So if free trade policies like NAFTA didn’t drive Detroit’s decline, that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect the city’s (or the state of Michigan’s) economy. Sanders’ 43,000 figure comes from a 2011 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning policy think tank that has produced several reports about the potential detrimental effects of trade pacts like NAFTA and TPP.
NPR
March 7, 2016
But a series of new—and slightly depressing—charts from the Economic Policy Institute point out more of the ways that the retirement accounts are falling short. Instead of leveling the playing field in retirement, 401(k) plans have the effect of magnifying income inequality, says Monique Morrissey, an economist for EPI who focuses on retirement. And differences in income alone don’t explain the difference, she said, citing that tax law and differences in risk tolerance also could be deepening the gap between what low income and high income workers are able to set aside for retirement. Take a look at some of EPI’s most compelling charts, which analyze data from the Census and the Federal Reserve…
The Washington Post
March 7, 2016
There are no comprehensive numbers on what proportion of named executive officers’ compensation is tax-deductible. Steven Balsam, a professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, took a swing at the subject four years ago. In an oft-cited paper, “Taxes and Executive Compensation,” written for the Economic Policy Institute, he analyzed compensation paid by 7,248 companies in 2010.
The Washington Post
March 7, 2016
Here, from the Economic Policy Institute, is something very easy to understand. Black Americans suffer from significantly higher levels of unemployment even when they have the same level of education as white people. It takes some impressive acrobatics of rhetoric to exclude past and present racism from the reasons behind a situation like this, when black people suffer nearly double (or more than double) the unemployment as white people do at all educational levels.
Gawker
March 7, 2016
This year’s occasion for despair comes courtesy of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which released a report Thursday titled “The State of American Retirement: How 401(ks) Have failed Most American Workers.” According to EPI’s analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances between 2000 and 2013, slightly less than one-half of prime working-age families (that’s families headed up by someone between the ages of 32 and 61) have a grand total of bubkes in their retirement accounts. (I use the Yiddish only because no other language can quite transmit the absurd awfulness of this fact.)
Slate
March 7, 2016
Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said that the drop in wages in February “is a real stumble in getting wage inflation higher.” But, he added, we may be seeing slack in the market because more people are hopeful that job prospects exist and are jumping back into the labor market for them. The only problem? Not all of them have found jobs yet.
PBS News Hour
March 7, 2016
For millions of Americans, the prospects for a comfortable retirement continue to erode. That’s the latest finding of an updated report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank in Washington that has been cataloging the trend for many years.
Time
March 7, 2016
Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, is less pessimistic than Alpert about the economy’s trajectory. But he argues that people are especially disappointed with the sluggish wage growth, because their expectations have risen after years of consistent job growth. “People are going to be unhappy about the economy until it starts delivering reliable wage increases,” Bivens said. “In 2011 and 2012, we had jobs again, and wages were not up, but people were willing to be patient. Now, seven years into the official recovery, people are justifiably less patient.”
The Huffington Post
March 7, 2016
In 2001, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute tallied up the job losses from the North American Free Trade Agreement (better known as NAFTA) passed in 1993. Only California lost more jobs from NAFTA than Michigan, EPI estimated. Michigan shed more than 46,000 jobs, 40,000 of them in manufacturing alone—mostly in the automotive sector.
The Washington Post
March 7, 2016
That uptick on the far right is significant. As the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens explained to The Week, there’s a debate among economists over how much of that fall is “cyclical” or “structural.” “Cyclical” basically means, “due to the recession.” If there aren’t enough jobs, people will get discouraged and leave the labor force. Which suggests that if government boosts aggregate demand with the right fiscal and monetary policies, it can create new jobs and bring them back in. “Structural” means some deep and foundational change in the economy. The aging of the population is one example: If a larger portion of our population is retiring, that will lower the natural ceiling on how high the labor force participation rate can go. “Roughly half of the decline since 2007 is unambiguously demographic,” said Bivens. “It’s that remaining half that people mostly argue over.”
The Week
March 7, 2016