Alessandro, Charlie & Pomelo: The Raise the Wage Act of 2019

Colgate University Public Economics Course

This podcast will place an emphasis on the implications of the Raise the Wage Act of 2019 within the greater context of poverty and inequality. The Economic Policy Institute states that this act is intended to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, which implies that this policy will more than double the minimum wage and have large economic impacts within the domestic marketplace. While we have not yet covered the poverty and inequality section of this course, we believe that the Raise the Wage Act is of the utmost importance and very relevant to other topics we have already reviewed in class. Rather than seeing certain states enforce different minimum wages than others in contemporary society, this act would set an unprecedented standard at the national level. Bearing in mind that the policy is currently under evaluation in Congress, and has not yet been federally mandated, our aim in this podcast is to explore both positive and negative outcomes of the Raise the Wage Act. To facilitate this analysis, we have consulted Professor Sylvia Allegretto, labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Nardos Beyene, Visiting Instructor in Economics at Colgate University.