Celine McNicholas, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, agreed that Trump’s budget requests have become “increasingly ridiculous.”
“They no longer represent a reasonable starting place for budget negotiations,” she said. “Still, they do represent a statement of values—and a serious statement of this administration’s position. Positions can be both serious and ridiculous.”
“It seems like, one, that was used for smuggling contraband,” said Adam Hersh, a Washington, D.C., economist who formerly worked at the Economic Policy Institutethink tank, “so they have cracked down on that a lot, not just drugs, but other things. Two, the big Chinese retail companies that do direct shipping avoid paying tariffs, or other companies like if you trade on the Amazon marketplace to import it and warehouse in the U.S., the Temus and Sheins and things like that, were big beneficiaries of de minimis.”
EVENT: The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) holds a virtual State of Working America Q1 Economic Briefing, beginning at 1 p.m.
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A study by the Economic Policy Institute found an 18% pay gap between men and women in Missouri on average. The head of a non-profit group in Missouri, which aims to improve economic opportunities for women, says the percentage is not surprising. Wendy Doyle of United We of Missouri spoke with Sue Danielson.
The inability to earn a decent wage can result in adverse knock-on effects later in life. In the U.S., which ranks 23rd in the World Happiness Report, women are more likely than men to face poverty, especially as they age: 17 percent of women between the ages of 70 and 79 — and 22 percent of women 80 and older — live in poverty, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. Men in these age groups experience poverty at a rate of 11 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
The GOP used a figure from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that the average annual cost for childcare for a 4-year-old is $13,426.
They then pointed to a post from the Center for Community Solution, a Cleveland-based nonprofit, stating that about 520,000 Ohio households have at least one child under the age of six. “Even if each household only has one child, that is $6.76 billion in new spending,” the Ramaswamy release stated.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the purpose of the Act has long lost its luster as without any legal requirement to update it’s rate for rising prices, “the real value of the federal minimum wage has gradually declined, reaching a 66-year low in 2023, where it is now worth 42% less than its highest point in 1968.”
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