Pelosi’s claim that an estimated 1.8 million jobs will be lost through AHCA
The Washington Post/Glenn Kessler
Strikingly, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in March did its own report on the impact of the AHCA, using a different methodology, and came up with a similar number as the CAP report: 1.8 million jobs lost by 2022. EPI’s report was more hedged, saying it was a “rough estimate of the potential drag on job growth.” The author, Josh Bivens, noted that macroeconomic projections have often been wrong. “Given all of this uncertainty, we present our findings as a drag on potential job growth, rather than as clear predictions of ‘jobs lost.’ ” (Josh quoted throughout)
The Washington Post
June 20, 2017
Book review of The Color of Law.
The New York Times
June 20, 2017
It’s an “unprecedented” action, according to Celine McNicholas, who served as the NLRB’s director of congressional and public affairs and as special counsel during the Obama administration. “Literally the Trump administration’s top attorney has decided to switch sides and argue on behalf of the employer against workers’ rights to collectively act under the National Labor Relations Act,” said McNicholas, who is now labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that describes itself as focused on including the needs of low- and middle-income workers. (Celine quoted throughout)
Bloomberg BNA
June 20, 2017
Trump Administration Sides With Employers Over Workers On Arbitration Agreements
The Huffington Post/Dave Jamieson
Celine McNicholas, a labor lawyer at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said what the White House was doing was extremely rare: flipping the government’s official position in an ongoing Supreme Court case. “This was something folks had been fearing,” McNicholas said. “I do think that the decision to switch sides is a real departure from the standard practice.” She added, “It’s incredibly troubling that an administration that ran [a campaign] on leveling the playing field and giving workers rights is going to literally stand with employers and corporate interests.”
Huffington Post
June 19, 2017
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