RPL webinar encourages listeners to reflect on economic myths and imagine alternative systems
On April 7, 2025, Religion and Public Life hosted the third session of Breaking the Matrix, a five-part series of online conversations on carcerality in the United States. This panel, "The U.S. Economy," explored the invisible matrices of the U.S. economic system, and its myths and structures that we often take for granted as natural or inevitable. As shifts in labor, technology, and climate transform the global economy, this conversation examined how we might reimagine our institutions to build a more just and inclusive future.
Becca Leviss, MTS ’25, CRPL ’25, moderated the discussion, which featured Vishal Reddy, Executive Director of WorkFour; Lauren Paul, Senior Director of Strategic Advancement at the Institute on Race, Power, & Political Economy; and Nati Linares, Co-Founder & Artist Organizer at Art.coop.
To lay the groundwork for the conversation, Paul challenged the neoliberal legacy that positions firms as the engines of economic growth, critiquing the false promises of trickle-down economics. She named key economic myths—such as the centrality of the market, the illusion of race-neutral policy, and the growing distrust in democratic governance—as narratives that must be actively disrupted.
“When advocating for new work, we need to be intentionally inclusive of all identity groups,” she added, pointing to how programs like the New Deal systematically excluded Black communities and immigrant workers.
This presented a key theme of the session—that economics is not neutral but cultural and ideological. Most importantly, a large part of the economy is driven by storytelling and myths, which are themselves also not neutral.
Another myth, addressed by Reddy, is that of the fixed workweek—an assumption that is so deeply engrained in American culture that it is rarely questioned. In fact, the very act of questioning it brings up accusations of laziness that in turn also need to be countered. When it comes to the cultural perception that working less than 40 hours a week is lazy, Reddy argued that “statistically, we know that’s not true. [In fact,] workers have become more productive.” He advocated for replacing the myth of worker laziness with new myths like executive selfishness, asking instead, “Why is there hoarding of wealth, resources, and power that is preventing people from working less?”
Reddy highlighted how the 40-hour, 5-day workweek comes from a historical anomaly often misattributed to Henry Ford and FDR, instead of the decades of organizing by labor unions to work less, resulting in the 40-hour work week. While there are some legal barriers to a decreased work week, Reddy explained that a lot of the barriers have to do with a lack of imagining alternatives. In pilot programs, for example, the 32-hour, 4-day workweek has proved to be effective, with 91% of companies staying with it after the conclusion of the pilot program. Reddy concluded,
“Collective myths become collective realities . . . But once people experience the counterintuitive nature of working less and achieving more, they become storytellers in their own right.”
Much of the work of reimagining the myths of the current US economy also falls on the shoulders of artists, for whom moral imagination is an inherent aspect of their work. Linares emphasized that even so, artists are subjected to the same limiting beliefs when “people just don’t value art.” Contrary to what we might assume, she continued, “even progressives and radicals aren’t always willing to support [imaginative] art.”
This lack of material support for creative forms of moral imagination reinforces the myth that artists’ work is valueless unless it generates profit. This is symptomatic of a general lack of support for non-traditional forms of work. “If you challenge what’s going on, you’re seen as this authoritarian Marxist person, as opposed to [someone] actually talking about deeper democracy,” Linares explained.
In response to this economic barrier to artistic forms of moral imagination, Linares stressed the importance of the solidarity economy, claiming that artists and cultural workers can take on the role of modeling economic alternatives. Linares pointed out that modeling such alternatives isn’t innovative work, saying, “Solidarity economy isn’t [a] new framework. It’s something very rooted in practices that we’ve always had, but maybe we’ve forgotten.” It was jazz musician mutuals and Black cooperatives, she explained, that responded to their systematic exclusion from the economy by creating mutual aid practices such as food co-ops, land trusts, and alternative music platforms. Artists “reindigenize” economies and “remix” inherited models when they return to practices of solidarity economy.
Building on the discussion of changing narratives and understanding the history of economic systems and alternatives, Leviss asked how we can expand the concept of freedom through economics. Restructuring how we fund arts and how we define the workweek were both given as examples of rethinking our perception of freedom as it relates to economics. Paul also emphasized that economic freedom has always been tied to political freedom, asking, “how can you really be free if you have the right to vote but can’t afford your groceries?”
The panelists agreed that freedom must include the ability to thrive materially and emotionally. This means that we must also critique systems that seem to propose the myth of freedom while simultaneously reinforcing structures of harm. Philanthropy, for instance, was cited by Paul as a key example. U.S. law only requires foundations to spend 5% of their wealth annually to receive tax breaks, ensuring that benefit while allowing the other 95% to quietly support investments into extractive industries. This means that philanthropy can be used as a public relations tactic to hide the exploitative use of these large sums of money.
In contrast, Paul explained the power of “baby bonds” as a policy of wealth redistribution that functions as endowments that actually benefit individuals. Baby bonds use public trust accounts to invest in every child’s future from birth. These funds, which grow over time, can then be used for education, healthcare, or housing. This would require a radical reframing of how we perceive philanthropy and endowments since, currently, “we’re okay endowing institutions, but we’re averse to endowing individuals.”
Shifting to the urgency of our current moment, Leviss and Reddy emphasized the transformative possibility of moments of crisis given the right infrastructure. Thinking of the recent crisis created by the LA wildfires, Reddy called out the fact that the daily grind of “work, in a lot of ways, doesn’t let folks confront the reality of what’s happening in their world [outside of themselves].” Transformation requires us to collectively adapt our current systems to more creative systems that allow us to see crisis as opportunities for change, rather than a momentary disruption.
The matrix of the U.S. economy might seem intimidating to many, but what became overwhelmingly clear over the course of the conversation is that it is more than a set of structures. The U.S. economic matrix is held up by myths, stories, and beliefs, meaning it is susceptible to change if we can only imagine it.
The panelists encouraged listeners to reflect on what myths they have inherited and then invest time into the power of imagination, solidarity, and lived alternatives that shape the economy into one that serves not only firms and large-scale companies, but the people themselves.