“As a group, low-wage workers would be just unambiguously better off,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that has long pushed for minimum wage increases. “The bottom line is the benefits exceed the costs.”
NY Mag
July 9, 2019
“As a group, low-wage workers would be just unambiguously better off,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that has long pushed for minimum wage increases. “The bottom line is the benefits exceed the costs.”
Ms. Shierholz and other liberal economists also questioned the budget office’s methodology, saying it overlooked recent academic research that has found substantially less job loss from minimum-wage increases than many economists previously expected.
The New York Times
July 9, 2019
“We don’t see the negative scare stories that people are worried about, that for a big enough minimum-wage increase, employers cut back on hiring and people lose their jobs,” said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and one of the paper’s authors. “There wasn’t any downside to the increase. There was only an upside,” he said.
CBS News
July 9, 2019
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute pointed out that the decision still undercuts unions’ collective bargaining because they will now have fewer resources specifically dedicated to collective bargaining (i.e., no more fair share fees).
Inside Sources
July 8, 2019
Unscrupulous businesses stole an estimated $429 million in wages and overtime pay from Michigan workers between 2013 and 2015, impacting more than 2.8 million workers, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, Michigan taxpayers are shortchanged $107 million a year in revenue through tax fraud when businesses misclassify workers by reporting employees as self-employed independent contractors or paying them off the books as a way to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, a Michigan State University study found.
UP Matters
July 8, 2019
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., has criticized that proposal as excluding 8.2 million workers from extra pay, many of them in retail and service jobs.
“We have a 40-hour workweek so people can spend time with their families,” said Ms. Shierholz, who was the Labor Department’s chief economist when it rolled out the Obama-era rules.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
July 8, 2019
If wages for those at the bottom are high, you may naturally expect low poverty rates. No matter how you define it, higher wages would most logically relieve poverty levels. This is also the argument made by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). An increase in the minimum wage may very well reduce poverty in the short-term. However, there will be adjustments. In reality, a higher minimum wage changes the types of people living in poverty rather than the overall number.
Foundation for Economic Education
July 8, 2019
“The more people are struggling to make ends meet themselves, the more they may notice inequality,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
AP
July 8, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published a study that looked at income inequality based on 2017 reported wages, and the results may be surprising. While the top 1% obviously out-earn the bottom 90% by a considerable margin, you don’t need to make millions each year to join them. And if you consider yourself relatively well-to-do, you may be in the top 5% or 10% already.
The Motley Fool
July 8, 2019
As a paper by the Economic Policy Institute’s Ross Eisenbrey lays out, workers forced into arbitration are less likely to prevail, and when they do prevail, they typically receive less money.
ThinkProgress
July 8, 2019