Benchmarking globalization’s impact on non-college-educated U.S. workers and households
| Cost of policy, 2011 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Policy | Archetypal worker* | Archetypal household** |
| Growing trade with less-developed countries | $1,761 | $3,084 |
| Growing trade with China | 564 | 987 |
| Making Bush-era tax cuts permanent and financing with across-the-board cuts to transfers*** | 963 | 1,685 |
| Solving 75-year Social Security funding gap with across-the-board payroll tax increase | 862 | 1,510 |
| Annual federal income taxes | 775 | 1,357 |
* Annual income loss for a full-time worker earning average hourly wage for non-college-educated workers in 2011
** Annual income loss for a household of two workers supplying 3,500 hours of work per year while earning average hourly wage for non-college-educated workers in 2011
*** "Transfers" refers to programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and food stamps.
Source: Author's analysis of Krugman (1995), Bivens (2008), Mishel et al. (2012), Furman (2007), Social Security Administration (2012), and CBO (2012). See the appendix for methodology.