As the Economic Policy Institute clearly explained earlier this year: Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “penalties are insufficient to serve as a deterrent. Companies merely factor these penalties into the cost of doing business. Therefore, it is imperative that corporations have some legal incentive to adhere to health and safety guidelines.”
Business Insider
August 10, 2020
That eye-opening analysis came right after Congress passed the $2.0 trillion Trump/McConnell Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which in its first year bestowed 50 percent of the tax cuts on the top five percent income earners, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
And, while the “tax benefits to middle or low-income individuals are modest and will expire in 2025… the enormous tax breaks for corporations are permanent. By 2027, after the individual provisions expire, the top 1 percent of households alone will see 83 percent of the benefits of the TCJA.”
Insider NJ
August 10, 2020
If Republicans refuse to come to an agreement with Democrats to provide financial relief to jobless Americans, the national impact is expected to be severe. The Economic Policy Institute has cautioned that “cutting off or reducing the $600 will cause enormous hardship and further damage the economy.”
Gothamist
August 10, 2020
Growing income inequality in the U.S. is partly due to the disparity between what CEOs are paid and what they pay their workers. From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% while wages for employees grew by only 11.9%, according to a 2019 report from Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.
Dallas Morning News
August 10, 2020
Alva said that while he was driving with Lyft, he paid $35 for gas refills every two days, paid $1,200 a month for car maintenance, and last year spent between $1,000 and $1,500 on fixing flat tires. According to a 2018 study from the Economic Policy Institute, Uber drivers earned roughly $9.21 an hour after paying and vehicle expenses and commission fees to Uber.
48 hills
August 10, 2020
The insular microcosms of Twitter and other social media platforms can quickly lead one to believe that everyone in the city had a similar quarantine experience, but in fact, as the Economic Policy Institute reports, under 30 percent of workers were able to work from home.
Miscellany News
August 10, 2020
What’s more, without that aid, those families won’t be spending at local businesses anymore. The ending of that aid will turn a trickle of business closures into a flood. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that cutting those benefits will cost Montana another 11,800 jobs.
The Missoulian
August 10, 2020
While mental health is an individualized issue, just like physical health, one issue that is an actual systemic program is the achievement gap now closely tied with the socioeconomic gap. According to Humble ISD’s website, 32.3 percent of students are economically disadvantaged. The coronavirus is going to exacerbate the effects of advantages some students have in comparison to others, according to an Economic Policy Institute blog post by Richard Rothstein.
Houston Chronicle
August 10, 2020
Numbers released on Friday, Aug. 7, showed an increase of 1.8 million jobs in July nationally. “But, because so many jobs were lost in March and April, we are still 12.9 million jobs below where we were in February, before the pandemic spread,” wrote Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute in a blog post.
Wisconsin Examiner
August 10, 2020
They don’t portend good things for the economy, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, who notes that anxious consumers, whether they hold a job or not, typically cut back on spending, the primary driver of the economy.
“The insecurity of what has happened to people around them may lead people to save as much as possible,” she said. “And that could decrease spending in the sense that, ‘I don’t know what happens next.’ ”
Associated Press
August 10, 2020