How to End Low Wage Work—Forever

The Money with Katie Show

Money with Katie

Investing, How To, Self-improvement, Business, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you solve a problem like the disconnect between “wages employers are willing to pay” and “wages employees need to survive”? If you’re my guest this week, the answer is: a wage subsidy. Today on the show, I speak with Ben Glasner, an economist with a PhD in public policy and management in search of answers for how to build a fairer economy, about the benefit proposal that he says has two very critical things most proposals of this nature lack: efficient targeting and bipartisan support. We discuss: The significance of the fact that 21 million Americans earn less than $16 per hour, and two-thirds of those workers are women Why other attempts at incentivizing job creation are expensive ($100,000–$200,000 per job) and poorly targeted The target wage and proposed funding structure that Ben and his coauthor believe will minimize or eliminate fraud and make small business hiring more competitive Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://moneywithkatie.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get your copy of Rich Girl Nation, one of Barnes & Noble's Best Business Books of 2025:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.moneywithkatie.com/rich-girl-nation⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcripts, show notes, resources, and credits at: https://moneywithkatie.com/the_mwk_show/end-low-wage-work-forever/. — Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Think about cheese.
0:02.0	Make your thoughts cheesier.
0:04.2	Now add 100% chicken breast fillet, Chipotle sauce and Amadea cheese melt.
0:08.3	And it's giving the new cheesy chicken stack at McDonald's.
0:12.0	Did we mention it's cheesy?
0:13.9	Cheese.
0:15.8	Available to the 4th of Jan, 2026 from 11 a.m.
0:18.1	Plus and participation may vary.
0:19.2	Subjects availability.
0:21.5	I think it is one of the most important myths that we have to break down when we talk about
0:26.4	low-wage labor and work in the middle class. When we think about the fact that low-wage labor
0:31.2	is disproportionately done by women, especially in caregiving, education, and service roles,
0:36.7	I think like home health aides, child care workers,
0:39.5	restaurant and retail staff. Those jobs are absolutely essential to the functioning of our economy.
0:44.4	But historically, American political narratives and kind of sentimental narratives have treated
0:49.3	as a second best relative to the idealized blue-collar labor market. So when we think about more than 20 million workers who earn kind of at that lower
0:57.9	threshold, people under $16 an hour, that's a low-wage workforce we're actually talking about,
1:02.3	not some mental image that many still carry around from the legacy of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
1:10.2	I saw this article titled How to End Low-Wage Work Forever, shared in Nickma
1:16.7	Julie's newsletter of dollars in data, and it had that classic, meaty, long-read energy
1:23.4	that I always set aside to digest on a rainy day.
1:26.5	Because the problem of low-wage work in the United States is an entrenched and frustrating one,
	...

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