Media clips

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• Elizabeth Warren seeks to aid elders

  Warren’s bill is designed to provide older Americans with the same increase top executives received. She based the boost on an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute that showed 350 top chief executives received 3.9 percent pay increases from 2013 to 2014.

  Boston Globe November 5, 2015
• School vs. Society in America’s Failing Students

  In a report released last week, Martin Carnoy from the Graduate School of Education at Stanford, Emma García from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington and Tatiana Khavenson from the Institute of Education at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, suggest that socioeconomic deficits impose a particularly heavy burden on American schools. “Once we adjust for social status, we are doing much better than we think,” Professor Carnoy told me. “We underrate our progress.”

  The researchers started by comparing test scores in the United States with those in France, Germany, Britain, Canada, Finland, South Korea, Poland and Ireland. On average, students in all those countries do better than American children. Then the researchers divided students into groups depending on the number of books in their homes, a measure of the academic resources at families’ disposal. This adjustment significantly reduced the American deficit, especially among students on the bottom rungs of the resource ladder.

  The New York Times November 4, 2015
• The states where it’s much harder for black people to get jobs than white people

  There is a silver lining in the data, however: things are improving. “We’re seeing more states in the third quarter where the black unemployment rate is getting below that 10 percent mark,” says Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy for the Economic Policy Institute, which published the findings. Several states lacked estimates due to small sample sizes.

  The Washington Post November 4, 2015
• The 1 Percent’s Earnings Could Be Stagnating — At $671,000

  The average person in the top 1 percent of wage earners made $671,061 in 2014, up 4.9 percent from 2013 after adjusting for inflation, according to anew analysis of Social Security Administration data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning Washington think tank. The richest 0.1 percent — about 156,000 people earning an average of $2.5 million a year — did even better. Their earnings rose 8.9 percent from 2013. By contrast, the bottom 90 percent of wage earners got just a 1.4 percent pay raise.

  Economic Policy Institute President Lawrence Mishel noted that while the wealthy suffered larger-than-average losses during the recession, they have also experienced far faster wage growth during the recovery than the rest of the population. Moreover, he said, inequality seems to be peaking higher in each economic cycle, and although top earners haven’t yet gotten back to where they were in 2007, they might still reach a new high before the next recession hits. “If [inequality] is stabilizing, it’s way, way higher than 1979 or 1989,” Mishel said.

  FiveThirtyEight November 4, 2015
• Want a big raise? Start with a big salary

  The US workers who got the biggest raises in 2014 were the ones who needed it least. Those in the top 1 percent saw their wages grow by roughly 5 percent, while the top 0.1 percent of earners got an even heftier 9 percent boost. Meanwhile, everyone else saw pay increases of less than 2 percent, according to a new analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  The Boston Globe November 4, 2015
• Congress must defeat the TPP

  Already, The Wall Street Journal is projecting a $56 billion increase in our manufacturing and automotive trade deficit under the TPP by 2025. Trade deficits not only bring down our nation’s gross domestic product, they are directly associated with the loss of jobs. As the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Robert Scott has written, it is our nation’s trade policy, not technological productivity, that has precipitated the dramatic loss of manufacturing jobs over the last 15 years.

  The Hill November 4, 2015
• As Sanders Makes Major Pivot Toward Immigration, His Record Gets In The Way

  There are those who argue that Sanders past positions have been miscast as not progressive enough on immigration. Sanders has framed his 2007 vote, for instance, as against guest worker programs that he argues amount to slavery. “His position has been unfairly twisted as anti-immigrant,” said Daniel Costa of the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, whose board features labor figures like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka. “Pointing out the abuses and exploitation that happens in guest-worker programs is pretty progressive.” “Clinton’s been silent on it,” he continued. “Bernie Sanders has been talking about it. The way the programs are set up it’s bad for the U.S. workers that are here. If they get fired they become deportable.”

  Buzzfeed November 4, 2015
• Dallas Fed president will meet with Fed Up Coalition members to hear their concerns

  A dozen people representing Fed Up will attend tomorrow’s meeting at the Dallas Fed. They include: Brown; representatives of the Dallas AFL-CIO, Texas AFL-CIO, Center for Popular Democracy and Economic Policy Institute; Dallas Faith leader Wes Helm; and a Walmart worker. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins also will attend as a guest of Fed Up, said Daniel Barrera, a Dallas organizer for the Texas Organizing Project.

  Dallas Morning News November 4, 2015
• What International Comparisons Don’t Tell Us About U.S. Student Achievement

  Recent international test scores show what appears to be a poor performance on average by U.S. students compared with their peers in first-world industrialized countries. Consequently, education systems in Finland, Korea, Singapore and other nations have become the gold standard to which other nations aspire. Except, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute, comparing student outcomes across countries with vastly different cultures, education systems and environments may be misleading if not somewhat irrelevant. Instead, it may be more vital in the U.S. to compare Massachusetts with Connecticut, and Texas with California, rather than North Carolina with Japan or Poland.

  In “Bringing it Back Home: Why State Comparisons are More Useful than International Comparisons for Improving US Educational Policy,” the authors argue that international comparisons have merit, but measuring states with other states rather than countries is more valid in evaluating the true quality of education in the U.S. “It’s very challenging to craft comparisons based on international ratings,” says Emma Garcia, an EPI economist who co-authored the report with Stanford University Professor Martin Carnoy and Tatiana Khavenson, a researcher at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “The scores do not mean that U.S. students are not making progress in comparison with other countries.”

  NEA Today November 3, 2015
• Even Among College Grads, Whites Earn More Than Nearly Everyone

  In re­cent dec­ades, wage gaps have grown the most for col­lege gradu­ates, says Valer­ie Wilson, the dir­ect­or of the Eco­nom­ic Policy In­sti­tute’s Pro­gram on Race, Eth­ni­city, and the Eco­nomy. There’s great­er pay equal­ity among lower earners with less edu­ca­tion be­cause the min­im­um wage provides a floor. For people of col­or with a high­er edu­ca­tion, Wilson says, “There is dis­crim­in­a­tion in the labor mar­ket, not only in terms of hir­ing but def­in­itely in pay.”

  National Journal November 3, 2015