In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that American workers collectively lost nearly US$15 billion due to wage theft. Canada is in a similar position. But Canada has decades-old laws in place to protect workers, so why do so many companies continue to get away with such an egregious offence?
The Manitoban
March 30, 2020
As the Economic Policy Institute shows, the Top 0.1 percent cumulative earnings since 1979 have risen 343 percent, along with the Top 1 percent earnings increasing by 157 percent. But the bottom 90 percent has seen its earnings remain almost flat at 22-percent growth.
The Philadelphia Citizen
March 30, 2020
“Even at the time, this was clearly nothing but PR. The economic theory linking corporate tax cuts to wage gains was never supposed to occur immediately. Instead, it runs through a long chain of economic events, starting with increased investment,” said Hunter Blair, budget analyst with the Economic Policy Institute. “Without an uptick in investment, typical workers have no chance of benefiting from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And for the first time since the Great Recession, investment has declined for three straight quarters. With investment cratering, there’s no reason to believe typical workers will see the benefits that proponents of the bill promised.”
The Guardian
March 30, 2020
“Disproportionately, older households have more exposure to stock market fluctuations and less time to catch up,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which focuses on poverty reduction.
The Hill
March 30, 2020
The reviews of NAFTA are somewhat mixed, and a new version of the deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, is expected to be implemented soon, after Canada ratifies it. In 2013, the liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute projected that NAFTA caused, “20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.” At the same time, Foreign Affairs estimates that 14 millions American jobs still depend on NAFTA. And a 2016 report from the U.S. International Trade Commission concluded the policy, “had essentially no effect on real wages in the United States of either skilled or unskilled workers.”
CBS News
March 30, 2020
The argument helped Sanders eke out a win over Clinton in the Great Lakes state, in a 1.5-point upset. Later, Mr. Trump, too, consistently criticized Clinton over NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sanders portrays his congressional votes opposing the trade deals as a matter of character. “I worked with the unions as a member of the House of Representative to defeat NAFTA and to defeat PNTR with China. I can remember like it was yesterday being on a picket line in Montpellier, Vermont in opposition to NAFTA. I knew what it was gonna do. I knew that you cannot ask American workers who are earning living wages to compete against the starvation wages being paid in Mexico,” Sanders said Friday in Detroit. The senator hit the same note during campaign stops in Michigan over weekend. He said in Flint on Saturday that “I heard, during that period in the ’90s, I heard all of corporate America say, ‘You gotta vote for these trade agreements.’ And all of the media said, ‘You gotta vote for these trade agreements.’ I stood with the unions, the working families of this country; I voted against those agreements! Joe Biden voted for those agreements.” The reviews of NAFTA are somewhat mixed, and a new version of the deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, is expected to be implemented soon, after Canada ratifies it. In 2013, the liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute projected that NAFTA caused, “20 years of stagnant wages and the upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power.” At the same time, Foreign Affairs estimates that 14 million American jobs still depend on NAFTA. And a 2016 report from the U.S. International Trade Commission concluded the policy, “had essentially no effect on real wages in the United States of either skilled or unskilled workers.”
CBS News
March 30, 2020
Dan Sanderson, a software engineer from Wisconsin, has an economic reality that is far from spectacular. In fact, it’s giving me major anxiety. According to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Economic Policy Institute and Capital & Main, a nonprofit publication in California that reports on economic issues, real median income growth in Wisconsin slowed to 2.2 percent during the first two years of the Trump administration, compared to a healthier 6.4 percent growth rate for the typical household in the final two years of the Obama administration.
The Daily Beast
March 30, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reported that: “According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, child care is affordable if it costs no more than 7% of a family’s income. By this standard, only 11.2% of New Hampshire families can afford infant care.”
Concord Monitor
March 30, 2020
Between 1978 and 2018, inflation-adjusted CEO compensation soared 940%, according to the group. As You Sow used realized stock options in making its calculations and cited data from the Economic Policy Institute. The group also pointed to growing public sentiment that executive pay packages are skewed, citing the results of a Stanford University poll in which 86% of respondents said that they believe the chiefs of large, public U.S. firms take home outsized paychecks.
Financial Advisor
March 30, 2020
“If what is required is that you’re quarantined, then we should be providing the appropriate incentives for people to be able to follow what is being recommended,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“If you need the money, then that’s going to change your incentives about what you do,” she added.
Route Fifty
March 30, 2020