On October 8th at 7pm, colleagues at Pacific Lutheran University will hold their latest installment of the Ruth Anderson Public Debate, where two teams (one expert and one student debater each) will engage in a debate on the subject of increasing the minimum wage in Tacoma to $15 an hour. Sound Economics will be there covering the debate live, and we encourage those economically-minded readers to attend if you can! If you cannot attend, follow the debate on Twitter; a small handful of questions for the debaters will be selected from Twitter submissions.
In the weeks leading up to the debate, Sound Economics will highlight some previous posts on the minimum wage debate (such as this one by Lorraine Black and all of these), and present updates as the nation experiments with minimum wage increases. Three interesting reads on the topic today:
- The Washington Center for Equitable Growth shares a post on the history of the minimum wage in the U.S.
- A recent poll from the Initiative on Global Markets Forum at the University of Chicago highlights economists’ perspectives on the impacts of minimum wage increase proposals.
- A post this morning on Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture digs into the data on the Seattle minimum wage increase proposal, focusing on employment impacts.
Stay tuned for more on the minimum wage, and join us for the public debate on October 8th!