This is an important post about the consequences of government-sponsored segregation in places such as Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, where violent protest has erupted over the deaths of black men at the hands of police. It was written scholar Richard Rothstein, who explains that whenever young blacks riot in response to police brutality or murder, “we’re tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police quality” — but that only won’t address the primary problems. Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers.
The Washington Post
May 4, 2015
Hillary Clinton could face a litmus test very soon. She is under pressure to take a position on a massive Pacific free-trade agreement sought by President Obama. Legislation supporting the pact is moving through Congress, and the left is mobilizing to fight it. “This is a chance to separate herself from what people fear about her, which is a continuation of some of the Clintonian economic policies that did not work out so well,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy institute, a progressive think tank.
For now, Mishel is reserving judgment. He said the candidate could yet delight liberal activists, noting that Clinton had the more progressive agenda when she ran unsuccessfully against Obama eight years ago. But he also pointed out that she would be spending a lot of time with Wall Street in the coming months, soliciting donations for her campaign. “We just don’t know where she is yet,” he said. “The unstated concern of some people, I think, is that she is too close to the financial center and needs to raise a lot of money. That can make someone shy about addressing the 1%. And it can push them into emphasizing ‘opportunity’ over inequality.”
The Chicago Tribune
May 4, 2015
“You have people working full-time who are still living in poverty,” said Representative Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is the chief sponsor of the $12 proposal in the House. “Raising the minimum wage will address that.” About 37.7 million workers would benefit from the higher wage floor, and just 11 percent would be teenagers, said David Cooper, who co-authored a study of the legislation for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
May 4, 2015
The overpromising of earlier trade deals, especially Nafta, has produced a backlash. For Democrats, two factors emerged in a study of the Nafta vote by the Economic Policy Institute. Back in 1993, there were 67 rural Democrats, who split almost evenly for and against the treaty, while Democrats representing urban or suburban areas opposed it almost 2-to-1. Today, there are few rural Democrats in the House. And business, which provided a big chunk of campaign cash for those pro-Nafta Democrats, gives much less support for Democrats now.
Bloomberg
May 4, 2015
As the chart below (using data from the Economic Policy Institute) shows, the last time Americans at the bottom of the income distribution had a raise was during the sustained employment growth under Bill Clinton.
Salon
May 4, 2015
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia, along with 21 cities and counties, have minimum wages above the federal rate, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
If the minimum wage had kept pace with price increases since 1968, by 2014 it would have stood at $9.54 –about 32 percent higher than its actual level, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which on Thursday published a report entitled “We Can Afford a $12.00 Federal Minimum Wage in 2020.”
CBS News
May 4, 2015
In 1968, when the minimum-wage was near its inflation-adjusted peak, the minimum wage was 52% of the median hourly wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning group supported by the AFL-CIO and other unions. That share had fallen to 37% last year.
Wall Street Journal
May 1, 2015
The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has released new researchsuggesting that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 is economically feasible, sustainable, and has a historical precedent. Essentially, it’s been done before — back in 1968.
After raising the minimum wage regularly throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the government then “essentially stopped,” said David Cooper, an analyst with EPI and one of the study’s authors. And the modest increases of the ’90s and 2000s did not to keep pace with inflation. “We went through too many periods where we either weren’t raising it frequently enough or we weren’t raising it adequately enough,” said Cooper. “The bill they’re introducing would fix this problem by indexing growth to growth in median wages.” The Economic Policy Institute, founded in 1986, receives the majority of its funding from foundations and about a quarter from unions. It bills itself as a nonpartisan think tank created “to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.”
Buzzfeed
May 1, 2015
If Murray-Scott passes, the $12 per hour minimum wage wouldn’t kick in until 2020, five years from now. In fact, according to a new study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the annual percentage increase in the minimum wage would peak at 12.5 percent in the second year. (When the minimum wage rose from 2007 to 2008, it increased by 13.6 percent.)
The New Republic
May 1, 2015
Adjusting for inflation raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020 would return the minimum wage to where it was in 1968, the Economic Policy Institute said Thursday morning. In 1968, the minimum wage was 52.1% of the median wage. Current minimum wage is about 37.1% of the median wage. “Raising the federal minimum wage to $12.00 by 2020, under the conservative assumption of no real wage growth at the median, would leave the ratio at 54.1%, just above where it was in 1968,” EPI wrote in a report released Thursday.
The Guardian
May 1, 2015