Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast

Dylan Gottlieb on Yuppies, Financialization, and the New Inequality

The year was 1984, "The Year of the Yuppie," according to Newsweek magazine. Yuppies may have been a classic 1980s stereotype, but they were also a very real demographic as revealed in this month's episode featuring our very own Dylan Gottlieb. Gottlieb explains how hundreds of thousands of highly-educated, young, urban professionals flocked to New York and other cities during the 1980s, transforming the US economy in the process. Yuppies, Gottlieb argues, were the footsoldiers of late twentieth-century financialization, writing the legal briefs and crunching the numbers for the corporate takeovers that fueled Wall Street's rise and the growing inequality that accompanied it. They were also some of financialization's primary beneficiaries. As other Americans saw their wages stagnate and opportunities dwindle, yuppies—and the high salaries they earned—stood out as a lone bright spot in the broader downward 1980s economy, attracting attention from retailers, developers, city officials, and national politicians.

Justin Leroy on the Lowest Freedom, Racial Capitalism, and Abolition Democracy

The very dregs. Of the very lowest kind. This is how radical abolitionist David Walker described the freedom accorded Black people in the 19th century. In this month's episode, Justin Leroy explores the economic thought of people like Walker, alongside Maria Stewart, William Apess, James McCune Smith, Frederick Douglass, T. Thomas Fortune, and Ida B. Wells. Despite their prominence in the field of African American history, these figures have rarely been taken up as economic thinkers or theorists of racial capitalism. Treating them as such, as Leroy does, offers an alternative narrative of racial capitalism's evolution outside the slave South, the limits of freedom under capitalism and white supremacy, and a possible path forward through the pursuit of abolition democracy.

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism

For those in the Global North, the twentieth century was the Fordist century—an era of mass production and mass consumption. But as Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in their new book, there's another order afoot: Muskism [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/477340/muskism-by-tarnoff-quinn-slobodian-and-ben/9780241805114]. Elon Musk, they show, is an avatar for a whole range of phenomena that have shaped our world: from a vision of white supremacy fostered in South Africa; to a symbiosis between Silicon Valley and the warfare state; to a world where founders become technokings; to a dream of a posthuman future where man and machine have merged into a networked whole. Muskism, they reveal, is a new operating system for the twenty-first century. Listen in to this very special episode—recorded live and in person—to learn more.

Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment

Today, we welcome Jessica Levy, co-host of Who Makes Cents, onto the program—not as an interviewer, but as a guest. She's here to talk about her remarkable new book, Black Power, Inc: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics [https://www.pennpress.org/9781512828573/black-power-inc/]. This book traces the strange career of black empowerment: from civil rights protests to the boardroom, and from the streets of urban America to the townships of South Africa. Black empowerment, she reveals, was a protean concept, at once radical and conservative, that allowed different constiutencies to sometimes push for change, and at other times, to co-opt more transformative alternatives. Along the way, we'll grapple with a big question: is it possible to use corporations to combat the inequalities that racial capitalism has created?

Sean Vanatta Joins for a Banking Mega-Pod

To many, banking remains largely invisible—a hidden circulatory system that allocates capital and credit throughout the economy. If it's worth paying any attention to at all, it's only in moments of crisis—when things clot up, and circulation stops entirely. But in recent years, business and financial historians have reminded us that banks are far more than quiet functionaries. In fact, they are foundational to virtually every aspect of modern life: from public and private investment, to the relationship of the state to its citizens, to the distribution of wealth, to the geographical apportionment of money. In short, understanding banking is essential to seeing how power works under capitalism. To help us do that, I can think of no one better to have on than Sean Vanatta, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and the author of the two books we'll be discussing today: Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America and Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control. Listen for some big-brained takes on the history—and just possibly the future—of banking in the United States.