EPI in the news

• Democrats Are Rushing Into a Job Guarantee. It Could Be a Huge Mistake.

   

  Unfortunately, Democrats do not yet have a proposal that can bring these aspirations to life. One problem to work through is the traditional Democratic question of how to finance their new program. (Republican policy ideas never have this issue —they just put everything on the credit card and stick the next president with the bill.) It’s quite a large expenditure, perhaps half a trillion dollars a year, depending on the exact contours. Progressives have circulated polling showing support for a job guarantee financed by a 5 percent income tax hike on earnings over $200,000 a year, but Josh Bivens at the liberal Economic Policy Institute notes that that would cover less than a fifth of the cost.

  New York Magazine | April 26, 2018
• As AZ Teachers Strike, Economists say Reasons are Obvious

   

  Public school teachers across Arizona plan to walk out of their classrooms Thursday to demand higher wages and better funding for schools.  The latest economic research suggests teachers have valid reasons to feel left behind. Arizona teachers make just 63 cents on the dollar compared to other workers with college degrees.  That’s the largest gap in the nation, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, where Lawrence Mishel is a labor market economist. “Teachers’ wages have really lagged behind that of other workers with similar amounts of experience and education,” says Mishel, “and we find that to be true even when we include the fact that teachers get better benefits.” (whole story)

  Public News Service | April 26, 2018
• Why Teacher Pay Raises Can Prove So Tough to Win

   

  Nationally, teachers today are paid on average $60,483 annually—17 percent lower than America’s typical college graduates, according to a recent survey conducted by the National Education Association.  And teachers have lost ground in recent years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on lower- and middle-income workers. Its analysis found that while college graduates’ average weekly pay rose by $124 between 1996 and 2015, teachers’ pay declined by $30 over that time when adjusted for inflation.

  Education Week | April 26, 2018
• Taking on Walmart Is No Easy Fight for Cities

   

  But there are additional reasons why officials might scrutinize the company more than others. “They do set the standard in a lot of places,” says David Cooper of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “If Walmart is raising pay, every other employer in the rural area where Walmart dominates is also going to have to respond. It does have outsize significance in that respect.”

  Governing | April 26, 2018
• Dumped Foreign Steel Causes Layoffs, Pain for Steelworkers

   

  “Every country wants to have its own steel industry,” she explained. “What’s different is that China is completely off the charts” in terms of subsidies, from tax breaks, to cheap land, to below-market electricity to low-interest generous loans from state-owned (government-owned banks). Economic Policy Institute trade specialist Robert Scott added the biggest subsidy is currency manipulation. Tariffs do little against those myriad subsidies, and Scott noted Trump’s Treasury Department, three days before, issued a congressionally mandated report about currency manipulators – and didn’t name China. He also said while China may be the biggest steel dumper, it’s not the only one. Korea and Japan are in the game, too. Still, when the U.S. let China into the World Trade Organization in 2000 – over labor’s strong objections and lobbying – China was producing 100 million tons of steel a year. Now, it’s 1.6 billion tons “and Korea and Japan are willing to take those dumped, subs-idized products” – China’s steel – “and ship them in manufactured products, like cars, to us.”

  Press Associates Union News Service | April 26, 2018
• Columbia grad students go on strike to protest university’s efforts to block unionization

   

  The distinction is not merely an issue of semantics, but one of rights, better wages, and improved working conditions. According to a January 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute, graduate teaching assistants have taken on heavier workloads, have more responsibility when it comes to teaching and grading, and assume much of the research that ends up winning the universities grants and prestige. “And yet the pay they receive rarely rises to the level of a living wage,” the report stated. The EPI report found that between 2005 and 2015, the rise in graduate assistant and non-tenure-track faculty jobs surpassed that of tenured and tenure-track jobs, with the former currently making up approximately 73 percent of the academic workforce. “The simple explanation for this increasing reliance on graduate and non-tenure-track faculty is that they are far less costly to employ,” the report reads.

  Think Progress | April 25, 2018
• Amazon and Walmart CEOs Make — Surprise! — Drastically More Money Than Their Employees

   

  Even before the SEC passed this new law, the fact of CEOs’ staggering paychecks (and payouts) has been well known (and much maligned) for quite some time. Last year, an Economic Policy Institute study found that the pay gap between CEOs and their employees has grown six times as large as it was three decades ago and that today CEOs make about 271 times more than their employees. While the EPI noted that the CEO-worker pay gap peaked in 2000, when CEOs made 376 times more than the average employee, the ratio wasn’t always this alarming. In 1964, for example, CEOs made 20 times more than an average employee, and in 1989, they made 59 times as much. (EPI cited throughout)

  Racked | April 25, 2018

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