I am impressed that some well-informed and much-admired economists on the left, like Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, are congratulating Larry Summers for changing his views. I hope they are right. So why am I not convinced?
Another source of my skepticism is the practical problem of which political constituencies Democrats must be prepared to abandon this time—working people or financial contributors. EPI’s Larry Mishel pointed out that if Hillary Clinton embraces the Larry Summers agenda this “puts her in a bind, you might say.” She would be going against Robert Rubin, the Clintons’ most influential advisor. The Goldman Sachs and Citigroup banker opened the Wall Street money spigot in 1992 by assuring bankers Bill Clinton’s presidency would be good for the country and especially good for bankers.
The Nation
March 11, 2015
The New York Times
March 10, 2015
Right-to-work laws can also have the benefit of increasing face-to-face contact between union staffers and members, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out. “There’s nothing they can do [about free riders] than try to persuade them,” he noted. But this extra effort also means that staff resources are sapped by trying to get everyone to pay, which means they end up “chasing after people to get their dues instead of researching, meeting with the employer, or organizing other units, doing all the things that the union would need to do to build strength.”
Think Progress
March 10, 2015
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington D.C. non-partisan think tank that focuses on issues facing low-and middle-income workers, 81.3 percent of the state’s short-term unemployed didn’t receive benefits last year. Only 18.7 percent — less than one out of five of Florida’s short-term unemployed — did. While that might seem low, three other states — South Carolina (14.8 percent), South Dakota (15 percent), and Louisiana (16.9 percent) — had even lower recipiency rates.
Tampa Bay Times
March 10, 2015
For U.S. workers who were jobless at some point last year, unemployment insurance benefits that replace income and spur economic growth were scarce. A report released Monday by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, states the proportion of jobless workers who received benefits from state-run programs fell to 23.1 percent in December, a level not seen since the previous record-low of 25 percent in September 1984.
“The point of unemployment insurance is to help workers who are out of work through no fault of their own, and give them a chance to support themselves and their families while they look for another job,” said Will Kimball, an EPI researcher. “When states cut the generosity and length that benefits were available, they failed the workers who need help the most.”
International Business Times
March 10, 2015
Another way, as Elise Gould of the liberal Economic Policy Institute put it this morning, is that the economy still has a lot of healing left to do: “Despite a year of solid job growth there is still ample slack in the labor market.” You won’t see much wage growth, if that’s true, until a lot more people have jobs, both folks who are looking for work now and those who had given up looking for work.
The Washington Post
March 9, 2015
At the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., Elise Gould, a labor economist, was looking at wages. “Solid job growth but sluggish wage growth has been a constant refrain over the last few months,” she said in her review of the report. Ms. Gould said the economy has gained more than 200,000 jobs a month for the last 12 consecutive months, but wages are still “sluggish.”
“In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen some employers take a step forward and make a choice to pay higher wages,” she said. “Corporate profits are near all-time highs, so employers can pay their workers more without having to raise prices.” She also noted that the labor market is showing a lot of slack, with 6 million people who would be expected to be working not even looking for work.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
March 9, 2015
Although productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at the much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
March 9, 2015
Those who have given up are often referred to as “missing workers”. According to Alyssa Davis at the Economic Policy Institute, there are about 1 million young missing workers – under 25 years old – and if they were included, the unemployment rate for young Americans would be closer to 16.2%.
The Guardian
March 9, 2015
Summers supports looking past income inequality to the distribution of wealth. During our conversation, he pointed out that “a large fraction of capital gains escapes taxation entirely” through “the stepped up basis at death. ”Stepped up basis refers to an I.R.S. provision reducing the capital gains tax liability on inherited assets so that the beneficiary’s capital gains tax is minimized. Revenue losses from the stepped up basis amounted, in the 2014 fiscal year, to $36.4 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget. Summers’s policy proposals have been praised by former critics
Asked for his assessment of Summers’s views, Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal, pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, emailed “I very much appreciate that Larry Summers has recently highlighted the need for a ‘high pressure economy’ and the need to ‘expand worker bargaining power.’ ”
The New York Times
March 4, 2015