The Atlantic
February 5, 2020
Leftists argue that economic inequality comes from a corrupt system. They have increasingly persuaded gullible voters to support socialism by hammering away at high CEO compensation. In a 2019 report[5] entitled “Reining in CEO compensation and curbing the rise of inequality” three economists at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) opine:[6]
“We should end the corruption of a corporate governance system that fails to subject CEO pay to the same labor market pressures everyone else is subject to.”
Townhall Finance
February 5, 2020
Executive pay is up nearly tenfold since 1979 according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization, and by one measure, it grew 10 percent in 2018. But it remained lower in 2018 than it was in 2007.
The New York Times
February 5, 2020
But the wage gains made among workers in the bottom 20% of earners over the last two decades were largely due to minimum wage increases enacted at the state level, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“These are policies that were implemented by state legislatures and local governments around the country to help offset the effects of a decline in the real value of the federal minimum wage,” the EPI wrote in a statement issued before the SOTU.
Route Fifty
February 5, 2020
In preparation for President Trump’s State of the Union speech, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) assembled research from the last year that examines the real state of the union for working people on wages, manufacturing and trade, taxes, labor standards, housing, and immigration.
St. Louis/Southern Illinois Labor Tribune
February 5, 2020
In a notice sent out last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank closely aligned with the AFL-CIO labor federation and the Democratic Party, Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the EPI Policy Center, said that the decline in union membership was “bad news for the middle class of the United States” (emphasis added). Ms. Shierholz said more than she intended.
World Socialist Website
February 5, 2020
Schools face budgets stricter than even the leanest startups. Nearly all teachers have to spend some their own money on classroom supplies. According to research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), teachers in high-poverty districts spend about $523 per year in unreimbursed expenses, while teachers in low-poverty areas spend $434.
Business.com
February 5, 2020
Besides depriving unions of money, RTW laws also deprive workers of wages, the Economic Policy Institute reports, in endorsing Warren’s bill.
“So-called right-to-work laws lower workers’ wages – which is no surprise, given that unions raise wages and the intended effect of right-to-work laws is to hamstring unions,” said EPI Policy Director Heidi Shierholz.
EPI’s studies show workers in “right-to-work” states have average wages 3.1% below those of comparable workers elsewhere. That difference costs workers millions of dollars a year, Shierholz adds.
People’s World
February 5, 2020
Economists and policymakers have increasingly become concerned with the domination of just a handful of highly successful companies controlling an outsized market share in a given industry. They fear these industry giants will influence pricing power and exert their ability to suppress industry-wide wages. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan and nonprofit think tank, the gap between productivity and wage growth has been increasing over the last 50 years with productivity outpacing wages by more than six times.
Investopedia
February 5, 2020
Using data from the Joint Center of Housing Studies and the Economic Policy Institute, MagnifyMoney identified 16 cities where the median rent claims all of a minimum wage worker’s take-home pay, and then some. Let’s take a look at big cities that are more affordable and ones where the rent is too darn high.
In December 2019, MagnifyMoney calculated the minimum wage of workers in 34 of the nation’s largest cities — those with a population of 300,000 or more in 2018 — to determine the relative affordability of rental housing. Our findings are based on data from the Joint Center of Housing Studies for median rent and the Economic Policy Institute for minimum wages. To find estimated take-home pay after payroll tax, we assumed 16% withholding in Social Security, Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), Medicare and federal income tax.
Get Out of Debt
February 5, 2020