Amid this abundance of material, a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has received considerable attention and might serve as an example. The EPI clearly wants Congress to renew some of the expiring parts of the CARES Act passed last spring. In particular, it wants to continue unemployment insurance for an additional 13 weeks beyond the usual time and reinstate the $600.00 additional weekly unemployment payout that expired last July and that more recent legislation has modified. The report’s headline claims boldly that such reinstatements will “create or save 5.1 million jobs” in 2021.
Forbes
December 23, 2020
But Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a Labor Department economist during the Obama administration, told the Wall Street Journal that the rule does not address wage inequality, and instead could shift work to servers that would traditionally not fall to them.”If the administration wanted to raise pay for back-of-the-house workers, they could have supported a minimum-wage increase,” Shierholz said.
FOX 2 Detroit
December 23, 2020
Pantone advises, “Ultimate Gray and Illuminating do not have to be used in equal proportions,” which also holds for the haves and the have-nots. Indeed, the COVID period is exacerbating the underlying trends of inequality that have been at play for decades. An analysis by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, focused on data from the Social Security Administration to find that over a forty-year period (1979–2019), the top 1% (2019 average of $758,434) saw their wages grow by 160.3%; and those in the bottom 90%had annual wages (2019 average of $38,923) grow by 26%. “These disparities in long-term wage growth reflect a major redistribution upward of wages since 1979.”
MSN Money
December 23, 2020
- “It’s really, really clear this is about the interests of corporate executives and shareholders,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at EPI, told Business Insider.
Business Insider
December 23, 2020
With the economy down about 10 million jobs, the surge in cases will further hinder gains and could even drag the labor market into a new decline, Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said.
Business Insider
December 23, 2020
Many economists also expressed the need for more Covid-19 stimulus in 2021. For example, the progressive nonprofit Economic Policy Institute
estimates that roughly $3 trillion in relief is needed to “stop the economic bleeding caused by the coronavirus pandemic and build a strong recovery.”
CNN Business
December 23, 2020
Is it worth adding to the national debt? The President of the Economic Policy Institute calls it absolutely necessary. Lee says when people lose their jobs it’s a blow to the economy and it slows down our ability to recover. “We don’t have a situation where people are too lazy to work. We have a situation where it isn’t safe for many people to work or that they lost their job through no fault of their own, and this is exactly the situation where major government stimulus is useful. It will actually more than pay for itself.” Lee estimates the need is closer to $3 trillion compared to the $900 billion proposed. She says Congress will have to jump right back into relief talks when it reconvenes next year.
Hearst Television
December 22, 2020
“This is a lot better than nothing,” says Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “But it is not enough. Millions of people will exhaust those benefits in the middle of March.”
None of the unemployment extensions are retroactive, and some are less generous than the proposals put forth by Democrats earlier in the pandemic. The $300/week top-up, for instance, is half of what the Democrats wanted. The CARES Act enacted in March, which included a $600/week enhancement that expired July 31, has been credited with preventing jobless Americans from falling off an income cliff early in the pandemic—and even allowing many to save. But in the five months since those extra benefits have expired, recipients have blasted through their savings, and then some.
The lack of retroactivity for these new benefits, “is a terrible missed opportunity to alleviate suffering and help the economy,” says EPI’s Shierholz.
Mother Jones
December 22, 2020
There is a lot of good news coming out of this new round of economic relief but the president of the Economic Policy Institute says it neglects state and local aid. She says she fears this will cause additional hardship going into the new year. “States and localities are running out of money…and they are going to be forced to cut back on essential public services like public health, like schools, that we all count on.” Thea Lee says those cuts will lead to layoffs and even more economic repercussions. She also says Congress will need to address state and local aid when they get back to work next year and that funding could help get kids back into the classroom safely.
Hearst Television
December 22, 2020
For preemption, see Economic Policy Institute, “Worker rights preemption in the U.S.: A map of the campaign to suppress worker rights in the states,” available at https://www.epi.org/preemption-map/ (last accessed September 2020)
Center for American Progress
December 22, 2020