Media clips
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Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington speaks at a Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence event at the legislative office complex in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. The event was the first of a series scheduled from supporters and opponents of creating a school voucher program and expanding charter schools in the state.
AP January 30, 2014 -
Today, newly-formed education advocacy group TREE (Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence) hosted a presentation by Elaine Weiss of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.
Weiss discussed recent Tennessee education policy in the context of the drivers of educational inequality. She pointed to research suggesting that poverty is a significant contributor to student outcomes and noted other research that suggests as much as 2/3 of student outcomes are predicted by factors outside of school.
Later in the day, SCORE (Statewide Collaborative on Reforming Education) released its annual State of Education in Tennessee Report.
Tennessee Education Report January 30, 2014 -
With education the burning issue driving policy on the local, state and federal level, the presentation across the street inside Legislative Plaza was a horse of a different color.
Tennesseans Reclaiming Education Excellence, TREE, held its first-ever press conference in a packed small legislative committee room Monday, examining how the state’s approach to addressing achievement gaps drive policies that are hurting public schools.
“The state of education for Tennessee is it has a lot of potential to do the right things and is not doing them,” said Elaine Weiss, a TREE presenter and national coordinator for Washington, D.C.-based Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Nearby, Democratic Rep. Mike Stewart bumped his fists together like a boxer, congratulating her for taking on the state.
Nashville Scene January 30, 2014 -
On Tuesday, we wrote about some good-sounding news: unemployment rates in 29 states are at post-recession lows. We alluded to some caveats, however, including the historically huge share of people out of work for prolonged periods —six months or more. On Wednesday, the Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper provided the state-level data.
Before the Great Recession hit, the national share of the jobless who were long-term unemployed peaked at 26 percent, in June 1983, as you can see in the graph below:
Last year, long-term unemployment was above that level in 41 states and D.C., according to EPI, a think tank whose research focuses on low- and middle-income workers. Long-term unemployment is lowest in the Dakotas, where less than a fifth of the jobless have been out of work for long stretches. It’s highest in D.C., New Jersey and Florida, where more than 45 percent of the jobless are long-term unemployed.
Head on over to EPI’s site for an interactive version of the map above, or scroll down to view state-by-state data. Below that is a series of survey responses from people who are long-term unemployed.
The Washington Post January 30, 2014 -
This morning, President Obama visited a Costco in suburban Maryland to reemphasize the theme of income inequality he sounded in the State of the Union speech last night. Our calculator shows why Obama chose the home of the giant pickle jar and behemoth TP package: Even at the relatively low wages paid by big-box retailers, slightly better pay can mean the difference between inescapable poverty and a modest living.
Mother Jones January 30, 2014 -
Ariane Hegewisch, study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “If you look at who is poor and who is likely to remain poor, women are the majority.”
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimates that the poverty rate for working women would be cut in half if women earned as much as men.
The pay gap appears narrower in lower-wage jobs than in higher wage jobs, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But she noted that the reason is not because women are doing better, but because men in lower wage jobs are doing worse.
“That’s not the kind of improvement women want,” Shierholz said. “If you could solve inequality overall, you’d have helped a lot of women.”
Reuters January 30, 2014 -
Obama says expanded trade will generate high-paying jobs for an economy that’s still more than 1 million paychecks short of its pre-recession peak. His critics in the labor movement and some economists say previous deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, destroyed millions of factory jobs.
“It has absolutely been a contributor to the rise in inequality,” said economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research group partially funded by labor groups. “We would have a different country, with less inequality, had we not seen the developments in the global economy that we’ve had over the last 15 to 20 years.”
The concern that Obama is fanning over the income gap could boomerang on his plans. Five fellow Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee this month said they won’t vote for giving the president “fast track” authority to speed trade deals through Congress, citing in part the risk to jobs.
Bloomberg Politics January 30, 2014 -
As Obama follows up on a State of the Union speech Tuesday that focused on increasing economic opportunity, census tracts at opposite ends of the spectrum help paint the picture. Data from 2010 showed a median family income of just $8,831 in the Napier-Sudekum area. In Belle Meade, the median family income was more than 20 times higher at $183,047.
The same stories can be found across the state. Incomes for the bottom 20 percent of Tennessee households fell by 12 percent over the course of nearly a decade, a 2012 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute found.
USA Today January 30, 2014 -
Account holders would be able to make hardship withdrawals without facing significant tax penalties. And while the plan is aimed at low-income people, anyone in a household earning up to $191,000 a year is eligible to invest.
“The plan has the advantage that it helps people who do not have the ability right now to save easily through payroll deduction,” said David C. John, a senior policy advisor at AARP who added that it steers people around financial institutions that discourage investors with small accounts. “It helps get people into the habit of saving.”
But others said Obama’s new initiative is so modest that it does nothing to address the larger problem of eroding retirement security for Americans.
“At best, it is a distraction from the bigger issue of what we need to do to shore up retirement,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “It is a very, very modest tweak, and it is not likely to have much of a substantive impact.”
The Washington Post January 30, 2014 -
The plan, as the President outlined it in his address and the White House fleshed out a bit more Wednesday, aims to give lower-income workers a way to start building retirement nest eggs in tax-deferred accounts, through regular payroll deductions made by their employers. The employers would have to agree to offer the service to employees.
The accounts would be available to those earning less than $191,000, but the minimum initial contribution would be $25 and subsequent contributions could be as little as $5.
The money would be invested in a government-backed bond with a yield pegged to the Government Securities Investment Fund offered to federal employees through the government’s Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement program. That low-risk, low-return fund yielded 1.47% over the last year and an average 2.24% over the last three years. Like Series EE savings bonds, the myRA bonds wouldn’t lose face value, which means the investments would be protected from market losses. But with such low yields they might barely keep up with inflation.
Once the accounts reach $15,000 in value, they would have to be rolled over into a conventional Individual Investment Account. That’s a sop to the financial services industry, which makes billions from managing IRAS. And that’s bad news, says economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute. “The president’s plan may serve to channel more savings into a high-risk, high-fee system without first addressing its failings,” she wrote on EPI’s blog.
Los Angeles Times January 30, 2014