But the cost of living involves more than housing. Transportation, groceries, insurance and other factors are part of the equation. The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, found South Florida (including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties) was the 23rd most expensive place to live, well behind Washington, D.C., Boston and Boulder, Colorado.
Bradenton Herald
July 1, 2019
Neither Methodist, nonprofit Baptist Memorial Healthcare or Regional One, the public hospital, pay all their employees at least $15 an hour. Even that figure would make it impossible to make ends meet for an employee trying alone to support a household with dependents, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator and another created by the Economic Policy Institute, both of which take into account local living expenses.
Commercial Appeal
July 1, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the national average annual income of the top 1% is $1,316,985 while the average income of the rest of the population is only $50,107. This means the top 1% earns 26.3 times more than the bottom 99%. In New York — a city getting too expensive for even Wall Street bankers— the top 1% earns 44.4 times more.
INSIDER’s data team used statistics from the Economic Policy Institute to find the average income of the 1% in each state (including Washington, DC), along with the average income of the rest of the state’s population. We also listed the state’s income ratio, which answers the question, “How many more times the income do the top 1% make over the bottom 99%?”
Business Insider
July 1, 2019
Many financial advisors are now saying that focusing on small changes is an ineffective strategy. Our focus instead should be on larger decisions like “saving $150,000 on a house purchase or negotiating a major raise.” Others see comments like Orman’s as some mix of nonsensical and classist (and also definitely racist, because the whole history of property ownership in America is racist). Senior researcher at the Economic Policy Institute Elise Gould notes that even those with “stable, middle-class incomes” find themselves living paycheck to paycheck.
Sprudge
July 1, 2019
So none of us should be surprised that none of the Democratic Party’s White House hopefuls showed up this past Tuesday at the landmark Taxing the (Very) Rich conference that two of the nation’s top progressive think tanks — the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies — hosted in Washington, D.C.
Inequality.org
July 1, 2019
But that tells only part of the story. Teachers’ salaries in the United States vary greatly from state to state, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. In 2017, the blended national average of elementary and secondary teacher salaries was $58,950, but as high as $79,637 in New York and as low as $42,668 in South Dakota and $42,925 in Mississippi. The Economic Policy Institute noted that professionals with comparable education and skills earn 19 percent more than do the country’s educators. The result of relatively poor pay is declining enrollment in teachers’ colleges, and a high turnover among those employed, both of which are, in turn, creating worrisome teacher shortages in poor areas.
The American Interest
July 1, 2019
Inflation-adjusted wages stagnated for the bottom 60 percent, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
July 1, 2019
Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio falsely said: “The bottom 60 percent haven’t seen a raise since 1980.” Analyses of Census data by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income workers, show there has been a rise in inflation-adjusted wages over that time period, even if the percentage increase was relatively small, especially compared with the 90th percentile of workers.
Sources:
Gould, Elise. “State of Working America Wages 2018.” Economic Policy Institute. 20 Feb 2019.
Gould, Elise and Heidi Shierholz. “Average wage growth continues to flatline in 2018, while low-wage workers and those with relatively lower levels of educational attainment see stronger gains.” Economic Policy Institute. 18 Jul 2018.
FactCheck.org
July 1, 2019
(CEO pay graph)
This graph shows the ratio of CEO pay (two different measures) to the typical US worker’s pay over the years. Economic Policy Institute
VOX
July 1, 2019
“The Color of Law,” a book by Richard Rothstein, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute (where I work), is an in-depth historical review of just how deeply these legalized segregation tactics thwarted the ability of black Americans to build up any wealth.
MarketWatch
July 1, 2019