Economists are split over the value of such a break. “Refundable payroll tax credits that are used for PPE or other protections for consumers and workers seems sensible to me,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.
He suggested limiting any break based on how many workers a business employs, “to reduce how gameable it is,” and combining it with other stimulus, notably extending the $600 unemployment benefit that is set to expire at the end of July.
Bradenton Herald
July 2, 2020
Opoku-Agyeman: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I literally just published an article, and it’s with the Economic Policy Institute about “Black women best,” which is an economic policy idea coined by Janelle Jones, who is one of the managing directors at the Groundwork [Collaborative]. And pretty much this idea says if we center the economy around Black women, everybody is alleviated in terms of outcomes. And so in order to do that, you actually have to have Black women in the room, right? And one thing that we’ve recently seen is, there’s no Black women in the Federal Reserve leadership. And so it’s really important that those individuals who are making important decisions at a high level are representative of the world that they’re hoping to make decisions for.
Marketplace
July 2, 2020
Josh Bivens with the Economic Policy Institute is urging Congress to extend the $600 weekly supplement until mid-2021 to keep the economy from collapsing. Each dollar spent on unemployment insurance benefits boosts spending by as much as $2, he argues.
When the economy is still struggling to get up on its feet, “cutting off a policy support that helps households maintain spending is a terrible idea, both for these households’ welfare and for macroeconomic stabilization,” Bivens writes.
AFSCME
July 2, 2020
More than 50 percent of Americans get their health insurance through their employer. Since mid-March, close to 47 million Americans have sought jobless aid. A recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute forecast that 3.5 million workers lost their insurance in just the last two weeks of March.
Fox Business
July 2, 2020
An Economic Policy Institute study found that only 16 percent of the 60 million Latinos in the U.S. can work from home—we disproportionately work in the service industries that are considered “essential.”
Latino Rebels
July 2, 2020
Just over 1 in 10 Americans who are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic don’t have a good chance of getting called back to their old jobs, according to recent research from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNBC
July 2, 2020
According to CBS News, citing the Economic Policy Institute, California has more than 3 million workers claiming unemployment benefits, with another 1.8 million in NY and more than 2 million in Pa.
Click Lancashire Independent News
July 2, 2020
“Given the likelihood that states may have to re-shutter parts of their economies with the rise in cases, the job gains we saw last month may not last,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, in a preview of the jobs report.
The Hill
July 2, 2020
“If you have millions of people who have a lot less money to spend, then they stop spending, they’re not buying the goods and services that they otherwise would have,” Economic Policy Institute Policy Director Heidi Shierholz told Cheddar. “And then the workers that would have provided those goods and services for them, they lose their jobs.”
Cheddar
July 2, 2020
On the other hand, critics of the deal argue that it was to blame for job losses and wage stagnation in the United States, driven by low-wage competition, companies moving production to Mexico to lower costs, and a widening trade deficit. The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s (CEPR) Dean Baker and the Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott argue that the surge of imports after NAFTA caused a loss of up to six hundred thousand U.S. jobs over two decades, though they admit that some of this import growth would likely have happened even without NAFTA.
Council on Foreign Relations
July 2, 2020