How to Build an Economy That Works for Everyone | Nick Romeo

Apr 15, 2025

Nick Romeo, a journalist featured in The New Yorker and author of 'The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy', shares compelling insights on transforming our economic landscape. He discusses the urgent need for a new definition of living wage and the power of cooperative ownership models. Romeo critiques traditional economics for oversimplifying human needs and explores innovative gig work solutions that prioritize fairness. The conversation also highlights sustainable business practices and the potential of collaborative ownership in reshaping societal norms.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Beyond Math in Economics

Economics education needs expansion beyond neoclassical market assumptions to include history, behavioral economics, and philosophical questions about fairness.
Economics is not just math; it involves normative issues like resource distribution and societal obligations that math alone cannot resolve.

INSIGHT

Living Wage is Political Issue

The definition of a living wage has shrunk over time from enabling a middle-class life to barely covering immediate expenses.
Defining what a living wage means is a political and moral question, not just a mathematical one.

ANECDOTE

Well-Paid Maids Success Story

Aaron Sayedian runs Well-Paid Maids, a cleaning service paying higher-than-living wages consistently.
His motive was to demonstrate that businesses can succeed and grow without exploiting workers' wages.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

As a journalist, Nick Romeo has interviewed people doing remarkable things, from running worker-owned companies to redesigning gig work as public infrastructure. These experiences shaped his new book, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy, and led him to one big insight: a better economy isn’t just possible—it’s already here. In this episode, Nick and Dart talk about the difference between market wages and living wages, why mainstream economics underestimates people, and how everything from co-ops to experiments in building gig work platforms as public utilities are reimagining the role of work in society right now.

Nick Romeo is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He writes about policy, power, and the systems that shape how we live and work.

In this episode, Dart and Nick discuss:
- Why we need a new definition of a “living wage”
- The power of co-ops, trusts, and employee ownership
- How gig work can be redesigned to serve workers
- What it means to design an economy around fairness
- How ownership models shape the future of work
- Why traditional economics misses what really matters
- And other topics…

Nick Romeo is a journalist and author who covers bold ideas in economics, policy, and philosophy. He’s reported for The New Yorker on everything from Austria’s job guarantee experiment to Spain’s Mondragon cooperative and Nicholas Humphrey’s theory of consciousness. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and Scientific American. He teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. His latest book, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy, offers a roadmap for a fairer, more sustainable economy. Praised by The Guardian as “enlightening and inspiring” and called “brisk and sensible” by The Washington Post, it showcases real-world models that are already changing how we think about work, wages, and ownership.

Resources Mentioned:
The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy, by Nick Romeo: https://www.amazon.com/Alternative-How-Build-Just-Economy/dp/1541701593
CORE Economics Project: https://www.core-econ.org
MIT Living Wage Calculator: https://livingwage.mit.edu/
Well-Paid Maids: https://www.wellpaidmaids.com/
Tax Justice Network: https://taxjustice.net/

Connect with Nick:
Website: https://www.nickromeowriter.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-romeo-b4486393/

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.