No Overtime for the Supervisor of Sandwiches

Optimist Economy

It wasn’t just hourly factory jobs that were supposed to come with a 40-hour workweek. Even salaried jobs were supposed to get overtime pay, though very few do do anymore. Overtime protections are the only legal mechanism enforcing work-hour limits, and for 50 years, the salary threshold that determines who qualifies to receive overtime has been left to erode. Employers found another workaround too: just call the sandwich maker a "sandwich manager." Now, the new no-tax-on-overtime deduction isn't protecting workers — it's rewarding the kind of overwork it was overtime was originally designed to punish. Fixing the law governing overtime would be a huge and instant boost not just to the U.S. economy, but to our work-life balance.


Chapters:
00:01:43 Announcements
00:02:32 Retcon: Economic data reliability
00:05:54 Terms & Conditions: Tenterhooks; Perquisite 
00:08:23 Big Pilcrow: Overtime 
00:45:27 Executive Orders: Badge of shame for working past 40 hours; more colorful cars
00:46:52 Spiritual Sponsors: Awesome first bosses; Faraday e-bike

Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders?  Send them to optimist.economy@gmail.com

2026-05-19 48 min

Available Results

Generated results are saved to the knowledge database for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Extract Knowledge

Pick what you want extracted first. Model, scope, and chapter options appear after a template is selected.

Generated results for public episodes are saved to the knowledge database so they can be reused and searched later.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.