Debating Public Policy Series: Debating the Minimum Wage

For our inaugural Debating Public Policy Series event, the UNC Program for Public Discourse invites two UNC faculty members to debate the advantages and disadvantages of the Biden administration’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15.

This event occurred on April 19th, 2021, at 5:00 pm

Debaters:

| Dr. Lucca Flabbi is an Associate Professor in the UNC Department of Economics. Dr. Flabbi is an applied microeconomist and econometrician with expertise in labor/population economics and in applied econometric methods.

His research focuses on gender discrimination in labor markets, labor market search and frictions, earnings inequality across skill groups, the role of flexibility on wages, simultaneous marriage and labor market searches, intergenerational mobility, and schooling decisions.

| Dr. Paige Ouimet is a Professor of Finance at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. Dr. Ouimet has several research projects looking at income inequality and the role of firms. She also has researched ESOP (employee share ownership plans) and employee stock options and their impact on labor productivity, wages, and turnover.

Her research agenda is concentrated at the juncture of finance and labor economics, and she is interested in how decisions studied in finance impact employee stakeholders. Specifically, how those effects are reflected in firm performance and, hence, corporate finance decisions.

Moderator:

| Kevin Marinelli serves as Executive Director of the Program for Public Discourse and teaches in the Department of Communication. He teaches courses in rhetorical studies, and his scholarship centers on public argument. He has published essays in Rhetoric Society Quarterly and Argumentation and Advocacy, including his most recent essay on the emergence of Black Lives Matter. Kevin also leads the Agora Fellows, a group of undergraduate students committed to the study and practice of public discourse in contemporary democracy. Currently, Kevin is investigating practices of rhetorical citizenship.

Kevin holds a Ph.D. in speech-communication from the University of Georgia and an M.A. in the same subject from San Jose State. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in both communication studies and political science from the College of Charleston.

[purpp-esque]

Even if a netional minimum wage was set, there'd still be differences in weight of dollars accross the state. Less developed places have less income inequality, so higher price differences on products is less feasible. Businesses would either leave that state, or lower their prices. Then someone who came from a richer state would have much more money to spend. They'll flood that place and the prices will jump and you now have more income inequality, and spreading inflation of prices.