Media clips
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The true costs of goods and services is a secondary issue to stagnant and exploitative wages: The cost of certain goods might go up, but more people would be able to afford them with better compensation. The current price of low-cost goods and services in the United States is low-income, exploited workers living in poverty. But the country as a whole isn’t broke, only its workers are — while corporations and C.E.O.s are richer than ever. The value of the federal minimum wage has declined 24 percent since 1968. If we re-established the relationship between the minimum wage and the overall median wage to its 1968 level, we would raise wages for 35 million people, a full quarter of the workforce.
The situation is even worse for those earning tips, such as nail salon workers. Their pay is set at $2.13 an hour by the federal government. If tips don’t supplement these workers’ paycheck to the regular minimum, they have to ask their employers for the difference. (And good luck with that.)
The New York Times May 12, 2015 -
The impact of the bolder proposal for America’s workforce would be widely felt. According to recent estimates by the Economic Policy Institute, the new wage rate of $12 per hour will boost earnings for some 10 million parents, 21 million women and nearly 18 million workers of color.
CNN May 12, 2015 -
But the Economic Policy Institute points out that this ignores imports, and therefore the ballooning trade deficit, which weighs down economic growth and wages.
Salon May 12, 2015 -
The system accelerated urban decline and ghettoization. It also prevented a generation of black citizens from gaining the wealth that typically flows from homeownership. Writing of Baltimore just last month, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, argued that “the distressed condition of African-American working- and lower-middle-class families” in Maryland’s largest city and elsewhere “is almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from accumulating housing equity during the suburban boom that moved white families into single-family homes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s — and thus from bequeathing that wealth to their children and grandchildren, as white suburbanites have done.”
The New York Times May 11, 2015 -
According to a brief by the Economic Policy Institute, the Walton Family’s total wealth equals that of 79 percent of the combined wealth of all African American families (or almost 78 percent of the combined wealth of all Latino families).
The Washington Post May 11, 2015 -
The average U.S. worker hasn’t done as well. For the 12 months ended in April, wages rose 2.2%. That’s well above inflation but below the 3.5% to 4% that marks a healthy economy, said Josh Bivens, the research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on the needs of low- and middle-income workers.
The economy needs stronger jobs growth to increase demand for workers and push up pay, he said. “It’s too slow to have spurred any increase in wage growth yet, and I still think it’s going to be a while,” he said of April’s employment gains. Given that the economy appears to be stuck in another year of modest 2% to 2.5% economic growth, Bivens said, the Fed should not raise its benchmark interest rate yet.
Los Angeles Times May 11, 2015 -
Barack Obama’s petulant criticism last Friday of Democrats who do not support his proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership reminds me of the old tongue-in-cheek advice to young lawyers: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the other lawyer.” The facts are definitely not on the President’s side. For two decades the trade deals negotiated by the last three presidents have lowered U.S. wages, lost jobs and generated a chronic trade deficit that requires our country to borrow more money every year in order to pay for imports. The president’s main argument that exports have risen, without mentioning that imports have risen much faster, is now transparently deceitful to anyone who can add and subtract.
The Huffington Post May 11, 2015 -
Overall, the national unemployment rate fell to 5.4% Friday, its lowest point since 2008. But unemployment is still higher for blacks than any other race — 9.6% in April. “That definitely is a positive step in the right direction,” says Valerie Wilson, an economist who covers race and ethnicity issues at the Economic Policy Institute. “But it’s also an indicator of how much more progress needs to be made for African Americans.” Despite being almost six years into a recovery, the employment picture for blacks looks particularly grim in some states. Blacks in Illinois have an unemployment rate of 12.5% — more than double the national average. Michigan, Pennsylvania and California are above 12% too, according to an EPI report. The good news is that those rates have been steadily going down in the past year.
CNN May 11, 2015 -
In general, wages for new college graduates, as for US workers, have stagnated since the recession. On average, entry-level wages for graduates are expected to be no better than 15 years ago, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
The Boston Globe May 11, 2015 -
Previous trade agreements have failed miserably in living up to the promise of new jobs. In fact, the North American Free Trade Agreement cost the United States 650,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
San Francisco Chronicle May 11, 2015