Media clips
-
The AFL-CIO created an entire department dedicated to encouraging investors to vote against large CEO compensation packages. Think tanks including the Economic Policy Institute have released data showing CEOs make about 300 times more than the average worker. Critics argue that bloated CEO compensation packages lead to wage stagnation for the average worker, which leads to low morale and reduced productivity. (EPI cited and Larry quoted)
Bloomberg July 28, 2017 -
“This request is clearly in the interest of the Trump administration in weakening, if not killing [the Obama] rule,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said by phone. “They are putting out the request for information in the hopes of obtaining good information to have the legal foundation to back a weaker threshold for the rule.” The EPI, which has advocated for labor unions in the past, issued a statement opposing the proposed overtime changes:
Mic July 28, 2017 -
A number of studies have suggested we’re living in a period where technology could be very destructive for American jobs. While automation will create 15 million new jobs by 2025, it’ll wipe out 25 million in the process, according to the research firm Forrester. In fact, our series “Robot-Proof Jobs” explored the possibility of a robot takeover, and which jobs would and wouldn’t survive in the event of one. But not everyone agrees with this argument. Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, says that automation is a distraction from other issues, like eroding labor standards and declining unionization.
Marketplace July 28, 2017 -
Or look at the pay gap between CEOs and workers. In 2016, the chief executives at America’s largest companies averaged $15.6 million in salary, stock options and other compensation – 271 times the pay of the average worker, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Sacramento Bee July 28, 2017 -
Still, the United States will remain somewhat dependent on foreign factories for basic parts that go into finished products. Trump has asserted that new factories in the United States will reduce the trade deficit, which dampens economic growth. But foreign-owned companies in the United States can easily widen the trade gap, according to analysis by Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank based in Washington. “These plants are always magnets for imports,” Scott said. Scott estimates that roughly 40 percent of America’s trade deficit in goods of $751.5 billion in 2014 came from the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies.
The Associated Press July 27, 2017 -
“Clearly, the salary threshold no longer does a satisfactory job of covering those vulnerable to unscrupulous employers,” Ross Eisenbrey, the former vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and the original proponent of increasing the threshold, told the Prospect when the rule was being finalized back in 2015. “These protections were meant to ensure the right to a limited workweek, especially for workers who lack control over their time and tasks, and who do not receive high pay.” Obama’s overtime update, formally introduced in the summer of 2016 amid the face of heated opposition from corporations, doubled the salary threshold to $47,476 for all salaried workers—regardless of title or duties—and tethered future threshold increases to increases in the cost of living. The rule would expand overtime coverage to more than four million workers while making it easier for more than seven million workers who are already qualified to prove their eligibility, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute. It was a crowning achievement of Obama’s second term, which centered on using the executive branch to advance pro-worker policies.
The American Prospect July 27, 2017 -
Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, says it would be catastrophic. Canceling the employer and individual mandates would, according to a CBO estimate, lead to 15 million people losing health insurance over the next decade. That’s not as bad as a complete repeal (32 million) or as the various proposed versions of the Republican health-care bill (22-23 million). Indeed, notes Bivens, the skinny repeal preserves Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, and “most of the people who got coverage [under Obamacare did so] through Medicaid expansion,” so those, the most vulnerable, are protected. But, Bivens says, doing away with the mandates would bring the health-care system to “almost complete collapse.” This is because letting people freely opt out of buying insurance creates prohibitive premiums for everyone else. (Josh quoted throughout)
Quartz July 26, 2017 -
Alongside this work, the Fed is also responsible for monitoring the financial sector. “Especially since the Dodd Frank legislation, they’re sort of the frontline regulator, and are responsible for the supervision of banks and other financial actors to make sure we don’t have another financial crash,” explains Josh Bivens, a research director at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). … “Some of the big-ticket items that you tend to buy become a little more expensive, and so consumers end up spending less on them, which is one of the things that leads to higher interest rates reigning in economic growth,” Bivens explains. “The other angle, besides consumers, is you have businesses that tend to take on debt to invest. Higher rates will discourage that, so you’ll see a slowdown in business investment after a while.”
Refinery29 July 26, 2017 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute, entry-level wages for high school graduates have fallen since 1973, adjusted for inflation. Don’t mistake this for a boon for college graduates, 50% of whom have seen their real wages decrease since 2000. Real wages have only gone up in certain skilled jobs. From 2000 to 2011, the only professions that have seen 5% or more real wage increases have been managers, health care and technical professionals, computer and mathematical science, and architecture and engineering workers. But a 5% wage increase over a decade is not enough to rebuild the middle class. … It ends up that those who are doing well are building their income and wealth by meaningfully sharing in the equity and profits of the businesses where they work—not only through wage increases. The Economic Policy Institute’s report, The State of Working America, documents a stunning concentration of capital ownership or wealth—namely, access to stocks and bonds and real estate—and shares in businesses in the families and individuals with the highest incomes. It also documents the importance of capital income, namely dividend and interest income and capital gains on stocks, bonds, real estate, and business interests of the families and individuals with the highest incomes.
Fortune July 26, 2017 -
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the nonpartisan but left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, notes that the dire effects the UW study found for low-wage workers falls well outside what decades of research on the subject would have predicted. While that may be the case, it also suggests that the paper is an outlier, he says, and should not be trusted without further evidence. Another common critique of the study is that it looks only at people who work at firms with one location. This is because state payroll data does not distinguish which location of a chain a worker is employed at. Thus it is impossible to know, for example, whether a barista is working at a Starbucks inside Seattle or outside. The UW study team argues that, based on interviews with employers, they believe that restaurant chains were more likely to cut worker hours, so by excluding them, the study is likely to actually underestimate the wage hike’s negative effects on workers. Zipperer and others say the opposite is true. The way Seattle’s minimum-wage law is set up, only the biggest firms had to raise their wages to $13 an hour in 2016. This, conceivably, induced some workers to leave jobs at small firms in order to get a pay raise at larger chains, the report’s critics say. Such job movement “is not a remote possibility,” Zipperer says. “It agrees with a lot of intuition.” But when that happens, he says, the worker falls off the study’s radar: “This study is going to count that [movement] as a job loss.”
Seattle Weekly July 26, 2017