In a research report published last August, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) showed that top CEOs in the U.S. earned 320 times as much as the typical worker in 2019. Between 1978 and 2019, EPI found, CEO pay soared by 1,167% while typical worker pay grew by just 13.7%.
Common Dreams
March 17, 2021
According to the latest research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), top CEOs in the U.S. were paid 320 times as much as typical workers in 2019. EPI found that the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989.
Common Dreams
March 17, 2021
“Republicans in Congress chose to make the corporate tax changes permanent, while phasing out most tax changes to the individual tax code by 2027,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Hunter Blair noted in 2018. “They made this choice to comply with the arcane rules of budget reconciliation, which do not allow legislation that increases budget deficits outside the 10-year budget window.”
New Republic
March 17, 2021
“In states where lawmakers want to invest in new programs, or further investment in education, for example, this funding will allow them to do that now without changing their tax policies,” said David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute.
Popular investments in health care or education programs could make passing new progressive taxes more politically feasible if constituents want to see such programs continue. “If they want to do something bold and lasting, they will need to create new dedicated revenue streams,” Cooper said.
Newsweek
March 17, 2021
Some critics of expanding UI worry that making benefits too generous will keep people from working. For one thing, that’s partly the goal here: Public health experts don’t want businesses operating at full capacity until it’s safe. But there’s also no evidence that people are staying out of the workforce en masse so they can collect their unemployment checks.
“If this was a big disincentive effect, it would show up in the data,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department. “It’s not like it didn’t disincentivize any individual person from taking a job, but any disincentive effect has been so small that it’s not even detectable in the data.”
VOX
March 17, 2021
It is unclear exactly how many companies would pay more in taxes under the plan. The ratio of CEO-to-worker compensation was 320-to-1 at the top 350 American firms in 2019, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
March 17, 2021
Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, said in a news conference on March 16 that if employers are having trouble hiring, the first thing they tend to do is ask their current employees to work more hours to compensate. And in fact, average weekly hours worked in the private sector did jump in January, to 34.9, the highest in records going back to 2006. But the workweek fell 18 minutes in February to 34.6, which is at the high end of normal.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
March 17, 2021
A minimum-wage hike would impact 32 million workers, according to an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Around one in three Black workers and about one in four Latino workers would benefit from the raise; almost 60% of workers who would benefit are women, with women of color seeing a particular boost. Those are all groups who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic’s economic devastation.
Business Insider
March 17, 2021
I want to ask about wage theft. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Americans lose three times more in wage theft than they do in street robberies, bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies combined. This is disproportionately impacting low-wage workers, women, and workers of color who are more often than not the victims of wage theft.
C-SPAN
March 17, 2021