Media clips
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During the past few decades, retirement plans shifted from traditional pensions with set payouts to 401(k)s, where you pay into a personal investment account with no guarantees.
“The recession had a huge impact on retirement savings, and on other forms of wealth,” said Monique Morrissey with the Economic Policy Institute. She recently published a report showing 401(k)s mostly benefit the highest earners. That’s because middle- and low-income people may not have the tools to manage their investments successfully, or may not be able to afford to pay into the accounts at all.
And the recession decimated savings for many people, but lower-income people have recovered less of that wealth in the recovery. She said most working-age Americans have little to no money saved to retire, a problem that was compounded by the collapse of the housing market.
“At the same time that people’s 401(k) balances went south, their housing values also tanked,” she said. “Most people think they’re alone and they feel very anxious about that. They should feel anxious. But they’re not alone.”
Marketplace July 6, 2016 -
Mark Price is labor economist for Keystone Research Center in Pennsylvania who worked on a report calculating income inequality county by county for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington DC. He says some small counties in Texas had people with very high incomes, which drove up the gap. “I think it’s a mixed picture,” Price says. “Certainly there are some rural Texas counties that have some folks with some high incomes, very high relative to everyone else’s incomes.”
Texas Standard July 6, 2016 -
Meanwhile, decades of studies show that not only have minimum-wage increases not undermined workers’ overall economic security but also that New Jersey has suffered some of the country’s worst wage stagnation. The state’s richest 1 percent of households have captured over 80 percent of the rise in earnings since 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Between 2007 and 2013, moreover, according to census data, the working-poor population has risen steadily statewide from 20.9 percent to 25.3 percent.
The Nation July 6, 2016 -
At the same time, many families are contending with stagnant or even declining wages, which is placing even more stress on already strained household budgets. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, child care costs more than college tuition, while day care costs more than rent in most American cities, the Economic Policy Institute found in a 2015 report.
CBS News July 6, 2016 -
“If your parents are living paycheck to paycheck, how are you going to do it?” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that focuses on labor and economic issues. “It restricts access to jobs in government to a narrower group of people.”
The New York Times July 6, 2016 -
A few years ago, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute and Demos proposed using existing student aid programs — including Federal Work-Study and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid — to facilitate internship grants for low-income students. Their proposed Student Opportunity Program would provide funding equal to $3,500 for three-month grants and $7,000 for six-month grants to students who couldn’t afford to work without compensation.
The New York Times July 5, 2016 -
Trump’s campaign has repeatedly cited work done by Robert Scott at the Economic Policy Institute — a surprise given that it’s considered a liberal-leaning organization — to argue that NAFTA has cost the U.S. as many as 700,000 jobs.But Scott, who argues NAFTA has failed to live up to its promises, said he believes that while the threat of higher tariffs can be used to force change in countries that manipulate their currencies or take other protectionist actions — think China or Japan — they shouldn’t in Mexico, which has highly integrated supply chains with the U.S., especially in areas like auto production, and isn’t engaged in such protectionist measures. “It’s going to raise the cost of cars coming from Mexico (and) it’s going to be costly,” said Scott, EPI’s senior economist. “Basically, U.S. manufacturers have outsourced … small vehicles to Mexico (where they are produced more cheaply).” Tariffs, he added, “would be a boon to Kia and Hyundai and Toyota” and other companies importing into the U.S.
Detroit Free Press July 5, 2016 -
Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who studies labor markets, said the study’s “big takeaway is that San Francisco doesn’t stand out as being all that much of a special home for self employment or so-called gig work, and that digital platform work is just a small part of a broader set of employment practices.”
San Francisco Chronicle July 5, 2016 -
“I find myself put in a strange position,” said Robert E. Scott, an economist and self-described “progressive Democrat,” whose work Trump often cites in his speeches. “In one sense Trump is correct in his diagnosis that globalization has played a big role in the impoverishment of non-college-educated workers,” said Scott, who is director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.“Trump blames it all on Hillary and Bill Clinton, but this has been a bipartisan policy — and one that has been supported mostly by Republicans.”
Los Angeles Times July 4, 2016 -
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