A Million Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage

Optimist Economy

Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi

Public Policy, Economics, Government, Economy

4.9 • 829 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t been raised since the era of flip phones. Competing bills introduced in Congress recently would set it at $15 or $17. Is that high enough, and how can we ensure it doesn’t fall so far behind again? Minimum wage debates are dominated by worry about anticipated harms to some businesses, but ignore the proven positive effects for American workers — like narrowing Black-White wage gaps. And most importantly for our resident economist Kathryn Edwards, she gets to revisit her favorite but flawed piece of legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy

Complete show notes with links to articles and data at optimisteconomy.com.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I just made everything disappear on my screen.
0:03.0	Sorry, I don't know where you at.
0:05.5	Follow my voice, Robin. Find me.
0:07.9	Where did you go?
0:15.2	Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.
0:18.0	I'm Robin.
0:18.9	On this show, we believe the U.S. economy can be better,
0:21.5	and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.
0:31.6	We have a couple announcements. One is that if you have a fancy podcast consumption platform,
0:57.1	we have chapters to the episodes now, and you can skip all this. Just go ahead. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. Good to the meet. I think that's chapter three. Second announcement is that you can find us at optimisteconomy.com. You can email us at optimist.com. and we have two ways for you to donate to the show. You can become a paid subscriber to our substack or you can become a regular subscriber
1:02.0	through Buy Me a Coffee. You can also drop off my favorite form of being paid, which is a burlap
1:08.1	sack with a dollar sign on the side that's filled with gold coins, and we can come up with some kind of drop location. We'll work on that one. And the meantime, substack and buy me a coffee are probably the best way to go about it. Probably the safest way to go about that, yeah. I want to add that we've had two great reviews on Spotify this week that both just tickled us. The first
1:27.9	said, give these women money so that they can afford their own hotel rooms, pools, and trucks
1:32.9	related to the first request. And second, one said that they would be a paid subscriber to a
1:40.1	Robin Talks Taxes spinoff, which I just want to say there is an audience for anything
1:44.8	and everything out there, which also leaves me hopeful for our future on this show.
1:51.0	Very hopeful for the future. Speaking of which, I have a fantastic retcon, which is our next segment.
1:56.3	This is now chapter two. No, chapter two. Redcon. The first redcon is that I mentioned in the estate tax episode that this idea of taking
2:05.3	the estate tax and dedicating it to children is something I had talked to the staff
2:10.2	members of Congress about.
2:12.2	Well, Representative Sarah Jacobs from San Diego introduced the Legacy Act to Congress, which would, in fact, raise the
2:19.7	estate tax and dedicate a portion of its proceeds to a children's trust fund to help specifically
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.