There’s a lot of debate about how much and who should get a third round of direct payments from the government. But the back and forth on the issue may not be all that necessary.
“It’s rare. When we have the cards set up to actually have a genuinely rapid economic recovery that could push unemployment really low in the next couple of years, I think that might happen, we should seize that opportunity,” said Josh Bivens, Research Director at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for the low and middle income.
Bivens says further targeting of direct payment checks isn’t really necessary because no one rich is getting them to begin with.
He adds that narrowing them too much could leave out people who may have had a solid 2019, but then had devastating changes in 2020, since the payments are based on 2019 tax returns.
Scripps National News
February 9, 2021
If Democrats want to win back working-class voters and keep the loyalty of minorities— who, according to a 2016 Economic Policy Institute study, will constitute a majority of blue-collar voters by 2032—they need to focus on creating well-paying jobs for non-college graduates.
Newsweek
February 9, 2021
We talked to Heidi Shierholz about it. She’s a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She agrees with a lot of the CBO report, but she says the CBO overstates what a higher minimum wage would cost the government.
Heidi Shierholz: That said, even if you take their numbers at face value, they still find that for a very relatively low price to the federal government, you’d get a minimum wage increase that did really important things for the U.S. economy — pulling people out of poverty, reducing inequality, getting more income to low-income people.
Marketplace
February 9, 2021
Biden’s relief bill unlikely to raise the federal minimum wage. >> making less than $15 an hour you’re living below the poverty wage, but that may not be in your american rescue plan? “No. I put it in but I don’t think it’s going to survive.”
That is a blow to many of these households as the Economic Policy Institute estimates a $15 minimum wage to boost earnings of roughly a quarter of all Latinos and a third of all Black Americans.
MSNBC
February 8, 2021
And those who kept their jobs through the pandemic weren’t without strife. The Economic Policy Institute reported in 2018 that Black men were paid 69.70 cents on the white male dollar and Black women earned only 60.80 cents on the White male dollar.
Reader's Digest
February 8, 2021
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said lawmakers “need to go big to solve this crisis,” including by extending unemployment aid and providing more federal funds for state and local governments.
“Today’s jobs day report reinforces the need for Congress to take bold action in passing crucial relief measures through reconciliation,” she wrote.
Courthouse News Service
February 8, 2021
Some progressives seeking a broader remake of U.S. policy and institutions such as the World Trade Organization worry Biden will focus too much on wooing allies alienated by Trump. “I hope it won’t just be that—four years of soothing people’s ruffled feathers,” says Thea Lee, head of the progressive Economic Policy Institute. Then again, Lee adds, the crises Biden inherited from Trump offer an opportunity. “It certainly creates the space for building something new.”
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
February 8, 2021
Per the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute, the median hourly wage is “the wage at which half the workforce is paid more and half the workforce is paid less.
Business Insider
February 8, 2021
Jared Bernstein is a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. Previously, since 2011, he was a Senior Fellow and the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. From 2009 to 2011, Bernstein was the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Executive Director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and a member of President Obama’s economic team. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Bernstein was a senior economist and the director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, and between 1995 and 1996, he held the post of Deputy Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Washington Post
February 8, 2021
But as many leading economists have explained, Biden’s proposed spending limit is necessary to meet the challenge of the pandemic. A letter from the leaders of the National Employment Law Center, the Economic Policy Institute, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Center for American Progress, and the Roosevelt Institute explained that “President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan—with its critical public health investments to beat COVID-19, its aid to help struggling families, and its assistance to states, localities, tribes, and territories—is an appropriate scale of new spending under current conditions.” The letter also explained that the additional relief passed in December was insufficient:
Media Matters for America
February 8, 2021