Economists tend to be much more skeptical. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute dismisses fears of technological unemployment, pointing to data that suggests this particular scenario is nowhere in sight. (Heidi speaks throughout)
VOX
November 16, 2017
Hunter speaks at 1:00 mark.
“This money can be used to pay for Medicaid, to strengthen Medicare, pay for roads, bridges, infrastructure,” said Hunter Blair, a budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. He says the GOP tax plan is designed to help the wealthy. He says the current estate tax exemption level is already too high. “Raising the exemption level, more of a give away to the richest estates, it doesn’t seem like a good idea,” said Blair.
Gray TV
November 16, 2017
Employment arbitration agreements are increasingly popular, as employers try to keep cases out of court. The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates as many as 60 million American workers have signed one, even if they didn’t read the fine print.
NPR
November 16, 2017
Rising incomes for lower- and middle-earners may help reduce inequality, especially if wage growth for higher-earners remains subdued. A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, found that real wages for the top 1% of earners fell by 3.1% in 2016, and were lower that year than they were in 2007. As workers’ wages grow, firms’ profit margins may also come under pressure, reducing, somewhat, the capital income of the rich. Texas Roadhouse, a chain of steak restaurants, recently warned investors that it expects its wage bill to grow by 7-8% in 2017.
The Economist
November 15, 2017
The Washington Post
November 15, 2017
That point is broadly true. Wage growth has been relatively flat for decades, but after the recession hovered around 2 percent, as data from the Economic Policy Institute shows. Had wages grown at 3.5 percent after the recession — the pace wage growth saw before the recession — hourly earnings would be about 12 percent higher. (chart included)
The Washington Post
November 13, 2017
“Boosting productivity growth…will not lead to broad-based wage gains unless we pursue policies that reconnect productivity growth and the pay of the vast majority,” Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote in 2015. Mr. Mishel is co-creator of a chart illustrating the post-1973 divergence between productivity and pay that has achieved iconic status on the left. (Larry quoted throughout)
The Wall Street Journal
November 13, 2017
The dark side of public–private partnerships entails bailouts and bad deals. Infrastructure is in part defined by natural monopolistic tendencies, and without an effective public regulatory monitoring mechanism, private actors who take on public services might raise prices to an inefficient level or degrade service quality to an inefficient degree, says Hunter Blair, budget analyst for the Economic Policy Institute. Governments run the risk of mistaking the financing that public–private partnerships can leverage for the funding of projects themselves—of missing the forest for the trees. “A lot of people in the government, when they talk about [public–private partnerships], they see it as this free lunch,” Blair says. “We’re going to bring in private money, so that means, somehow, it’s going to cost us less to pay for the infrastructure. Funding at the end of the day still has to come from taxes or user fees. There is no free lunch here.”
CityLab
November 13, 2017
In fact, most corporations have access to pretty much all the money they need right now, says Josh Bivens, director of research at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But they’re not investing all that much or increasing wages. “So we have exactly what the corporate tax cut is trying to engineer—really high post-tax profit rates. And yet it has not resulted in more investment. So the idea that we just want to do more of the same thing that has not spurred investment strikes me as not correct,” Bivens says.
Marketplace
November 13, 2017
According to the Economic Policy Institute, one in five veterans — or 1.8 million veterans — are currently paid less than $15 an hour. Who are these low-paid veterans? Two-thirds (66 percent) are 40 years old or older, 61 percent have college experience and 69 percent work full time.
Marketplace
November 13, 2017