While slapping on tariffs in what is supposed to the final rounds of trade talks also seems dramatic, Robert E. Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, said he doubts they will actually materialize.
Think Progress
May 8, 2019
Trade tensions do carry risks for both countries, undoubtedly, but the greater hazard lies in perpetuating the present abuses. After all, since the mistaken Clinton/Bush decision to integrate China fully into the World Trade Organization, China’s trade manipulation has led to the incredible loss of 3.4 million U.S. jobs in this century, according to the union-backed 2018 study of the Economic Policy Institute. Many China apologists ascribe manufacturing jobs losses here wholly to automation. But former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Katharine Abraham published a report with University of Maryland colleagues determining that China compelled about twice as many workers to leave the U.S. workforce as did automation.
Real Clear Politics
May 8, 2019
But starting in the 1990s, a competing strand of thinking has gained a foothold, using its own studies to argue minimum wage hikes did not have the adverse effects that had been feared. It started with David Card and Alan Krueger, who studied worker pay at fast-food joints in New Jersey, in 1994. The new research from UMass Amherst’s Doruk Cengiz and Arindrajit Dube, the Economic Policy Institute’s Ben Zipperer, and the University College London’s Atilla Lindner is the latest volley from that latter school of thought.
VOX
May 8, 2019
One proposed change would alter how the poverty threshold rises to reflect inflation; under the plan the threshold would move from using the consumer price index to using the “chained” consumer price index. While almost all indexes, including the CPI, measure inflation, in part, by assuming consumers will substitute one item for another when things get too costly, chained CPI does it more aggressively. Over time this change would lead to a decrease in the number of people living in poverty, not because they are earning more money, but because they will not meet the increasingly narrow definition of it. As a result, “fewer and fewer people would receive benefits over time,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
May 8, 2019
The issue driving income inequality in the U.S. has not been a lack of productivity by American workers, a February report from the Economic Policy Institute finds. Instead it is that the lion’s share of gains from increased productivity have gone to a tiny segment of wage earners at the top.
Axios
May 8, 2019
Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute told DailyMail.com that part of the issue could be that inflation and the cost of living in America has outstripped wage growth.
Daily Mail
May 8, 2019
“There’s a whole history of attempts to cut benefits of various kinds by saying we could use a more accurate measure of inflation, but the only change suggested by these groups are changes that would kick more Americans off welfare benefits,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “This is being done to lower eligibility, and this administration cannot pretend they’re doing it for accuracy purposes, especially if the only thing they’re changing is to make a measure that is already too low even worse… There’s no rationalizing this as help.”
Newsweek
May 8, 2019
The reason is no secret: its simple math. The Economic Policy Institute found Maryland teachers earn 14% less, on average, than similarly skilled workers in other jobs in Maryland’s state economy.
MarylandReporter.com
May 8, 2019
Overall, teachers in the U.S. were paid 21.4% less than comparably educated professionals in 2018, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which described the gap as a “record high.”
Time
May 8, 2019
It’s by now a familiar story: anemic wage growth for most workers and rising inequality have plagued the US labor market since the 1970s, funneling an ever greater share of economic growth to the country’s most affluent people.
The Guardian
May 8, 2019