When we study capitalism, we usually focus on the active time in people’s lives: the moments where things like work, consumption, production, trade, accumulation, and exchange all happen. But Teresa Ghilarducci, the guest on this week’s episode, argues that capitalism also shapes what happens next, in that period after people’s working lives have come to an end.

Teresa’s new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy tells the story of how retirement—just like work—has become much more precarious over the past several decades. It’s a story about politics, about demographics, about economics. How we pay for retirement, she reveals, tells us a lot about what we value in our society, and how that’s changed over time. And along the way, she offers us a few policy proposals that just might remedy the way we handle retirement today.

Check out the episode here!

Teresa Ghilarducci is a labor economist and nationally recognized expert in retirement security. She holds the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in economic policy analysis in the Economics Department at the New School for Social Research and directs the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) that focuses on economic policy research and outreach.