What’s the effect of a $15 minimum wage in Minneapolis? No one knows just yet
The Star Tribune/ Emma Nelson
“We’ve never gone to $15 before,” said Dave Cooper, senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that studies the minimum wage. “I think that what Minneapolis and Seattle and San Francisco are doing now is outside of what has largely been studied, so we’re going to have to watch and see what happens.”
Star Tribune
June 18, 2017
People are worried Amazon will replace Whole Foods workers with robots
The Washington Post/Danielle Paquette
Elise Gould, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said cashier jobs represent an important part of the economy. They’re spread out across the country and employ workers of diverse backgrounds and ages. “These are jobs that can help support a family,” Gould said.
The Washington Post
June 17, 2017
The right criticized Janet L. Yellen for years. Now the left says she’s too far right.
The Washington Post/Ana Swanson
Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, called Wednesday’s rate hike “a clear mistake.” “Today’s decision seems to indicate that the Fed is on autopilot to raise rates, regardless of what the data argue,” he wrote in a note. “This will lead quite soon to a pronounced slowdown in economic activity and job growth, and could essentially mean that we never manage to achieve genuine full employment or give American workers a real chance at sustained, durable wage growth.”
The Washington Post
June 16, 2017
That closer look was taken by Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. In a long essay, they examine the Acemoglu and Restrepo paper in detail. They note that the two economists find that capital investment, and use of computers specifically, tend to increase jobs. As Acemoglu and Restrepo themselves wrote: “[Our results] suggest that other types of capital equipment and even computers tend to increase the demand for labor. This result underscores the possibility — though certainly does not prove — that industrial robots might have a very different impact on employment and wages than other types of recent technologies.” (whole story)
Bloomberg
June 16, 2017
Through the 1970s—when the ratio of CEOs’ pay to that of the average worker was much lower, at somewhere between 20:1 and 30:1—the lodestar was “internal equity,” or how an executive’s pay compared with that of other employees in the company. A nascent industry, executive-compensation consulting, changed this. Consultants recommended switching to “external equity,” meaning compensation would be based on what other CEOs were paid. This was merely a useful sales tool—even though the consultants didn’t have solid evidence or theoretical justification for this method, they could attract business by vowing to set ambitious goals for their clients. Still, corporations adopted the standard of external equity, and CEOs got a lot richer.
The Atlantic
June 16, 2017
According to Daniel Costa, an analyst at Economic Policy Institute, under the current criteria, even if one builds in a targeted employment area, authorities “don’t know if people who live in the high-unemployment areas are even getting hired or if they’re given preference for hiring, and/or how many have actually been hired.”
The Nation
June 16, 2017
Last year, the median hourly wage rose 3.1 percent as employers steadily added jobs throughout the economy. In recent months, though, as job growth has slowed, wage growth has fallen to an annual rate of about 2.5 percent. That’s better than nothing, but unless wage gains are strong and sustained, workers will perpetually be making up for ground that has been lost over decades as wages have barely budged while executive pay and shareholder returns have soared. If wage gains reflected decades-long gains in labor productivity — the measure of the economic growth created by workers — an American making around $40,000 today would instead be making about $60,000.
The New York Times
June 14, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that in its first year, the CPC budget would create 2.4 million jobs for people of all backgrounds in both urban and rural America. The CPC proposes funding these public works with a financial transaction tax on the sale of stocks and bonds.
In These Times
June 14, 2017
Saving for retirement just got easier
The Boston Globe/Sen. Elizabeth Warren
But there is another reason families in the state aren’t saving enough for retirement. According to new research from the Economic Policy Institute, people saving for retirement in Massachusetts are losing $491 million every single year because of financial advisers who give advice that lines their own pockets at the expense of their clients.
The Boston Globe
June 13, 2017
Now, ordinary people might hear “we need more inflation” and think the prices for everything they buy would rise unsustainably. But the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens explains that inflation typically goes hand in hand with wage growth, rather than eroding living standards. Plus, Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation, so a boost wouldn’t affect them much. Inflation is also good for borrowers; it has the effect of lowering real interest rates, reducing debtors’ effective obligations. “When we run a tighter economy that’s associated with a higher inflation rate, ordinary individuals are unambiguously better off,” said Joseph Stiglitz on the press call.
The Fiscal Times
June 13, 2017