According to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute, rising inequality over the last four decades has reduced economic growth in the US. Since 1979, income share has risen for the top 10% but fallen for the rest. By 2018, the top 1% were securing 16.4% of pre-tax and benefits income, up from 8.9% in 1979. The top 1% were saving 30.6% of their income, over 60 times as much as the bottom fifth of household. This reduction in spending put constraints overall economic growth.
Counterpunch
May 27, 2022
Over the same 20-year period, NAFTA contributed to the loss of approximately four million U.S. jobs, according to Robert E. Scott, director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Seven years after the agreement, in 2001, Scott assessed the job losses at around 766,000; he issued another assessment in 2014, showing job losses totaling 3.2 million between 2001 and 2013.
Inc.
May 27, 2022
Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said most of the anxiety is being driven by the “relative newness of the inflation we’ve seen over the past year.” “The worry is that to rein it in and return it to more-normal levels might require a lot of policy dexterity, and, if policymakers can’t pull this off, this might lead to a recession,” Bivens told HuffPost.
The Huffington Post
May 27, 2022
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said Mr. Biden’s proposed economic policies would …(paywall).
The Wall Street Journal
May 27, 2022
But labor advocates say there is scant evidence to support such a grim forecast. At a recent hearing, EPI director of immigration law and policy research Daniel Costa pointed to the impact of making farmworkers in California eligible for overtime to encourage the establishment of similar protections in New York. There is “virtually no credible evidence” that overtime pay for farmworkers “will hurt the industry or slash profits dramatically,” Costa testified.
Capital and Main
May 27, 2022
According to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, nearly 54% of the recent inflationary price hikes that Americans are paying have gone toward corporate profits. And people have started to notice: In February, a poll from Data for Progress showed that 63% of respondents have come to the conclusion that “large corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic to raise prices unfairly on consumers and increase profits.”
Business Insider
May 27, 2022
Strengthening banks that serve Black Americans is just one part of the equation to solving the racial wealth gap, Valerie Wilson of Economic Policy Institute, an independent think tank, said. The other parts include raising pay, especially in low-wage sectors, improving diversity within the banking system to better serve nonwhite customers, and continuing to support Black-owned businesses as well as historically Black colleges and universities, Wilson and multiple Black bank CEOs said.
Business Insider
May 27, 2022
At about $720 per month, the cost of infant care for one child in New Mexico is equal to 18.3% of the median family’s income, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. That’s almost triple the 7% of income that the US Department of Health and Human Services considers the threshold for affordability. By that measure, only about 1 in 10 New Mexico families can shoulder the cost without government assistance.
Bloomberg
May 27, 2022
Gary Gerstle is an historian, Bob Kuttner is an economist and journalist and Valerie Wilson is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. In these wide ranging discussions, we will explore not just neoliberalism’s growth and impact, but the avenues for challenging its command over our lives.
Capital and Main
May 27, 2022
For example: absent from Bezos’s inflation analysis, Rampell’s columns, and other Post editorial diatribes is data from the Economic Policy Institute showing that more than half of the price increases Americans have seen in the past two years can be attributed to larger corporate profit margins.
Jacobin
May 27, 2022