EPI in the news

• Trump’s Plan to Deport Millions of Immigrants Would Be a Nightmare for Workers and the Economy

  While the U.S. immigration system is far from optimal and urgently needs reforms, here are two facts that are not controversial among economists: 1) Immigration expands the U.S. economy. And 2) the economy grows without hurting the wages of U.S.-born workers.

  In These Times | October 31, 2024
• Starbucks return-to-office is another corporate double standard
  According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio at the 350 largest publicly owned US companies was about 344-to-one in 2022. 
  Bloomberg | October 31, 2024
• The best protection from Trump’s inflationary agenda: Just be filthy rich

  Nearly 70% of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris, and 23 Nobel Prize winners endorsed Harris’ proposals over Trump’s “counterproductive” economic agenda.

  “I think it really would feel like a return to 2021 levels of inflation, in terms of how quickly it seems to come from out of the blue,” Josh Bivens, chief economist with the nonprofit EPI Action, told me.

  But it won’t be the same flavor of profit-driven inflation we’ve seen over the past three years.

  Pandemic-era inflation, with its many supply chain bottlenecks, gave some corporations monopoly-like power over parts of the economy when their competitors couldn’t get more output out the door, Bivens said. “This one will be a more broad-based, chaotic, supply-side push-up of prices.”

  CNN Business | October 31, 2024
• Harris and Trump both say they’ll stop price gouging—but can either actually do it?

  And a September report by the Economic Policy Institute found that a spike in profits explains well over 40% of the rise in prices between the end of 2019 and mid-2022

  Fast Company | October 31, 2024
• In Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic Sometimes Called the Shots With Gov. Tim Walz

  The hospital’s significant market share and high prices have contributed to a higher cost of living for families without employer-funded insurance in the Rochester area than in the Twin Cities, even though housing, food and other necessities are cheaper, according to the nonprofit economic think tank Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator.

  ProPublica | October 31, 2024
• Choose wisely with your vote

  Another example is comparing which administrations where more successful in increasing the gross domestic product and wages and reducing the rate of unemployment according to many analysts and the Economic Policy Institute. As reported in the New York Times in February 2021: “Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate 4.6 % under Democratic presidents and 2.4 % under Republicans. The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.”

  Smoky Mountain News | October 31, 2024
• Lipps stresses safety as Guilderland buses travel over a million miles each school year

  According to research by the Economic Policy Institute, reported by the National Education Association, school bus driver employment continues to be far below pre-pandemic levels. There were approximately 192,400 bus drivers working in K–12 schools in September 2023, down about 15 percent from September 2019.

  Altamont Enterprise | October 31, 2024

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