Media clips
-
The controversy over President Obama’s proposal to end the federal tax subsidy for 529 college plans raised two reasonable questions: Who receives the tax benefits from 529 plans and should college costs be subsidized through a tax break or by a spending program? Tax subsidies for saving largely go to higher income taxpayers who can afford to save and who would generally save if there were no tax subsidies. Spending programs for higher education, such as Pell grants, can be much better targeted to qualified individuals who would not go to college without such assistance. Unfortunately, most tax expenditures — exemptions, credits and deductions for specific activities — have the same kind of upside-down benefit. But there are over 200 different tax expenditures, so dealing with each one individually is rather inefficient.
The New York Times February 4, 2015 -
The superintendent churn gets less attention than turnover among teachers and principals, but it presents a real challenge, according to education observers and policy wonks. “Communities that are trying seriously to turn around their schools see this as a 10- to 20-year iterative process, where they have bumps on the way, they make changes on the way … that’s what big, long-term sustainable change looks like,” said Elaine Weiss, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and Montgomery County parent who is supportive of Starr. “If you’re out in three and a half years, you have barely made a dent.”
The Washington Post February 4, 2015 -
Critics of the TPP say the process is too secretive and favors big businesses. Supporters argue the deal would even the playing field for American manufacturers by eliminating most tariffs. Diane and guests discuss debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership and what it could mean for the U.S. economy and American workers.
Diane Rehm Show February 4, 2015 -
Two analysts, Martin Carnoy of Stanford and Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute, examined a sample of U.S. students in PISA and found it deficient on several factors, including an over-estimate of the number of low-income urban students and an under-estimate of the number of low-income rural students.
The Washington Post February 4, 2015 -
The Economic Policy Institute has taken economist Emmanuel Saez’s research on U.S. income tax returns and produced an account of just how America-altering that transfer of income has been. Between 1935 and 1980—that is, between the year in which both Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act were enacted and the year Ronald Reagan was elected as president—of all the income growth (excluding government benefits and transfer payments) that Americans reported on their taxes, fully 70 percent was income accrued by the bottom 90 percent of American households.
The American Prospect February 4, 2015 -
The White House released its annual budget on Monday for fiscal year 2016. On the one hand, this may seem like a low-value exercise, given the dim prospects for its major initiatives passing a Republican-controlled Congress. But on the other hand, the raft of stories written about it prove the president continues to have unrivaled power in setting the terms of policy debate. And the terms set by the 2016 budget are really useful. Most of the big-ticket items were previewed: significant increases on tax rates for the highest-income households on income they receive simply from wealth-holdings, higher taxes on large transfers of wealth, tax cuts for low- and middle-income taxpayers, and substantial spending increases on community colleges, early childhood care, and infrastructure.
One item that wasn’t telegraphed by the White House included corporate tax reforms that would impose a minimum 19% tax on foreign earnings of U.S. firms with no opportunity for deferral. This is a very big step in the right direction, if still a little shy of perfect since deferral should be ended and U.S. firms should be taxed at the going corporate income tax rate regardless of where income is earned. But 19% is a lot better than today’s implicit 0% on income held abroad. Further, a large chunk of the budget’s infrastructure proposals is financed by a one-time tax of 14% on accumulated earnings of U.S. corporations held abroad. Again, this is much better than the frequently floated alternative of allowing U.S. firms to repatriate their foreign-held earnings at a preferential rate.
Wall Street Journal February 3, 2015 -
The field generates one in five jobs in the U.S., including 12 million in manufacturing, and another 17 million in areas supported by manufacturing, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute. The industry is also particularly good at creating more lucrative jobs for less-educated Americans. The average manufacturing worker without a college degree earns $1.78 more each hour than in other sectors, according to the report, which looked at American Community Survey data.
Bloomberg February 3, 2015 -
Nationally, the pay gap between college graduates and people lacking degrees recently reached a record high, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute. Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more per hour on average in 2013 than people without diplomas, up from 89 percent five years earlier and 85 percent a decade earlier.
The Washington Post February 2, 2015 -
A new report (PDF) from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, shows the state of the union as far as income inequality goes, and, well, it’s pretty harsh. See below for a state-by-state ranking, from top to bottom ratio.
Daily Beast February 2, 2015 -
The plunge in oil prices is great for Americans who drive with the average household expected to save about $750 on gas this year. But the rapid price drop is causing lots of layoffs for oil workers. Those losses could begin to spill over into other parts of the economy, especially in once fast growing parts of the country like Texas. “I don’t want to call this strong growth until it actually starts pushing up wages and prices,” says Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Money February 2, 2015