It’s not cheap to live in one of the best places for millennials. That’s according to figures from the Economic Policy Institute, which has come out with an interactive calculator to determine how much it costs individuals and families to comfortably live in Arlington and other U.S. counties. For a couple with two children in Arlington, it costs about $9,493 per month to live comfortably, according to EPI, or just over $113,915 per year. The highest monthly costs were attributed to housing, at an average of $2,040 per month — for a “modest” but “sanitary” two-bedroom apartment — but childcare costs in the county were just behind it at $1,801 per month. (whole story)
ARL Now
March 27, 2018
But the language of the rule never stated the tips had to stay in the hands of workers. Worker advocates said the rule would give employers permission to pocket the gratuities that customers left their servers. The Economic Policy Institute estimated a loss of $5.8 billion a year to workers if the provision were enacted. Now, the spending bill rider sets penalties for employers who skim gratuities and gives workers the right to sue employers who take tips.
Common Dreams
March 27, 2018
Acosta said DOL did a “qualitative” survey on tip theft, but he won’t release it. While DOL didn’t run the numbers on the tip theft, the Economic Policy Institute, using federal data, did, in mid-January. It reported if Trump’s rule takes effect, the average tipped worker could lose a minimum of $1,000 yearly – and tipped workers are among those who can least afford such losses. EPI’s analysis showed tipped workers would lose a minimum of $5.8 billion yearly due to employers pocketing the tips, and – in a worse-case scenario listed in one chart — $13 billion. And working women would suffer 80 percent of the losses. Lawmakers cited both figures while questioning Acosta at the March 6 hearing on DOL’s budget. (EPI cited throughout)
Press Associates Union News
March 27, 2018
In a new paper, Jessica Schieder of the Economic Policy Institute and I examined the impact of a cap in the deductibility of CEO pay. A provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) prevented health insurers from deducting more than $500,000 of CEO pay from their taxes. This meant that a dollar of CEO pay went from costing companies 65 cents in after-tax dollars to costing them a full dollar, an increase of more than 50 percent. (whole op-ed)
Truthout
March 27, 2018
“Trump prefers to negotiate at the point of a gun,” said Robert E. Scott, a senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. But he questioned the wisdom of not outlining the goals of the negotiation at the outset, particularly with allies. “I think it would have been better to make this explicit when they laid out the tariffs,” Mr. Scott said. (Rob quoted throughout)
The New York Times
March 26, 2018
“The solution to the threats to U.S. national security and jobs must include strong, effective efforts to provide enforceable reductions in global overcapacity in these industries.
Robert Scott, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Research, Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg Quint
March 26, 2018
The Left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) last week fired back that the true loss would be about 97 percent less, only 5,000 jobs. The union-backed policy organization argued that The Trade Partnership reached “hyperbolic” conclusions by using a nonstandard model that vastly overstates the impact of tariffs. “The question is how the economy is going to respond to higher prices for steel and aluminum,” said Robert Scott, who wrote the EPI study. “They’ve made the most extreme assumptions possible.” Scott, EPI’s director of trade and manufacturing policy research, told LifeZette that The Trade Partnership study abandons the traditional assumption of full employment generally used in trade research. That has the effect of exaggerating the jobs losses triggered by higher prices for steel and aluminum that tariffs cause. (Rob quoted throughout)
Lifezette
March 26, 2018
If anything, the consequences of failing to complete college seem to be increasing, as the economy becomes ever more technologically advanced. Since 2000, the average inflation-adjusted wage of workers with some college credit but no degree has actually fallen, by 2 percent, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. The average wage of college graduates is up 6 percent.
The New York Times
March 26, 2018
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute disagreed, saying that many employers take a portion of tips even in places where it’s forbidden, and would do so even more often if it were legal. In a recent report, it estimated that servers would lose some $5.8 billion in tips annually to their employers.
CNN Money
March 26, 2018
But there are big caveats to Acemoglu and Restrepo’s paper. The kind of robots they look at constitute only a small fraction of the automation technologies being deployed across the world today. Economists from the Economic Policy Institute looked closely at Acemoglu and Restrepo’s results and found that investment in computers is associated with job gains rather than losses.
Bloomberg View
March 26, 2018