A national minimum wage of $15 would mean around one in five Americans earns more, the Economic Policy Institute found. It could also help reduce income equality, its research found, with women, minorities, and frontline workers benefiting the most.
Business Insider
February 26, 2021
Romney and Cotton’s plan would only raise wages for around 3 percent of American workers, compared to 21.2 percent of workers under the Democratic proposal, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute.
Newsweek
February 26, 2021
“We’ve lost 10 million jobs in the COVID-19 recession,” Robert E. Scott, senior economist at Economic Policy Institute, said. “We need to make those jobs up.”
Newsy
February 26, 2021
The letter was spearheaded by the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly nonprofit, and People’s Action, a network of community organizations. The coalition included several advocacy groups, such as Public Citizen; think tanks, such as the Economic Policy Institute; as well as organized labor stalwarts like Unite Here, a union of 300,000 service workers; the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 50,000 airline workers; and additional progressive groups.
Common Dreams
February 26, 2021
According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank, the Romney-Cotton plan would leave 27 million fewer American workers with a pay increase in comparison to Democrats’ proposal—with 11 million fewer Black and Hispanic workers and 16 million fewer women benefiting from the GOP plan. What’s more, it would continue the trend that has seen the federal minimum wage steadily decline in recent decades when adjusted for inflation, according to the think tank.
“Romney-Cotton’s $10 target by 2025 is the equivalent of $9.19 per hour in today’s dollars, about 13% less than what the minimum wage was at its high-water mark in 1968,” the EPI’s Ben Zipperer and Daniel Costa wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “It is unconscionable that we should pay the lowest-wage workers today less than what they earned five decades ago, while the economy’s productivity has more than doubled over the last 50 years.”
Fortune
February 26, 2021
David Cooper, “Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers,” Economic Policy Institute, February 5, 2019, available at https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/. ↩
Center for American Progress
February 26, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute reported that the minimum wage, if adjusted for inflation, should have exceeded $15 by 2020.
“Yet since the late 1960s, lawmakers have let the value of the minimum wage erode, allowing inflation to gradually reduce the buying power of a minimum wage income,” according to a 2019 report.
The Independent
February 26, 2021
The Post and Courier
February 26, 2021
FEATURING MONIQUE MORRISSEY – US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, known for his allegiance to Donald Trump, faced a House Oversight committee hearing this week where he said he intended to remain his position until kicked out. He told lawmakers, “get used to me.”
Rising Up with Sonali
February 26, 2021