The plans have split experts. Hunter Blair, budget analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the proposals were “basically a huge tax cut for the rich”. “According to the treasury, 43% of corporate tax is paid for by the top 1%. We have tried this supply side economics before; trickle down just doesn’t work,” he said.
The Guardian
April 26, 2017
President Trump is expected to unveil his tax plan tomorrow. It would reportedly lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. Budget analysts predict that would cost the federal government more than $2 trillion in revenue over a decade. But the administration says the tax cuts will boost the economy so much that they’ll pay for themselves because of increased economic activity. Is that realistic? (Hunter speaks at 1:53-2:05)
Marketplace
April 26, 2017
Do tariffs necessarily mean more jobs for steelworkers? A typical U.S. steel plant uses far fewer workers today than in the past, thanks to automation. And lower demand for domestic steel affects U.S. jobs, though an infrastructure program would provide a boost. But it’s axiomatic that lowering costs for American steel relative to Chinese rivals would help the industry (and half a million jobs, according to a 2014 Economic Policy Institute report). Plus, I don’t recall the proviso in trade enforcement that violations aren’t important unless they definitively bring the affected industry back to 1960s levels of employment. Anyway, there are lots of other reasons to prevent China’s predatory pricing.
The Fiscal Times
April 25, 2017
Interview with Daniel Costa about the problems with the H-1B program and what to make of Trump’s new executive order.
The American Prospect
April 25, 2017
We go to Washington hoping to make a difference. But in many cases, low starting salaries and unpaid internships are barriers to entry. It’s a phenomenon Carlos Vera described last year for NBC Latino, writing, “Interning in Congress is a rite of passage for any college student who wants a career in politics, but they don’t come cheap. Congressional internships are generally unpaid, and in D.C. will cost you a pretty penny.” As Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told the New York Times last year, “It restricts access to jobs in government to a narrower group of people.” The median white family has 13 times the net wealth of the median black family and 10 times the wealth of the median Latino family, narrowing the access of people of color to congressional internships that translate to entry-level jobs, which translates to fewer minorities advancing to senior staff positions: In 2015, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that of 336 chief of staff, legislative director, communications director and committee staff director positions, people of color held only 24.
The Washington Post
April 25, 2017
The irony is that grueling workweeks aren’t exclusively an elite phenomenon. Far from it. Many less fortunate Americans perform similar feats of productivity, although they have fewer incentives and opportunities to advertise it. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that Americans workers work significantly more hours than they did a few decades ago – especially women, blacks, and the poor. A black woman in the bottom fifth of earners worked 349 more hours in 2015 than she would have in 1979. The reason is simple: wages have barely budged since the 1970s, which means today’s workers have to work harder to make ends meet.
The Guardian
April 24, 2017
“Employers routinely select the lowest skill levels and pad their profits by hiring H-1Bs at the lowest possible ‘prevailing wage’ levels,” according to a 2016 Congress testimony made by Ron Hira, a research associate for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think-tank in Washington D.C. In his testimony, Hira claimed that 41% of all the H-1B applications in 2015 were issued to workers in Level I positions — those that are considered entry level for their respective occupation — and they, according to Hira’s analysis, generally make 40% less than the Level III workers who are considered more experienced. The analysis did not directly compare the wages of H-1B workers and U.S. workers while controlling the skill level of jobs. (Ron and EPI cited throughout)
Market Watch
April 24, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has compiled a fact sheet on the Trump administration’s deregulation efforts that it says “reveals a policy agenda that favors corporate profits ahead of worker protections and public health.” Celine McNicholas, labor counsel at EPI and co-author of the fact sheet, argued that regulations raising the bar for treatment of government labor have a positive ripple effect. “The federal government is a huge consumer of services and to the extent that they set fundamental labor and employment standards…that has a significant effect on the way companies will do business,” she said. McNicholas also suggested the focus on costs for businesses is misplaced because deregulation passes costs on to workers and their families. “Nothing’s free,” she said. “There’s a cost. It’s just about where is the cost being absorbed.”
WJLA
April 21, 2017
Some of the states you’ll definitely want to avoid if you’re trying to keep the cost of having kids low? New York, for one: according to Market Watch, a report from the Economic Policy Institute found that of the 10 most expensive places for a two-parent, two-child family to live, five of them could be found in the state of New York. Connecticut claimed an additional two spots on the list, while San Francisco, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii, also stuck out as particularly expensive cities for families. (EPI cited throughout)
Romper
April 21, 2017
Data from the Economic Policy Institute show that women and people of color in the workforce earn less, on average, than white, male workers. In the Ohio Valley region this ‘wage gap’ hovers around 20 percent: In Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia an African American worker will earn on average 82 cents for every dollar a white worker earns. For women, it’s about 78 cents. And that gap persists even as education levels rise among workers.
WVPB
April 21, 2017