Media clips
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The latest contribution is from Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. His study asks why the recovery is taking so long. The answer, he says, is not enough government spending. More pump-priming was (and is) needed. Federal budget deficits should have been (and should be) larger. Compared with other recoveries, total government spending at all levels (local, state and federal) has been weaker. The absence of this extra stimulus has held the economy back .This is the liberal analysis of the sluggish recovery. It could be right. In early 2016, Bivens notes, per capita government spending was 3.5 percent lower than at the depth of the Great Recession. By contrast, at a similar point in the recovery from the 1981-82 recession, per capita government spending was up 17 percent. If government spending now had followed the same path, says Bivens, it would have been $1 trillion higher in 2015, “translating into several years of full employment.” It’s the federal government that should borrow and spend more, says Bivens, because most states and localities are required to balance their operating budgets. (Also, many states and localities don’t want to borrow, the Wall Street Journal reports. Despite low interest rates, they’re scaling back “spending on aging roads, bridges and buildings,” because taxpayers oppose added debt.)
The Washington Post August 15, 2016 -
Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is now below 5% and there are more than 1 million fewer unemployed people than there were a year ago, all is not rosy in the labor market. There recently were 1.4 unemployed workers for every job opening — or to put it another way, there were 14 workers looking for work for every 10 job openings — according to a report released in February by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that studies low- and middle-income workers occupants don’t have any taxes to deduct, Blair said.
Market Watch August 15, 2016 -
On the other hand, Economic Policy Institute Vice President Ross Eisenbrey believes the rule will boost the economy and help workers. “Businesses have gotten used to the idea that they can work people 50 to 60 hours a week without paying them,” Eisenbrey said. “You can see how a business would make money doing that, but it’s just wrong. I think it’s immoral to work people that hard without compensating them for it.”
Danville Register and Bee August 15, 2016 -
Total wage theft in just those three cities amounted to almost $3 billion annually. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that if the patterns the study found are generalizable for the entire country, wage theft is $50 billion a year.
The Week August 15, 2016 -
Child care costs are a huge issue for any young family and those costs are going up. Annual day care costs surpass the price of in-state public college tuition in 33 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report released last year by the Economic Policy Institute, which had Ohio as one of the states where tuition still exceeds day care expenses….Hunter Blair, a budget analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, said Trump’s plan would mostly help middle- and upper- income families because many low-income households don’t make enough money to owe a tax liability.Those households have plenty of child care expenses, but a tax deduction wouldn’t help pay for them because the occupants don’t have any taxes to deduct, Blair said.
The Columbus Dispatch August 14, 2016 -
“It’s not front and center, and I don’t think it should be front and center,” said Joshua Bivens, director of research and policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The underlying economics of the current situation say that deficits are not a particularly big problem.”
The Hill August 14, 2016 -
Rather, it was this seemingly innocuous phrase: “according to the Economic Policy Institute.” That might not seem so surprising: EPI is a well-regarded Washington think tank with a longstanding opposition to the kind of trade deals Trump is fond of criticizing. (He cited their research on the number of jobs lost to such deals.) But it’s rare for Republican politicians to quote EPI, which is backed by big labor unions, gets funding from liberal activist investor George Soros and routinely produces research supporting a higher minimum wage, more government spending and increased taxes on the rich. Yet Trump name-checked the group twice in his speech, and an analysis by Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast found that Trump cites EPI far more often than traditional conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. (Woodruff notes that EPI isn’t exactly thrilled by Trump’s apparent endorsement — Larry Mishel, the organization’s president, calls the candidate “a bigot.”) Trump’s unrequited love for EPI might seem like another petty irony in a campaign full of them, but it hints at something larger about how Trump has scrambled the usual economic battle lines of American politics. The 2016 race, more than any other in recent memory, has focused not on how to accelerate economic growth but on how that growth should be distributed
FiveThirtyEight August 12, 2016 -
A new analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argues that “providing adequate wages and benefits is a crucial tool for attracting and keeping the teachers America’s children need.” The report notes that teacher pay has fallen behind what other comparable workers earn. While public-school teachers made $30 less per week (adjusted for inflation) in 2015 than in 1996, around $1,092 from $1,122, wages for college graduates rose from $1,292 to $1,416. Where other college-educated workers used to make just slightly more per week than teachers, they now earn significantly more. (The report’s authors acknowledge that teachers generally have better benefits than other professionals, so focusing solely on wages overstates the disadvantage teachers face in terms of total compensation, but they point out that only wages and not benefits can be spent and saved.)
The Atlantic August 12, 2016 -
You know what is a legitimately bizarre-to-the-point-of-being-funny choice for a political platform? “The job of teachers is too easy.” Yet this, in essence, has become a standard right wing talking point, in the guise of “teachers’ unions are bad.” After you spend some time thinking about these villainous teachers unions and all the work they have presumably been doing to make the lives of teachers unforgivably cushy, please take a look at this Economic Policy Institute report about teachers’ wages, which finds a yawning gap between what teachers are paid what comparable workers—that is, workers with similar credentials to teachers—are paid. Even when benefits are factored in, teachers are still making more than 11% less than their peers. In other words, we strongly incentivize talented and well-educated people not to be teachers. Because we do not pay them. This is a political choice.
Gawker August 12, 2016 -
Though the unemployment rate has fallen in half since peaking at 10 percent in 2010, the pace of job growth has been slower in this recovery that the rebound from the recessions of 1981 and 1990. Of the last four downturns, only the recovery that began in 2001 saw a slower pace of job creation. One of the biggest reasons, according to institute economist Josh Bivens, was the tight-budget policies at all levels of government after the Great Recession sent tax revenues plummeting. Faced with voters adamantly opposed to tax increases, federal, state and local governments capped spending across the board to match the shortfall. That drop in government spending created a major headwind for the economy growth, Bivens argues. “Government spending not only failed to rise fast enough to spur a rapid recovery, it outright contracted,” he said in the report. “This policy choice fully explains why the economy is only partially recovered from the Great Recession a full seven years after its official end.”
CNBC August 12, 2016