Why Wages Are Growing From the Bottom Up and Middle Out (with Arin Dube)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, Arin Dube, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, joins us to discuss his latest research, which suggests that the American labor market is undergoing a remarkable transformation. The widespread wage inequality that rapidly expanded between 1980 and 2019 is finally reversing, and American paychecks are growing again—especially at the bottom end of the income scale. In this enlightening conversation, Dube explains how and why the labor market has changed, how that's affecting wages, and how it all contributes to a virtual cycle of middle-out economic growth. Arin Dube is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, well-known for his expertise in labor economics and public policy and his groundbreaking empirical research on minimum wage. His work often involves empirical analysis and utilizes large-scale datasets to provide evidence-based insights into the effects of various policy interventions. Dube's research has been widely recognized and cited, contributing to the ongoing discussions among policymakers and economists around labor market dynamics and policy design. Twitter: @arindube The Unexpected Compression thread https://twitter.com/arindube/status/1724147807563477440 NBER Working Paper https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31010/w31010.pdf Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:10.0	It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down.
0:15.5	Middle out economics is the answer.
0:17.8	Because Wall Street didn't build this country.
0:20.1	Great middle class built this country.
0:22.2	The more the middle class thrives, the better the economy from the middle out.
0:42.0	Welcome to the show.
0:44.0	Goldie, I'm so excited today that we get to talk to Arin Dubay, who is one of our absolute favorite
0:56.9	economists and who has been incredibly useful and consequential in characterizing the job effects of minimum wage increases
1:08.8	over the last 10 years.
1:11.1	It's been a long time since you and I talked to him in the early days of the $15 minimum wage.
1:18.0	Right, and I think you and I first talked to him together, it was like early 2015.
1:24.5	It was as the minimum wage, the $15 minimum wage
1:27.8	had started to be implemented in Seattle.
1:30.3	And there was a big media battle, you know,
1:34.3	over public perception.
1:36.5	Yeah, those were in the days when everybody truly
1:39.0	had thought we had lost our minds.
1:41.2	Uh-huh.
1:41.8	And Seattle would be a wasteland. That's right. But Arran has gone on to do some of the best
1:47.9	work characterizing the effect of raising wages and the empirical evidence as we have told our listeners a
1:54.4	thousand times has been you know quite quite clear that there has been effectively
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Civic Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Civic Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.