Media clips
-
Expanding the EITC would help reduce poverty in two ways, according to Thomas Hungerford, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, another left-leaning think tank. First, it would give childless low-income Americans who are already working an income boost. And expanding the credit would encourage more people to work.
“It was designed to get people into the workforce because you can only get it if you have earned income,” Hungerford said.
Many argue that this is one of the most direct ways to help low-income workers. In 2011, the credit lifted 6.6 million people above the poverty line, according to an IRS estimate cited by the Associated Press. An EITC expansion only benefits the poor, unlike a minimum-wage hike, which could help some people who are not poor, like those working minimum-wage jobs for extra cash.
Expanding the EITC is also more politically palatable than a minimum-wage hike, which many conservatives oppose, arguing it will discourage businesses from hiring minimum-wage workers.
The Huffington Post March 5, 2014 -
March 3 (BNA) — Following Connecticut’s lead, Vermont and Massachusetts could be the next states to enact employer-paid sick leave laws, which tend to help workers with low wages who disproportionately lack access to this benefit, proponents of such policies told Bloomberg BNA.
The Economic Policy Institute said in a report released last October that almost 40 million U.S. employees, or about 40 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce, currently have no right to any paid sick leave. As a result, EPI said, these employees commonly go to work sick or leave their ill children home alone because they fear they will be fired for missing work.
“Even if they are not terminated, the loss of pay they suffer takes a dramatic toll—particularly since jobs without sick pay are concentrated among low-wage workers,” EPI said in “The Legislative Attack on American Wages and Labor Standards, 2011-2012.”
Bloomberg BNA March 5, 2014 -
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute showsthat all 50 states have experienced lopsided income growth in recent decades. In fact, between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers took home nearly 54 percent of the total increase in income.
To put it another way, while the bottom 99 percent of earners experienced an 18.9 percent average growth in income, the income of the top 1 percent grew more than 10 times that much — a whopping 200.5 percent increase.
MSN Money March 5, 2014 -
A coalition of school districts and parents has sued the state, arguing that the funding from the state was not enough to suitably educate children. A three-judge panel agreed, writing that it was “completely illogical” for the state to cut taxes while blaming an economic downturn for spending cuts.
Brownback appealed that decision, and is awaiting a ruling from the state Supreme Court.
Not surprisingly, whether states revert to pre-recession spending levels depends primarily on the party in power. Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center, points to several states that elected Republican governors in 2010 — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — as examples of the philosophy of lower spending.
“For a lot of these actors, the budget cuts and the fiscal crisis is greeted more as an opportunity than a tragedy,” said Lafer, who studied the issue for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Los Angeles Times March 5, 2014 -
National Journal February 28, 2014
-
Elise Gould, a Ph.D. economist who directs health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, told me in an e-mail that “Fairness in health care is about what kind of society we would like to create for ourselves. Efficiency is about making sure that health care is provided in a timely and cost-effective manner. The ACA promotes both fairness . . . by making health care more accessible and affordable . . . and efficiency in various ways, such as increasing the availability of preventive medicine, reducing the use of last resort health care (ER visits) relative to health maintenance and treatment at earlier stages of illness.”
Those are good points, but I still wanted to know whether the U.S. has a moral obligation to provide health insurance.
“Do we have a moral obligation to provide health care to people who would otherwise die in the streets?” Gould asked. “Unabashedly, I say yes and would venture to guess that most people would as well.”
The Washington Post February 28, 2014 -
There is a lot to celebrate about the pre-kindergarten program in the D.C. public schools. In fact, some aspects of the program are so strong that school officials would be smart to borrow them for application in later grades. This is all explained in the following post by Elaine Weiss, the national coordinator for the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, a project of the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute that recognizes the impact of social and economic disadvantage on many schools and students, and works to better the conditions that limit many children’s readiness to learn.
Weiss looks at an exemplary pre-K program called Jubilee JumpStart Center in the culturally diverse Adams Morgan section of Northwest Washington, where there will be the screening of a film called “Ready for Kindergarten: The Impact of Early Childhood Education,” tonight, Feb . 27. (You can find details here.)
The Washington Post February 28, 2014 -
(At the 3:30 mark) According to the Economic Policy Institute, Walmart’s trade deficit with china, between 2001 and 2006, well, it helped destroy 200,000 jobs in this country. An estimated 133,000 of those were manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing is a long-term investment, with the potential for long-term benefits for any economy.
The Ed Show February 28, 2014 -
A study published Wednesday by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute showed that abolishing overseas currency manipulation, a task few economists think would be easy, could bring millions of jobs to the U.S., especially in the manufacturing-intensive states of Sen. Brown and Rep. Levin.
Wall Street Journal February 28, 2014 -
Education Inaccessible
Further, some teens need to work to help earn their way through college. When jobs become scarce, education can become inaccessible, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research group funded in part by labor unions.
“Teen jobs matter a lot less if you go to college, but having a work history may be the difference between putting yourself through school or not,” she said.
Bloomberg February 26, 2014