Media clips
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In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the Constitution, it is a requirement to correct past injustices.
The Laverne Cox Show May 28, 2021 -
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline May 28, 2021 -
CEO pay skyrocketed 15.9% through the pandemic as the rallying stock market boosted compensation packages, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a Thursday blog post. That marks an acceleration from the 14% jump seen in 2019 despite COVID-19 roiling the global economy. EPI cited 281 filings from large firms in its preliminary report.
Conversely, annual compensation for the average American worker rose just 1.8% in 2020. The widening pay gap is captured in EPI’s CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, which rose to 307.3 last year from 276.2 among early reporting companies.
To be sure, CEO salaries broadly shrank through the year. The average salary for chief executives fell 5.2% as businesses paused pay hikes during the health crisis, according to EPI.
Yet a broader measure shows the stock market’s meteoric rise through 2020 more than made up for the slump. Realized direct compensation — which includes salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, stock options, vested stock awards — rallied last year as stocks rebounded from their pandemic lows. Among the 281 early reporting firms analyzed, realized compensation rose to $21.4 billion from $18.5 billion throughout 2020.
Business Insider May 28, 2021 -
May 28, 2021
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The US’ 10% tariff on aluminum imports from most countries accomplished its stated purpose of protecting the at-risk domestic aluminum industry in the interest of national security, market analysts and participants said May 26 after the release of a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
EPI Senior Economist Robert Scott said the tariff, imposed by former President Donald Trump under Section 232 in 2018, came at a time when the US primary aluminum industry was “hanging on by a thread.”
“The industry was threatened with collapse, and the US had the only existing high-quality, high-purity aluminum smelter that was running in the NATO countries,” Scott said in a virtual panel discussing the EPI’s May 25 report on the tariff’s impact.
“This was critical for national defense that we not lose this capacity as well as maintain the capacity to produce our own aluminum for the supply chains, and I think the COVID-19 crisis has shown just how important it is to be self-sufficient in these primary commodities.”
The EPI report concluded that the aluminum tariffs succeeded in fulfilling their intended effect and have allowed aluminum manufacturers throughout the supply chain to thrive.
S&P Global May 27, 2021 -
“Absolutely, we’re still in a crisis,” Elise Gould said.
Elise Gould is a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan Think Tank in DC.
“9 to 11 million more people don’t have a job that would’ve had a job. We’re on a very different trajectory,” Gould said. “That means, they do not have wages to be paying their bill. They do not have income. Many people are struggling –it’s very difficult for many people out there today.”
WSMV News 4 May 27, 2021 -
HEIDI SHIERHOLZ
Senior economist and director of policy, Economic Policy Institute; former chief economist, U.S. Department of LaborFifteen dollars an hour is an appropriate level for the minimum wage right now. We’re not going to suddenly go to $15 during the pandemic. The increase will gradually be phased in. Given inflation expectations over the next four years, $15 in 2025 would be about $13.79 in today’s dollars.
When people picture paying a higher minimum wage, they see it as if they were the only business raising wages. That is the beauty of an across-the-board labor standard. Everyone will need to raise wages, so no business will be at a competitive disadvantage.
After adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage is 31.5 percent less than it was in 1968. During that time, productivity growth has more than doubled. So, as an economy, we can afford this.
Inc. May 27, 2021 -
Although the tariffs were a hallmark of Trump’s trade policy, Biden would have some political cover if he decides to leave them in place.
“Four years ago, the U.S. primary aluminum industry was hanging on by a thread,” a report Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said, noting that aluminum production increased 37.6 percent after Trump’s tariffs went into effect.
The report argues that higher prices have had no meaningful effect on consumer prices or other industries.
The Hill May 27, 2021 -
The reason why this is not worrisome is that prices are basically rebounding from a deeply depressed base in the pit of the COVID recession a year ago. In March 2020, before the recession hit, core inflation was running at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent, or well below the Fed’s target rate.
As EPI’s Josh Bivens puts it:
Even several years of inflation above 2% would still not make up for years of too-slow price growth over the past 12 years, and making up for these years of too-slow price growth would go a long way toward reestablishing the credibility of the Federal Reserve inflation target. This is an opportunity, not a threat.
The American Prospect May 25, 2021 -
A 2019 Brookings study calculated that median earnings in metro Atlanta were $18.12 an hour. But about one-fifth of workers made $10.09 an hour or less, below the roughly $12.74-an-hour wage that sets the poverty line for a family of four.
“It does give people a little wiggle room not to take a job that has really low wages and is not safe,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, and now senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Atlanta Journal Constitution May 24, 2021