Okay, so both Warren and Rubio use the same phrase, Economic Patriotism. And for all their stated differences, they agree on a key symptom of the problem, outsourcing, which is deleterious to both employment and national security. The Economic Policy Institute, for instance, has estimated that in the dozen years after the U.S. normalized trade relations with China in 2000, some 3.2 million American jobs went to the People’s Republic.
Bloomberg Tax
June 18, 2019
“The PRO Act is an important effort to bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century — giving working people more power at a time when it is desperately needed,” said Celine McNicholas, the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) director of government affairs and labor counsel, in a statement. “Congress should pass the PRO Act immediately and give working people what they need most: fairness and a voice on the job.”
Truthout
June 18, 2019
It’s been 25 years since NAFTA went into force, and working people in the Buckeye State and beyond are still paying the price: 851,700 good-paying jobs were lost, including at least 106,400 here in Ohio, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Cleveland.com
June 18, 2019
Progressives seized upon the “shameful” 3,615-day milestone as all the more reason to push for a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. According to a report published in February the Economic Policy Institute, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would boost the pay of nearly 40 million workers.
Common Dreams
June 18, 2019
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020 would reduce public assistance spending by $17 billion annually. In Pennsylvania, raising the wage to $12 this year will lead to more than $150 million saved on Medicaid spending in fiscal year 2019-2020.
The Clearfield Progress
June 18, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper lays out what workers have lost in the near-decade since the last increase: $7.25 in July 2009 was equivalent to $8.70 now. That means a minimum wage worker has seen their purchasing power drop by 17%, or the equivalent of more than $3,000 a year. And still Republicans stand in the way of a raise.
Daily Kos
June 18, 2019
June 16th marks the longest period in history without an increase in the federal minimum wage. The last time Congress passed an increase was in May 2007, when it legislated that the minimum wage be raised to $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009. Since it was first established in 1938, Congress has never let the minimum wage go unchanged for so long.
People’s World
June 18, 2019
Economists too have been weighing in on how big employers like AT&T are using their increased profits from the tax windfall: “The strongest claim made by proponents of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was that it would trickle down to aid working families by boosting wages,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “This was never a convincing claim and we can see now just how cynical it was all along: after lobbying fiercely for a corporate tax cut that put literally billions in their coffers, AT&T is fighting tooth and nail to make sure that they don’t have to share any of this new profitability with their workers by committing to invest in good jobs.”
Value Walk
June 18, 2019
“The workers that come in need to be paid fairly and they need to have equal rights and protections,” says Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank with ties to the U.S. labor movement. “Unfortunately, the H-2B program doesn’t have that.”
We Love Foreign Workers
June 18, 2019