Media clips
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In June China sold $1 billion per day more to the U.S. than it purchased. If the yuan falls 10 percent it, will make Chinese goods so much cheaper that our trade deficit with China will likely increase by about $66 billion annually. That translates into a likely loss of 190,000 to 640,000 American jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Al Jazeera America August 19, 2015 -
In his immigration paper, however, Trump argues that only half of American college graduates with science, technology, engineering, and math degrees find degrees in their field. He also referred to a 2013 study by the Economic Policy Institute—a nonprofit labor think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income workers—that found two-thirds of new college-educated IT job holders under the age of 30 were hired through the H-1B guestworker program.
Boston.com August 19, 2015 -
A recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, showed that chief executives of large public companies saw their pay soar in recent decades. That study said average CEO compensation was $16.3 million in 2014, an increase of 997% since 1978, compared with 10.9% growth for the typical worker.
Los Angeles Times August 18, 2015 -
“I’ve never heard of impounding them,” Daniel Costa, an immigration expert at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in an email. He added, “You’d probably have to pass a law requiring the person to prove that they were a citizen or otherwise in a lawful immigration status, and if they couldn’t prove it, then they probably wouldn’t hand over the money in the first place. Otherwise how would you know what to impound?” If by “impound” Trump means “tax,” then his plan may be technically feasible, depending on how it’s structured. The government could pass a law requiring any person sending money to Mexico to prove their immigration status; those who didn’t prove they were in the U.S. legally would have to pay a tax. But that plan faces multiple issues. “[It] turn Western Union cashiers into de facto immigration officials,” Costa noted.
Politico August 18, 2015 -
Union membership has been declining for decades. A 2013 analysis by Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that supports workers’ rights, found a strong correlation between the decline in union membership and growing income inequality.
The Huffington Post August 18, 2015 -
As the Economic Policy Institute surmised earlier this year, increased trade deficits push jobs out of better-paying industries. And at a time when income inequality is running rampant in the U.S., workers don’t need even more “free” trade agreements that will further strip this nation’s economy of middle-income jobs.
The Huffington Post August 18, 2015 -
While China lowered the value of its currency on three consecutive days last week, for a total of 4.4 percent, the largest decline in two decades, a respected Washington think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, released a report detailing exactly how the United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. The report, “Manufacturing Job Loss: Trade, Not Productivity is the Culprit,” clearly links massive trade deficits to closed American factories and killed American jobs.
The Huffington Post August 18, 2015 -
Some people don’t think degrees are a silver bullet to solve the middle class’s job woes, though. “We have college jobs and we have non-college jobs. Both of them have done very poorly in terms of wage growth over the past dozen years,” said Larry Mishel, president of left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute and a labor market economist. “What we should be focusing on is why have wages done so poorly,” he said. Mishel said the the wage stagnation is largely attributable to a decline in the bargaining power of the middle class, due largely to a drop in union membership. “For the middle class … the union decline is a really, really big deal,” he said.
NBC News August 17, 2015 -
Some corporate leaders, like Peter Georgescu (“Capitalists, Arise,” Sunday Review, Aug. 9), are now expressing concern about rising inequality. But if Mr. Georgescu is representative of our newly enlightened capitalists, they still do not understand the problem. For 40 years, the rising gap between workers’ productivity and their wages has channeled most of the benefits of economic growth to shareholders. Mr. Georgescu therefore would like companies to raise the salaries of their workers. For obvious reasons, they don’t. So he proposes tax subsidies for them to do it. Amazingly, he claims that this would not represent “an increase in government support.” Mr. Georgescu thus skips over the root cause of the productivity/wage gap: the weakened bargaining power of workers, largely a result of the political pressure from his fellow chief executives to destroy labor unions, send jobs offshore and shift the tax burden from capital to labor. Until our capitalists acknowledge their own role in the rise of inequality, it will be hard to take their professions of concern very seriously.
The New York Times August 17, 2015 -
Parents who work “irregular” hours — unpredictable shifts for which they are called in or sent home with little notice, especially at night — can inadvertently lead to psychological or developmental fallout for their children, a new study from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, has found.
The study — part of a larger project by Morsy and Economic Policy Institute research associate Richard Rothstein, looking at how social class characteristics effect children’s development and achievement to suggest policy changes — found that kids of all ages can suffer fallout when parents are called in for erratic work hours.
The researchers note that erratic work schedules are more common among workers who are black or less educated, as well as young single mothers making low wages; one-third of moms with adolescents at home, for example, receive a week or less notice regarding their weekly schedules, adding to anxiety, exhaustion, and stress levels. “Anything that causes stress to parents is going to do harm to their children,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, tells Yahoo Parenting. “In this case, it deprives children of the time they need with a parent at important moments, such as getting ready for school or at bedtime.”
Yahoo News August 17, 2015