Jared Bernstein

Yes, I did.

I worked in the Labor Department in the chief economist's office.

area, I would be right.

I am... I try not to be that economist.

I'll tell you what kind of economist I am in that sense.

The...

Most economists are problematic for politicians because they explain to them why they can't do what they want to do.

A good economist can't.

The economist says, sir, I understand where you're coming from.

Ma'am, I understand, but you can't do that for these reasons.

So I'm not that kind of economist.

I try to figure out, if not the optimal, let's look at

There is a level to which you could raise the minimum wage that would be hugely problematic.

And there's a level to which you could raise it that would help low wage workers a lot more than it would hurt them.

So let's go to the second level, not the first one.

Well, first of all, I wouldn't be lying.

And I actually think that's really kind of foundational.

I mean, the way we used to talk about this when we were in the White House was we would say,

correctly, we just got a great GDP report.

We just got a great jobs report, you know, 200,000 jobs, 3% growth.