EPI in the news

• 5 Facts About the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act

  Because of this placement, the break time law failed to cover approximately 1 in 4 working women of childbearing age—or nearly 9 million working women. According to the Economic Policy Institute, this includes “more than 1 million black women, 976,000 Hispanic women, 825,000 Asian women, more than 6 million white women, and 185,000 women of other races.

  Center for American Progress | January 27, 2023
• Corporate Profiteering Is Driving Inflation

  To check this practice, the Economic Policy Institute proposed a temporary excess profits tax, which could balance the pricing power of massive, consolidated corporations. They argue that the pandemic has distorted pricing practices, which are not useful economic signals but just a temporary mismatch between supply and demand.

  Ms. Magazine | January 27, 2023
• The Union Membership Rate Has Dropped to a Historic Low. It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

  “The fact that tens of millions of workers want to join a union and can’t is a glaring testament to how broken U.S. labor law is,” the Economic Policy Institute asserts in response to the BLS report. ​“It is urgent that Congress pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. State legislatures must also take available measures to boost unionization and collective bargaining.”

  In These Times | January 27, 2023
• Roaming Charges: The Ugliest Thing in America

  According to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, states with restrictive abortion laws also have worse economic conditions, lower wages, less employment security, higher incarceration rates, and less access to unemployment benefits.

  Counterpunch | January 27, 2023
• Who gets paid minimum wage in Michigan? Only 1% of workers, as pay soars

  Only 1 percent of Michigan’s 4.4 million workers, about 52,000 total, were making minimum wage when the rate increased this month, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington D.C. that conducts research.

  Lansing City Pulse | January 27, 2023
• Jamie Dimon is going to make a lot less than he did last year as he joins Apple’s Tim Cook as the latest big CEO to lose out on a bigger payday

  In recent years, a growing conversation about executive compensation and economic inequality has been hotly debated. Executive pay has grown 1,460% since 1978, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute last year. In 2021, CEOs earned 399 times as much as a typical worker.

  Fortune | January 27, 2023
• Joe Biden’s Social Security Plan Is to Tax the Rich — Will It Work?

  Based on data from the Social Security Administration, the percentage of earned income subject to Social Security’s payroll tax has declined from 90% in 1983 to just 81.4% as of 2021. As noted by a recently published blog from the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the lowest level of earnings being subjected to the payroll tax in 49 years. More importantly, it’s confirmation that wage growth for high-earning workers is outpacing the near-annual increase in the maximum taxable earnings cap for Social Security’s payroll tax.

  Motley Fool | January 27, 2023

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