Media clips
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Higher wages are exactly what the financial doctors have ordered to cure America’s ailing economy. According to the Economic Policy Institute, it would take a wage growth of at least 3.5% to 4% for workers to feel the impact of the recovery. In 2014, the average hourly pay went up by just 1.7%. “Raising wages among low-wage workers shifts income into the pockets of workers and families that are highly likely to quickly spend every additional dollar they earn,” says David Cooper, economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “So even though some businesses have to pay their workers more, they see more customers coming through the door because now there’s additional dollars rippling out through local economies in a way that doesn’t really happen if those dollars just go back into the bank accounts of corporate shareholders.”
The Guardian February 23, 2015 -
Anti-unionism, which has become increasingly entrenched in recent decades, correlates with stagnating and declining wages. As unions have been harmed, not only by market forces but by policies that deliberately weaken them, income has flowed increasingly to those at the top of the economic ladder rather than to workers.
The New York Times February 20, 2015 -
It may be that as unions weakened, executives sometimes grabbed the gains from productivity. Perhaps that helps explain why chief executives at big companies earned, on average, 20 times as much as the typical worker in 1965, and 296 times as much in 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The New York Times February 19, 2015 -
David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute tells The Nation via e-mail, “Given that our economy is driven by consumer spending, the last thing we would want during a period of economic turmoil is more folks with less money to spend.“ And, he noted, “a larger moral/philosophical question that should be considered as well: should the lowest paid worker never have any change in their standard of living?… Imagine we had a revolution in production processes such that prices of staple goods fell considerably, should we legislate that the lowest-paid workers shouldn’t get to benefit from those improvements?”
The Nation February 19, 2015 -
There was a time where it was plausible to argue that more education and innovation were the primary solutions to our economic problems. But that time has passed. You cannot tell that, however, to the Wall Street Democrats and their Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. They’re not ready to change just yet, even though most of the Democratic Party has. This shift was signaled by a recent report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, which is co-chaired by Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Barack Obama’s first term. The report calls for full employment (a “high pressure economy,” as Summers calls it), a more welcoming environment for collective bargaining, higher labor standards (overtime, minimum wage, earned sick and paid family leave), changes in corporate governance, and large scale public investment to address middle-class wage stagnation.
The American Prospect February 19, 2015 -
Reports from the Center for Investigative Reporting, the New England Public Policy Center for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the Economic Policy Institute have spotlighted fraud and abuse problems with the H1-B program.
Los Angeles Times February 18, 2015 -
California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program (CSC) will cover workers in California who don’t currently have access to formal retirement savings via their work. “I’m a big fan,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute who recently testified before Congress on retirement security. “It’s probably the farthest along of all the retirement-reform ideas in terms of practical implementation.”
Time Magazine February 18, 2015 -
How does that really affect economic inequality? I was struck by some numbers from the Economic Policy Institute, reported last week by the Globe’s Evan Horowitz. Those figures tracked income growth in Massachusetts between 2009 and 2012, technically the start of the economic recovery and a period that was heavily influenced by Federal Reserve monetary policy. Among the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, income grew by nearly 47 percent over that period. Income actually shrunk by 1.5 percent for the rest of us.
Boston Globe February 18, 2015 -
The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that 3.5 million more workers would become eligible for overtime pay if the threshold were raised to $42,000. And 6.1 million workers would qualify if the threshold approaches $52,000. Advocates for an increase, like EPI and the National Employment Law Project, would like to see the threshold raised to at least $51,168 — or $984 a week.
CNN Money February 18, 2015 -
Another expert took issue with the definition of “Hispanic.” Richard Rothstein, an education research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told us that it’s a meaningless category for educational purposes. “Florida’s ‘Hispanics’ are not comparable to ‘Hispanics’ in other states because Florida’s include a larger proportion of middle-class Cubans, and a smaller proportion of lower-class Mexicans. Without knowing anything else, you would expect middle-class Cubans to perform at a higher level than lower-class Mexicans, because of the literacy levels at home, if for no other reason.”
Politifact February 18, 2015