Media clips
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The charts aren’t merely illustrative: they are an essential part of Piketty’s contribution. Fifteen or twenty years ago, debates about inequality tended to be cast in terms of clever but complicated statistics, such as the Gini coefficient and the Theil entropy index, which attempted to reduce the entire income distribution to a single number. One thing that Piketty and his colleagues Emmanuel Saez and Anthony Atkinson have done is to popularize the use of simple charts that are easier to understand. In particular, they present pictures showing the shares of over-all income and wealth taken by various groups over time, including the top decile of the income distribution and the top percentile (respectively, the top ten per cent and those we call “the one per cent”).
The Piketty group didn’t invent this way of looking at things. Other economists, such as Ed Wolff, of New York University, and Jared Bernstein and Larry Mishel, the creators of the invaluable State of Working America series, have long used similar charts and tables in their publications. But partly by using new sources of data, such as individual tax records, and partly by expanding the research to other countries, Piketty and his colleagues have deployed their charts to reshape the entire inequality debate.
The New Yorker April 3, 2014 -
MICHAEL TANNER: Pleasure to be with you. MARTIN: Also back with us, Ross Eisenbrey. He is vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. That’s a think tank that advocates for low and middle-income workers. Welcome back to you as well. Thank you for joining us. ROSS EISENBREY: It’s a pleasure to be here. MARTIN: So could you just help me understand why there’s this difference between the minimum wage for tipped workers and for other workers? And I’m sure it’s more complicated than a simple answer, but if you could try to make it as simple as you can. EISENBREY: I’m going to make it simple and complicated. The federal government, when it covered workers like restaurant workers, right from the beginning said that the employer only had to pay directly half of the minimum wage and could rely on tips for the other half. And so that’s the simple question. Over time, it’s no longer half – it’s only $2.13 for a $7.25 minimum wage.
NPR March 28, 2014 -
In her first press conference this week, incoming U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen indicated the central bank would reduce its bond purchases at a slightly quicker pace but also continued to de-emphasize the importance of the previously announced threshold of a 6.5% unemployment rate for raising short-term interest rates. Her remarks initially rattled markets, but this is actually a very sensible stance and one that shouldn’t have been news to anyone following the Fed’s announcements in recent months; the fact that markets hiccuped after hearing this indicates only that short-term stock movements convey essentially zero useful information.
Normally, economists would tell you that the Fed’s job is to manage a delicate trade-off between the two prongs of its dual mandate: keeping inflation low while maximizing employment. But since the beginning of 2008, a majority of macroeconomists has agreed that this normally delicate trade-off no longer exists, and that the Fed should focus on economic activity and employment, period. Unfortunately, that consensus shows signs of prematurely fraying. Some observers have started arguing that the time has come for the Fed to ease off the accelerator and start worrying about excessive inflation again — despite strong evidence that there is still a great deal of slack in the labor market.
CNNMoney March 27, 2014 -
5. If you’re not officially poor, you’re doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America’s cities and regions.
Mother Jones March 27, 2014 -
The graduation rate among U.S. high schools is now at 80 percent, the highest rate on record, the report said, adding that about 40,000 schools have used the grants.
But the initiative has been criticized by some organizations, such as the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, that said that some of the gains cited by the administration may be due to other factors.
“The policy agenda put forth by Race to the Top is a severe mismatch for the opportunity gap that drives the achievement gap that Race to the Top wants to close,” said Elaine Weiss, national coordinator, of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education Campaign, a program of the institute.
She said the grants may benefit schools that are already performing at high levels, while not doing enough to help some troubled schools.
Reuters March 27, 2014 -
Job searching “was like playing the lottery”, says Sharone, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Israelis believed that if they kept up the hunt, eventually their number would come up.
But not Americans. They experienced a “more insidious and deep kind of discouragement” in which lost job opportunities were personal failures, he says.
And because they thought it was their fault, they were more likely to stop trying.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, argues there’s nothing wrong with current US job seekers as a group other than their “misfortune of being jobseekers during the worst labour market downturn this country has seen in 70 years”.
But that misfortune shows no signs of ebbing as labour markets continue to shift.
BBC News March 27, 2014 -
And more people are finding themselves in that situation more often these days. Here are three things that have happened in conjunction in America over the past decade: Debt loads have increased. Real earnings have stagnated. And payday lending has exploded. Debt loads have come down, but are still elevated. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
The Washington Post March 27, 2014 -
It’s not hard to see why. The primary goal of the Better Off Budget is to close the “output gap” that opened after the financial crisis—that is, to tap the economic resources that have been idling for the last few years, leading to higher unemployment and lower wages. Obama’s budget seeks to do the same thing, but wouldn’t close the gap by nearly as much. Ryan’s budget would more or less ignore the gap altogether. In 2013, the gap—measured as potential gross domestic product versus actual gross domestic product—stood at $790 billion. The CPC budget closes it in three years by investing in infrastructure, state aid and a government jobs program. By 2017, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, it will create 8.8 million new jobs.
New Republic March 27, 2014 -
In a hearing this week, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said the Department of Labor would study both raising the wage threshold and overturning the 2004 rule that made certain salaried employees exempt from overtime because they perform some managerial duties.
“There are two issues we are working on in the regulation,” Perez said. “Number one, what should the threshold be, and secondly, how does the test work.”
Perez also said the current structure of the managerial exemption keeps deserving workers frozen out of overtime. “You can work 1 percent of your time in a management function and 99 percent of your time stocking shelves and you will be an exempt employee under the current regulation,” he said.
Workers who now make more than $455 a week, which adds up to less than $24,000 a year, cannot receive overtime pay. That level was set in 2004, when President George W. Bush raised it from $155 a week. That increase gave overtime pay to roughly 400,000 workers, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
Roll Call March 27, 2014 -
Unemployment at a post-recession low in 30 states, but the news isn’t all good. “Unemployment rates in 30 states are the lowest they’ve been since the recession ended, according to the Labor Department. But beneath that headline statistic, the state of the state labor markets is far from recovered….In the vast majority of states, long-term unemployment — a particularly intractable problem — is at or near record highs. In many states, the income gap between the poorest and richest has widened. And, as the Economic Policy Institute recently reported, low-wage workers in nearly every state have seen their wages drop (see chart below).” Niraj Chokshi in The Washington Post.
The Washington Post March 20, 2014