The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index for December 2014 today, which lets us look at trends in real (inflation-adjusted) wages over the year. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the U.S. economy has seen very little real wage growth. Real hourly wage growth fell 1.0 percent in 2011, and then 0.1 percent in 2012. Over the last two years, real wage growth has been positive, but slow: real wages rose 0.5 percent in 2013 and 0.4 percent in 2014. Even with the drop in inflation over the last couple of months, average wages increased in 2014 slightly less than in 2013. This means that, by definition, there has been no acceleration in wage growth. Decent wage growth would look like inflation plus productivity growth (around 1.5 to 2.0 percent). Given this, it is clear that the Federal Reserve should not take action to slow the economy down.

Our nominal wage tracker shows just how much wage growth has been falling short of reasonable targets. The labor market and the economy could withstand even higher wage growth because labor’s share of corporate sector income yet to rise in this recovery, and profits are still at record highs. Therefore, real wage growth can be accomplished without putting pressure on prices.

Turning to monthly wages, the figure below shows real average hourly earnings of all private employees (top line) and production/nonsupervisory workers (bottom line) since the recession began in December 2007. For both series, you can see that real wages fell during the recession, then jumped up in late 2008, in direct response to a drop in inflation. When inflation falls and nominal wages hold steady, the mathematical result is a rise in inflation-adjusted wages. After the deflation leading up to 2009 stopped boosting real wages, wage growth has been flat.

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The White House finally weighed in on the new House rule preventing a simple fix to extend the life of Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund. The fund is projected to run out next year, and if revenue isn’t reallocated from the larger Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program, disability benefits, already meager, will be reduced by a fifth, as taxes allocated to the program aren’t enough to cover promised benefits. Though a routine reapportionment of payroll taxes would address the problem, the new rule prohibits such a move unless steps are taken to extend the solvency of the Social Security system as a whole.

Since a simple majority is required to overturn the rule or vote for benefit cuts, the rule appears largely symbolic. But depending on whom you talk to, it may or may not have real political repercussions. One thing seems clear: It’s an attempt to pit retirees against disabled beneficiaries, with Republicans positioning themselves as advocates of seniors and reformers of a disability system supposedly rife with fraud and abuse.

What happens when this comes to a head in an election year? Though Republicans may be hoping to force benefit cuts by creating an artificial crisis, it seems unlikely that they’ll let 11 million disabled beneficiaries and their dependents, who disproportionately live in red states, experience sharp benefit cuts, which would cause the average benefit to drop below the federal poverty line.

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Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse introduced the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act earlier this week (Rep. Doggett and former-Sen. Carl Levin introduced a similar bill in the 113^th Congress). The bill would strengthen reporting standards for multinational corporations, strengthen various enforcement provisions, and end certain loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes as well as “check-the-box rules.” An explanation of these rules can be found here. It would also deal with what’s known as the “Ugland House” problem.

Though most people are aware of the nice beaches in the Cayman Islands, they are probably unaware of the Ugland House. The Cayman Islands is a tax haven for many profitable U.S. multinational corporations, who claim to earn substantial profits there but pay no taxes to Cayman authorities. In 2008, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational corporations reported they earned $43 billion in the Cayman Islands, which is rather interesting, because this amount is 20 times the Cayman Islands’ GDP. It is simply not possible that this amount could reflect legitimate business activities in the Caymans. This is where the Ugland House comes in.

The Ugland House (on South Church Street in George Town on Grand Cayman) is home to the law firm of Maples and Calder. It is also the legal “home” to over 18,000 corporations, many of which are foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations. The Ugland House serves as nothing more than a mailing address for these corporations—their only contact with the Cayman Islands. Their actual business operations are located in other countries, like the United States. A lot of money, however, is credited to this address. (It is worth noting there is a building in another well-known tax haven that serves the same purpose: 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware.)

So far, Congress has been uninterested in doing anything about this tax avoidance problem. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act would address this problem by categorizing corporations worth more than $50 million which are managed and controlled in the United States as U.S. taxpayers, no matter where they are incorporated. It is estimated that this act would raise almost $300 billion in revenue over 10 years. While some members appear to think that making U.S. taxpayers pay what they owe amounts to a tax hike, Rep. Doggett and Sen. Whitehouse are to be congratulated on their efforts to curb the flagrant abuse of tax loopholes by profitable companies that can afford to pay their fair share.

The U.S. Supreme Court could be on the verge of issuing a major setback to racial integration efforts. In two weeks, it will hear oral arguments regarding whether the federal government and states should be permitted to pursue policies that perpetuate or exacerbate racial segregation in housing—even where no intent to segregate is proven.

The segregation of low-income minority families into economic and racial ghettos is one cause of the ongoing achievement gap in American education. Students from families with less literacy come to school less prepared to take advantage of good instruction. If they live in more distressed neighborhoods with more crime and violence, they come to school under stress that interferes with learning. When such students are concentrated in classrooms, even the best of teachers must spend more time on remediation and less on grade-level instruction.

The Economic Policy Institute, together with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, have organized a large group of housing scholars—historians and other social scientists—to sign a friend-of-the-court brief urging that housing policies perpetuating segregation should be banned.

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