“China appears to believe that it has an inalienable right to control its own domestic economy, and its international economic environment… irrespective of any commitments it has made under the WTO or other international agreements,” said Robert E. Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
ThinkProgress
June 12, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute reports that 41% of baby boomers aged 55 to 64 have no retirement savings at all. If you’re part of that statistic, then you need to step up your retirement contributions now.
HoweStreet.com
June 12, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a preliminary calculation suggests that well over half of the workers who would have gotten new or strengthened overtime protections under the 2016 rule would be left behind by this proposed Trump administration rule. This means the administration’s rule would leave out millions of workers.
Education
June 12, 2019
While that story is, again, extreme, the common thread here is, uh, exploitation. Even South by Southwest, the longest running and largest festival/conference hybrid in the country, would likely not be able to turn a profit if not for some questionable labor practices. Thousands of “volunteers” and “interns” work for free every year, at an event that sells tickets in the four figures and benefits a for-profit company. In 2014, a Salon report quoted Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute as saying, “I can’t see how what they’re doing is legal. They’ve opened themselves up to a class-action lawsuit, which involves attorney fees and could involve liquidated damages, meaning double back pay for everyone.”
VOX
June 12, 2019
The merger would reduce the U.S. wireless market to three major players (the others are AT&T and Verizon). The state AGs’ objections echo those of 37 House Democrats who sent a letter to federal regulators earlier this year arguing the deal will “destroy jobs and drive down wages.” The Communication Workers of America estimates the consolidation will eliminate 30,000 jobs, and researchers at the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt institute, two left-leaning think tanks, estimate it will lower wireless workers’ average weekly earnings by up to 7 percent in affected labor markets. Read a press release on the lawsuit here. More from POLITICO here.
Politico
June 12, 2019
In other words, inequality has local officials coming and going. The ranks of the homeless are growing because almost all the gains from America’s growing economy, as the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould testified to Congress this past March, are “going to households at the top.”
United Steelworkers
June 12, 2019
An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) brief entitled “ The Productivity-Pay Gap” vividly displays a disturbing trend that, for the last 45 years, essentially all of the economic gains from America’s increasing productivity has gone to the elite and upper-middle class, while workers’ real wages have remained roughly flat. In their report, 1973 serves as a demarcation line: Prior to that date, worker gains in terms of real wages increased with an almost lockstep 1:1 relationship with productivity. After 1973, however, despite the continued trend of increased productivity, the promised “trickle-down” to all workers from neoliberal supply-side economics hasn’t happened.
Democracy Journal
June 12, 2019
U.S. Census Bureau statistics show median earnings for workers of $26,059, according to the 2017 American Community Survey. Median earnings for workers in 2010 were $23,699, or a growth of about 1.42 percent a year. How many county residents have seen their bills increase by only 1.4 percent each year? The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, has stated wages would need to increase between 3.5 and 4 percent for average workers to feel an impact.
The Post-Journal
June 12, 2019
In the Economic Policy Institute’s new report: “Class of 2019: High School Edition,” they look at the job prospects of students as they graduate from high school and consider their future. What they found was that Importantly, nearly two-thirds of workers over age 21 do not have a four-year college degree.
88.5 WMNF
June 12, 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 11, 2019