Media clips
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“Today, working people across the country, from fast food workers to adjunct professors, are striking and demonstrating in favor of a $15 minimum wage – the largest demonstration in the history of the Fight for $15 movement,” Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement Tuesday. “A bold proposal such as $15 is needed to lift the earnings of the bottom third of the workforce, generate robust wage growth overall and fuel economic growth.”
U.S. News & World Report November 30, 2016 -
Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $12 would lift pay for 35 million workers, or 1 in 4 employees nationwide, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
The Associated Press November 30, 2016 -
Chao will have the difficult task of of convincing Congress to ask taxpayers to pony up for Trump’s pricey infrastructure plan. “Trump’s plan frames the infrastructure problem as a lack of innovative financing options,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair wrote in a blog post. “This is nonsense. The problem is that politicians don’t want to ask taxpayers to pay for valued infrastructure.”
ATTN: November 30, 2016 -
Others, like a pair of researchers at the Economic Policy Institute, are asking questions about the plan’s details. Would the proposed tax credits be allowed to go to already-existing public-private partnership projects? And what about the desperately needed projects private investors aren’t gonna be super excited to fund? “Who decides which projects need to be built?” ask Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair. “How will the Trump administration provide needed infrastructure investments that are unlikely to be profitable for private providers (such as building lead-free water pipes in Flint, MI)?”
Alliance for American Manufacturing November 30, 2016 -
The victory is largely a symbolic one, given that the U.S. has been losing more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs each year to overseas competition, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. But the jobs saved represent about half the 2,000 that Carrier was preparing to move south to Mexico. They go a long way to redeeming a pledge that candidate Trump made in February to halt Carrier’s offshoring–or slap a steep tariff on any air conditioners that Carrier imports from Mexico back to the U.S.
Politico November 30, 2016 -
Some experts question whether Carrier’s move would be more than a symbolic victory for Trump. According to federal data, Indiana has lost more than 235,000 manufacturing jobs since 1969, and the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal thinktank, estimates that the US loses more than 300,000 factory jobs annually because of foreign competition.
The Guardian November 30, 2016 -
Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, believes that the business wing of the Republican party and business lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce will push back on proposed changes. “A high priority for them is the ability to hire workers on these temporary visas — where the workers are often indentured because they can’t easily switch employers, and they are often underpaid compared to similarly situated American workers because laws and regulations allow it, and/or because of a lack of enforcement,” Costa said. That disturbing detail, along with the Disney case, suggests that there are good reasons to investigate the H-1B program and whether it’s being abused. Costa believes the Trump administration could reinterpret the H-1B statute in a way that makes it more difficult for companies to do so. Siskind agrees, and said organizations using the same foreign-based staffing system as in that Disney case will face the most pressure.
Engadget November 30, 2016 -
“It basically violates the notion of ‘The free market knows best,’ ” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “It’s an unusual thing for a Republican, that’s for sure.” Mishel described the negotiations as “an important test” for Trump — of whether he can fulfill his bold promises to voters through a combination of experience in business and a new style of leadership. “I really hope the factory doesn’t close,” said Mishel, adding that Trump has “laid claim to a magic wand to be able to reverse” trends in global trade.
The Washington Post November 29, 2016 -
The liberal Economic Policy Institute argues the plan is unlikely to lead to much new investment because it’s driven more by ideology — that private enterprise always trumps direct public investments in infrastructure — than by rational policy. The funding scheme could result in fewer new projects than a direct-spending plan as state and local governments simply change how they finance improvements now in progress to take advantage of the credits, the EPI noted in a report this month. Another question: Will the plan provide a windfall to public-private partnership deals already in the works or provide incentives only for new ones? Public-private infrastructure deals are prone to devolve into “crony capitalism” — with developers securing bailouts when their projections for toll-collection totals prove too rosy, the EPI added. And often the most-needed improvements — say lead-free water pipes in Flint, Michigan — are unlikely to attract interest from private investors. “Trump’s plan frames the infrastructure problem as a lack of innovative financing options,” EPI analysts Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair wrote in the report. “This is nonsense. The problem is that politicians don’t want to ask taxpayers to pay for valued infrastructure.”
CBS Moneywatch November 29, 2016 -
PUZDER PEDDLES THE MISCONCEPTION that minimum-wage jobs are largely held by young people just entering the job market, and that increasing the minimum wage would price out these young workers and exacerbate youth unemployment levels. The reality is that the vast majority of minimum-wage workers are not teenagers; in fact, the average worker is 35 years old. More than one-quarter have children and the average minimum-wage worker earns half their family’s total income, according to the Economic Policy Institute…Ross Eisenbrey, the vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, who came up with the idea to raise overtime threshold, says that Puzder’s argument is bunk: Companies have absorbed higher overtime pay in the past without going out of business. “There’s no law of economics that says Puzder couldn’t raise the price of the sandwiches he sells by a nickel or two to pay for his employees’ overtime,” Eisenbrey wrote in 2014. “After all, his competitors will all be subject to the same rules. And, he could take it out of his pay, and the pay of his top executives.”
American Prospect November 29, 2016