We are excited to be joined today by Alex Williams, the principal US economist at Common Wealth, a progressive think tank operating across the US and UK, as well as a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Editor-in-Chief of the Substack newsletter Continuous Variation. Previously, Alex worked at Employ America, where he advocated for full employment policies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation about progressive economics. The first part of the episode takes us from Alex’s background as an economist to the economic record of the Biden administration, whose economic program has come to be known as Bidenomics. Alex’s recent piece for Common Wealth titled “Beyond Bidenomics” serves as the jumping-off point for this part of our conversation.
As the episode goes on, we turn to a discussion about a progressive economic program for the future, digging into the importance of active state management of the economy, whether in terms of provision of basic needs like healthcare and housing or the transition away from fossil fuels and towards a green economy.
This discussion links nicely with a new project by Common Wealth called Forces of Production, which is geared precisely towards facilitating effective state management of the economy by providing detailed analysis of economic data from a progressive perspective. More specifically, the project is a macro data newsletter that will be published monthly on Substack, with its first issue out next Monday, February 9th. We will link the newsletter’s launch post outlining what the project is all about in the show notes below, and definitely recommend you check it out.
Show Notes
Forces of Production launch post: “Atop the Forces of Production” (1/20/26)
Credits
Theme music by our youngest brother Tate.
Cover art by Arthur Santoro.
