Our total trade deficit with China alone is approaching half a trillion dollars a year. What does that do to the American worker? Senior Economist Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank says it best. “Trade with China has redistributed vastly more income from working Americans to those at the top, than it has created through any increases in economic efficiency.
News and Tribune
June 19, 2019
Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute estimates that a loss of one IQ point from lead poisoning may lead to a loss of more than $22,000 in lifetime earnings (adjusting for inflation). Now consider that 14 percent of the children poisoned in Flint, Michigan, had very high blood lead levels—above 10 micrograms, which works out to a lifetime loss of at least $162,800 in earnings per child. It is medically impossible to reverse the damage done to the nervous systems of these children. But it is very possible to compensate them for unnecessary harm.
VICE
June 19, 2019
Colorado’s move is commendable and positive, said David Cooper, senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. It’s the first state to undo the restrictions, he said.
Colorado Daily
June 19, 2019
The value of that wage has fallen by about 17 percent over the past decade, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, which translates into a $3,000 loss in annual earnings for a full-time year-round minimum-wage worker.
“There is not a single community in the U.S. where someone can have a decent quality of life at the current federal minimum wage,” said David Cooper, an EPI researcher on the minimum wage. “Congress has never waited this long to lift up the wages of workers at the bottom.”
The Washington Post
June 19, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that these workers would earn an average of $4,422 dollars more every year as a result of the increase. This would provide resources needed to meet basic needs like the cost of quality child care for three months or rent for five months at fair market rent. People of color — who are often excluded from higher-paying jobs due to historic exclusion, educational opportunities, and persistent discrimination in the labor market — would earn as much as $5,100 more per year, taking a significant step toward overcoming historically-rooted racial discrimination in wages.
NC Policy Watch
June 19, 2019
Some economists have done studies that purport to show a negative impact from automation. For example, a 2017 paper by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo claimed that regions with more robots lost more jobs between 1990 and 2007. And a paper by Osea Giuntella and Tianyi Wang found something similar going on in China. But these trends don’t seem to be showing up at the national level — some countries that use more industrial robots, such as South Korea, Germany and Japan, have unemployment rates as low as or lower than that of the U.S. Meanwhile, Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute concluded that when the definition of “robots” is broadened to include investment in information technology in general, the result found by Acemoglu and Restrepo disappears.
Bloomberg
June 19, 2019
This March, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California announced a plan to increase teacher salaries, which have not kept pace with the cost of living. Teachers’ pay is also out of line with that of other professionals. Teachers earn 11.1 percent less than other workers with comparable education and experience, according to the nonprofit think tank the Economic Policy Institute. Harris’ proposal would raise teachers’ salaries over the next decade to help close gaps between what teachers earn and the cost of living.
The Hechinger Report
June 19, 2019
The state of play: Currently, the average cost of child care for 1 child is between 9% and 36% of a family’s total income, which increases with multiple children or for single parents, per the Economic Policy Institute. The Department of Health and Human Services defines child care as “affordable” if it costs no more than 10% of a family’s income.
Axios
June 19, 2019
Horan includes data that illustrates how ride-sharing services like Uber have made it harder for drivers to earn a livable wage. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Uber reduced US driver pay to between $9 and $11 per hour in 2018. But before Uber entered the market, taxi drivers in big cities made between $12 and $17 an hour.
June 18, 2019
Raising the minimum wage “speaks so clearly and directly to trying to resolve that problem, it is going to resonate even to folks who are going to be conservative on other issues,” said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that studies how policy affects low and middle-income people.
CNBC
June 18, 2019