— The Economic Policy Institute’s Thomas Hungerford outlines six tax changes Congress can utilize to fund an extension of unemployment insurance without stepping on tax reform’s toes.http://bit.ly/1gtc6Me
Politico
December 17, 2013
Many more states are expected to take up similar fights next year, and advocates expect it to be a significant issue in the midterm elections next November.
“It’s easy, sometimes, for us to get discouraged when you see one or two states nudging the minimum wage up by a little bit here and a little bit there, but it does add up to something,” said Doug Hall, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network for the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “There’s a sense of momentum.”
NBC News
December 17, 2013
Another shibboleth of the naysayers of a minimum wage increase is that most minimum wage workers are teenagers. They are not. According to recent research by the Economic Policy Institute, about 30 million workers would benefit from the proposed increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Of these workers, 88 percent would be at least 20 years old with an average age of 35; 55 percent would be working full time; 56 percent of them would be female, and more than 28 percent of them would be parents.…
Putting more income into the hands of minimum-wage workers would not only reduce poverty; it would also stimulate consumer spending at a time when inadequate demand continues to impede a robust recovery and job creation. Using very different methodologies, two recent studies confirm thatan increase in the minimum wage to the $10 range would lift spending, gross domestic product and job creation.
The New York Times
December 17, 2013
A study published this year by Carnoy and Richard Rothstein, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, found that much of the difference between U.S. scores and those of high-ranking nations is because the United States has a higher proportion of disadvantaged students. But the researchers found that the scores of the most disadvantaged U.S. students have been improving markedly over the years, while scores for their counterparts in many top-ranked nations have fallen precipitously.
In contrast, the highest-scoring U.S. math students are nowhere near their peers in top-ranking countries, Carnoy said.
Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2013
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if Washington increased the minimum to $10.10 as Obama would like, some 21.3 million employees would be guaranteed a raise, assuming they kept their jobs. (Another 9 million might theoretically benefit if companies adjusted their whole wage scales upwards, which is what the light blue section on the chart shows. But that might just be wishful thinking on EPI’s part.)
In the end, we’re talking about a policy that would give roughly one in seven employed workers a raise.
The Atlantic
December 17, 2013
My Friday column arguing that inequality shouldn’t be elevated to “the defining challenge of our time” — or even the defining economic challenge of our time — has elicited a lot of really interesting responses. See Brad DeLong, Jared Bernstein, Paul Krugman, Larry Mishel, Ashok Rao, Matt Yglesias and Dean Baker, to start. I’ll add a few points.
The Washington Post
December 17, 2013
The answer, if this pseudo-argument deserves one, is that $15 is at least where the current minimum hourly wage of $7.25 would be if it had kept up with worker productivity since the 1960s, according to various experts.
For example, the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, as it did for the two decades before, it would now be $18.67 per hour. Ah, the good old days.
That figure makes President Barack Obama’s request for a raise to $10.10, after asking for $9 earlier in the year, sound modest.
The Chicago Tribune
December 13, 2013
Some of the improvement in the employment picture results from people dropping out of or not entering the workforce because of weak job opportunities, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that studies the issues of low- and middle-income workers…..
But the CBO also said that extending the program would increase direct spending by consumers by the same amount — $25.7 billion over 2014-15. An extension also would increase government revenues modestly, about $500 million, over the 2014-23 period, the office said.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a benefits extension creates spending that supports 310,000 jobs — jobs that will be lost if the program is discontinued.
NBC News
December 13, 2013
Josh Bivens, Researcher and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute: At this point, the agonizingly slow recovery from the official end of the Great Recession can be almost entirely explained by austerity in the public sector. The chart below shows growth in real public spending (state, local, and federal, and including transfer payments like unemployment insurance and Social Security, as well as direct spending like hiring teachers to staff public schools) following the trough of recessions since 1954.
At this point in the recovery, public spending following recovery from the Great Recession is by far the weakest on record. Particularly instructive is comparing the past 4 years with the 4 years following the recession that ended in 1982. That early 1980’s recession was extraordinarily steep – unemployment rose to a higher peak than during the Great Recession. Yet 4 years following its end all economic slack it caused was gone, whereas today’s economy is far from fully recovered. Yet if public spending following the Great Recession had mirrored its trajectory following the recession ending in 1982, the U.S. economy would essentially be back to pre-Great Recession health.
The Atlantic
December 13, 2013
For example, the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, as it did for the two decades before, it would now be $18.67 per hour. Ah, the good old days.
The Chicago Tribune
December 11, 2013