w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1600x837.jpg 1600w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1200x628.jpg 1200w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/GettyImages-1178920032-1-300x157.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" style="object-position: 50% 50%" /> </figure> <div class="dyn-card__label"> <span class="has-meta-variant">Economic Opportunity</span> </div> </div> <div class="dyn-card__content"> <h2 class="dyn-card__title has-h5-variant"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/investing-in-job-quality-in-the-south/">Investing in Job Quality in the South</a></h2><p class="dyn-card__meta"><time>Thu May 7, 2026</time></p><p class="dyn-card__cta"><span>View Event</span> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide" role="img" focusable="false" height="13" width="34"><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-wide"/></svg></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="event-tabs__footer"> <hr class="event-tabs__footer-hr"> <button type="button" class="event-tabs__go event-tabs__go--back"> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-left" role="img" focusable="false" height="24" width="24" aria-labelledby="svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-left-title"><title id="svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-left-title">Previous</title><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-left"/></svg> </button> <button type="button" class="event-tabs__go event-tabs__go--forward"> <svg class="svg svg--svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right" role="img" focusable="false" height="24" width="24" aria-labelledby="svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-title"><title id="svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right-title">Next</title><use xlink:href="#svg-assets-svg-icon-arrow-right"/></svg> </button> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h2 class="wp-block-heading has-h4-variant" id="h-about-this-event">About This Event</h2> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-kicker-variant" id="h-series">Series</h3> <div class="post-taxonomies"> <div class="post-taxonomies__layout"> <ul class="post-taxonomy"><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/economic-opportunities-program/series/opportunity-in-america/">Opportunity in America</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-kicker-variant" id="h-programs">Programs</h3> <div class="post-taxonomies"> <div class="post-taxonomies__layout"> <ul class="post-taxonomy"><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/economic-opportunities-program/">Economic Opportunities Program</a></li><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/future-of-work/">Future of Work Initiative</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-kicker-variant" id="h-tags">Tags</h3> <div class="post-taxonomies"> <div class="post-taxonomies__layout"> <ul class="post-taxonomy"><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/tag/economic-development/">economic development</a></li><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/tag/good-jobs/">Good Jobs</a></li><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/tag/job-quality/">Job Quality</a></li><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/tag/podcast/">Podcast</a></li><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/tag/videos/">videos</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-kicker-variant" id="h-topics">Topics</h3> <div class="post-taxonomies"> <div class="post-taxonomies__layout"> <ul class="post-taxonomy"><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/topic/economic-opportunity/">Economic Opportunity</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-kicker-variant" id="h-impact-areas">Impact Areas</h3> <div class="post-taxonomies"> <div class="post-taxonomies__layout"> <ul class="post-taxonomy"><li class="post-taxonomy__term"><a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/impact-area/economic-opportunity/">Economic Opportunity</a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/videos/building-economic-security-a-book-talk-with-arindrajit-dube-and-carrie-joy-grimes/">Building Economic Security: A Book Talk with Arindrajit Dube and Carrie Joy Grimes</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org">Aspen Institute</a>.</p>