That’s a departure, although not as much as you may think — people forget that Mitt Romney similarly threatened a trade war with China during the 2012 campaign. Still, it was interesting to see a Republican presidential candidate name-check not just Bernie Sanders but the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which has long been critical of globalization.
The New York Times
July 4, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on low- and middle-income workers, estimates that, on average, CEOs in 2013 made nearly 300 times more than the typical worker – up from about 20 times more in 1960.
Los Angeles Times
July 3, 2016
What working-class Americans really need, the folks at EPI say, is a much broader effort to raise their living standards. That effort might start with a more aggressive posture on trade. But it would also include stronger unions, spending on public works, more financial assistance with child care and other necessities — as well as better support for people who lose their jobs. “Cutting taxes on the rich (another Trump goal) will only hurt working people,” Robert Scott, EPI’s chief economist and a supporter of more aggressive trade policies, told The Huffington Post in an email. “We need to fix the domestic economy — rebuild U.S. infrastructure, which will take lots of public spending and tax revenues, and tax carbon and make the transition to a clean energy economy, which is also not cheap, and invest in rebuilding manufacturing, and invest in the social safety net.” And Trump, Scott says, “is not the guy to do any of these things.”
The Huffington Post
July 3, 2016
According to a study by Robert Scott, of the Economic Policy Institute, Wal-Mart accounted for approximately 11.2 percent of American imports from China between 2001 and 2013. The study, released in 2015, says the company added $36.7 billion to the United States’ trade deficit with China in the same time frame. According to Scott, Wal-Mart’s trade deficit with China is equivalent to the loss of 314,500 jobs during that period, which were jobs that would have provided higher wages and better benefits. He also argued that 100 American jobs have been displaced for every actual or promised job created by Wal-Mart’s 2013 initiative.
Joplin Globe
July 2, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute estimates 290,000 Tennessee workers, or 29 percent of the state’s salaried workforce, fall into the salary gap being addressed. Nationally, there are 12.5 million workers.”Many of them are being made to work overtime without pay, even though they should be receiving pay,” EPI spokesman Dan Crawford said. “We’ve gotten very used to in this country to working very, very long hours without any sort of compensation…. The overtime rule is the first step in sort of getting back to a point where work is valued a little bit more and where workers’ time is valued a little bit more.”The flexibility that Alexander says will affect workers who become hourly workers is rare among many salaried workers who fall into this salary range, he said.”This is going to mean more free time for workers or more money in their pockets or a combination of both, and I don’t think that is going to hurt morale at all,” Crawford said.
The Tennessean
July 2, 2016
In this post, Elaine Weiss has some advice for federal policy-makers who are drawing up the rules. She wants them to watch a film about a high-poverty school in Ohio to learn what students, teachers and schools really need to succeed today. Weiss is the national coordinator of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, a project of the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
July 2, 2016
In an editorial about guestworkers, the New York Times cited EPI’s Daniel Costa’s congressional testimony on how the H-2B temporary foreign worker program is harming both American workers and many of the migrant workers who come to work as landscapers and construction workers, as well as in other major H-2B jobs.
The New York Times
July 1, 2016
Underemployment was at 9% before the recession, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a research group. “Recent college graduates are having a hard time finding a job — finding a good job has become much more difficult,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and expert on the job market for college grads.
CNN Money
July 1, 2016
California was also among 24 states where the top 1 percent gobbled up at least half of all income growth between 2009 and 2013 and among 10 states where the 1 percent’s share of income jumped the most between 1979 and 2013, says the Economic Policy Institute study.
Sacramento Bee
July 1, 2016
The Washington Post
July 1, 2016