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Smart Talk: Minimum wage hike?; VP choice matter?

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What to look for on Smart Talk Tuesday March 8, 2016:

Gov. Tom Wolf has signed an executive order to raise the minimum wage for state workers under his jurisdiction and employees of Pennsylvania state government contractors from $7.25 to $10.15 an hour.

The governor supports increasing the minimum wage statewide and this could be the first step in a campaign to do so.

Supporters say a higher minimum wage would give low-income workers more spending money and put tens of millions of dollars back into the state’s economy.  Opponents counter a minimum wage hike will result in a loss of jobs, especially some those workers without many skills who need the jobs the most.

We’ll take a look on Tuesday’s Smart Talk.

Appearing on the program are Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Center and Alex Halper, Director of Government Affairs for the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry.

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Alex Halper and Mark Price

Also, there’s already media speculation about who the leading presidential contenders would name as their running mates if they win their party’s nomination. 

It’s rare to find a story that doesn’t include the narrative that a potential running mate would come from a battleground state in the presidential election.  The idea being that the vice presidential candidate would deliver that state’s voters to the ticket. 

Is that really the case? 

Our guests Tuesday have researched and written a book called The VP Advantage: How Running Mates Influence Home State Voting in Presidential Elections.  They are Kyle Kopko, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Elizabethtown College and Christopher Devine, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

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Kyle Kopko and Dr. Christopher Devine

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