In 41 states, the cost of sending a 4-year-old to full-time preschool exceeds 10% of a median family income—the level the federal government deems to be affordable—according to data from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Full-time preschool is more expensive than average tuition at a public college in 23 states. Care for an infant costs more than average rent in 17 states, the study found.
Wall Street Journal
July 1, 2016
It’s these trade deficit figures that economist Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute points to when asked where the U.S. economy would be without NAFTA and China’s entry into the WTO. “We had balanced trade with Mexico for 15 years before NAFTA took effect,” he says. “NAFTA encouraged U.S. multinationals to outsource and exports factories to Mexico. Absent NAFTA, I’m not sure that would have happened.” Scott also points out that since China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with the nation has exploded.
Fortune
July 1, 2016
Automation and the challenges of remaining competitive in a global marketplace have certainly made middle-class jobs harder to find. But it’s worth noting that as the middle class has shrunk, wages for people at the top have continued to rise. Those with very high wages make 41 percent more than they did in 1979, while middle-wage workers earn just 6 percent more, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
June 30, 2016
The same logic applies to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Trump calls “the worst trade deal in history.” He cites as an authority the Economic Policy Institute, the AFL-CIO’s think tank, but that’s like asking Sid Blumenthal if Hillary Clinton is trustworthy. Most economists understand that free trade with Mexico and Canada has been a historic success.
The Wall Street Journal
June 30, 2016
Offsetting that, Trump presumably believes, could be a crucial sliver of the vote in trade-impacted Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan — voters who might have even supported Bernie Sanders or similar anti-trade labor-oriented Democratic pols in the recent past. Doubling down on the white working-class vote by poaching Sanders supporters who already have a dim view of Hillary Clinton does make some sense at first blush. And Trump took care in his speech yesterday to quote Sanders and to cite research from the left-labor Economic Policy Institute.
New York Magazine
June 30, 2016
In his speech lamenting globalization and its ill effects on American workers, Donald Trump relied on the research and analysis of the liberal Economic Policy Institute over a dozen times. The prepared text cites the EPI’s work in footnotes again and again and again, to back up many of Trump’s claims about how our trade policies have destroyed American jobs, flattened wages, and pulverized the American middle class.
The Washington Post
June 30, 2016
The top 1% takes home more than 20% of all the income in the U.S., according to a report released in June 2016 by the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute, based in Washington D.C. “The share of all income held by the top 1% in recent years has approached or surpassed historical highs,” the report revealed.
MarketWatch
June 29, 2016
The Miami Herald
June 29, 2016
That’s what makes it striking that — rather than temper his primary-season language criticizing trade deals — Mr. Trump is, if anything, running to Mrs. Clinton’s left on the subject. He even cited the work of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, in the speech. Notably, these were not off-the-cuff comments, but rather an enumerated platform scripted and read from a teleprompter.
The New York Times
June 29, 2016