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The US economy is in new territory, and while most celebrate the new stock market milestones and the lowest unemployment rate in fifty years, a closer look reveals a more textured picture. Not everyone is doing well. According to research by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor and economist Paul Oyer, “Times are good if you are college educated and working in the right industries in the right locations. But the last 50 years have been terrible for people with lower skills. Adjusted for inflation, the average earnings of a man who didn’t go to college is lower now than it was 50 years ago. That’s unheard of.” And more specifically, Professor Oyer notes that we reduced income inequality globally while increasing it in the United States. “The low-wage jobs that left here are considered really good jobs in China. [Globally] we’ve lifted a billion, two billion people out of poverty over the past 30 years,” Oyer wrote. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, faculty members at the MIT Sloan School of Management, have studied the relationship between technology and the economy for years. Their efforts culminated in a seminal book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies,in which they chronicle how digital technologies are contributing to the stagnation of wages. Specifically, Brynjolfsson explains in a 2015 Harvard Business Reviewinterview, “In the 1980s, however, the growth in median income began to sputter. In the past 15 years it’s turned negative; once you adjust for inflation, an American household at the 50th percentile of income distribution earns less today than it did in 1998, even after accounting for changes in household size. Job growth in the private sector has also slowed—and not just because of the 2008 recession. Job gains were anemic throughout the 2000s, even when the economy was expanding. This phenomenon is what we call the Great Decoupling. The two halves of the cycle of prosperity are no longer married: Economic abundance, as exemplified by GDP and productivity, has remained on an upward trajectory, but the income and job prospects for typical workers have faltered.” Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1945 to 1973 the top 1% captured 4.9% of all income growth, while from 1973 to 2007, more than 58% of income growth went to the top 1%, and since the global financial crisis the top 1%’s share of income growth has held steady at more than 40%.
Forbes August 8, 2019 -
According to a report written in the Economic Policy Institute, the projected supply of new teachers in the country will clearly not meet the demand.
ABC 7 August 8, 2019 -
Given California’s high cost of living, the state should be spending at least $30,000 for each child in preschool and child care, according to a new report by researchers at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley and the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hechinger Report August 8, 2019 -
Amazon will soon be opening a fulfillment center in the Port of Tucson. This will have both positive and negative impacts on the local economy. Ship times will be reduced and about 1,500jobs will be directly created, but does this come at a cost? For initial insight, we analyzed a report in Economic Policy Institute titled Unfulfilled Promises prepared by Janelle Jones and Ben Zipperer on February 1, 2018. According to this report, the warehousing jobs increase but overall there is no noticeable difference in net jobs. This is largely due to lost jobs in the retail industry. This brings us to the next question, which retailers and businesses will be the most impacted?
Rose Law Group Reporter August 8, 2019 -
Today, Japan continues to be accused of manipulating its currency in order to give its automakers an unfair advantage, both in its own market and around the world. The Ford Focus, for example, was the world’s best-selling compact car in 2013, with 1.1 million sold. Only 800 were sold in Japan. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that nearly 900,000 jobs were lost in 2013 alone because of the U.S. trade deficit with Japan, which is fueled by Japanese currency manipulation.
Alliance for American Manufacturing August 7, 2019 -
Known as a Distinguished Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, Richard Rothstein, in his latest book, gives us a sweeping and disturbing historical analysis of how the United States government segregated nearly all of our major cities across the country, through numerous racially discriminatory housing policies. In The Color of Law, he delves into issues such as bank redlining, exclusionary zoning practices, public housing, restrictive housing covenants, and borrowing and lending practices for buying homes of which all were carefully created and sanctioned directly by the government at the federal, state, and local level to impose racial segregation among our communities nationwide.
Another noteworthy aspect of The Color of Law which, in my opinion, is its greatest strength is the vast amount of evidence Rothstein garners to destroy the notion that government played a minor role in de juresegregation across the United States. Exercising his skills as a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, Rothstein gathers evidence from the late 19th century onward that uncovers a policy of de jure segregation where nearly every presidential administration is found guilty. For instance, Rothstein explains that one of FDR’s New Deal initiatives, the Public Works Administration, built public housing projects that were intended for low to middle class white families exclusively. During World War II, FDR’s administration built homes for white defense plant workers, but left black workers and their families with temporary, poorly constructed dwellings.
Medium August 7, 2019 -
“The Trump proposal helped light a fire under state advocates because the threshold is so low,” said Naomi Walker, who directs the Economic Policy Institute’s state research and policy network. She expects to see campaigns to update overtime rules in states such as Colorado and Michigan in the coming months.
The Wall Street Journal August 7, 2019 -
Last year, the center reported that “black households have only 10 cents in wealth for every dollar held by white households.” Likewise, the Economic Policy Institute reminds us that in this period of economic boom, black workers had the highest unemployment rate in the country, 6.3 percent — nearly twice that of whites. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that black Americans “are more likely to die at early ages from all causes.”
History News Network August 7, 2019 -
For the second part of our series on the economics of inequality, we’re joined by Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute. She’ll help us sort through some of the history, the politics and the newest research.
Marketplace August 7, 2019 -
Overall, the number of workers subject to mandatory arbitration has increased in recent decades, according to an April 2018 Economic Policy Institute study. The report shows that more than half of nonunion, private sector employers have mandatory arbitration procedures. Among companies with more than 1,000 employees, 65.1% use these contracts.
Bloomberg Law August 7, 2019