Media clips

---

• Economic Goals and the Civil Rights Movement
  C-SPAN July 23, 2013
• There Are A Lot Of Clips About How Broken Our System Is, But Here’s One That Offers Some Solutions

  If you’re like most of us, you don’t have profit money from large corporations flowing into your bank account like a fire hose. But some do — they make up a tiny percentage of our country, but they have most of the power. There are, however, ways to fix that.

  I know — nothing new there, right? What is new is a fantastic interactive website where you can start to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how we can fix it. Check it out: Inequality.Is.

  Upworthy July 22, 2013
• Will The McDonald’s Employee Budget Help Get The Minimum Wage Raised?

  Indeed, McDonald’s may have inadvertently triggered more support for a movement that has so far only had weak political momentum — to raise the minimum wage.

  “[The budget] shows that what they’re paying is something you can’t live on — that people have to have two jobs, and much higher wages in order to support themselves,” says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a labor-market economist. “They demonstrated, inadvertently, that they don’t pay a living wage.”

  He says that the minimum wage should be at least 50% of the average wage. Right now, at $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage is just about 37% of the average wage, which Mishel said was $19.76 in 2012. (Some states set their own minimum wages, which can be seen in this chart.)

  If the minimum wage were bumped to 50% of the average wage, it would be $9.88, which works out to $20,550 a year before taxes.

  Forbes July 22, 2013
• What Happens If You Try To Live On McDonald’s Wages: A Budget

  So AOL Jobs decided to write up a second budget for a McDonald’s employee who is a single parent with one child living in Newaygo County, Michigan, which has the average cost of living for the country. The income numbers are the same, but the expenses are based on the “budget calculator” from the liberal think tank the Economic Policy Institute, excluding tax, but with the original budget’s ambitious $100 of monthly savings.

  As you can see below, our McDonald’s employee with a second job and one child will go into $1,548 of debt each month, or $51.60 a day.

  AOL Jobs July 22, 2013
• Fed Ponders Part-Time Shift as Obamacare Role Questioned: Jobs

  The high number of part-time workers is “primarily an issue of labor demand: we have a weak economy,” said Elise Gould, director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, which receives about a quarter of its funding from labor unions.

  Bloomberg BusinessWeek July 22, 2013
• There Are A Lot Of Clips About How Broken Our System Is, But Here’s One That Offers Some Solutions

  If you’re like most of us, you don’t have profit money from large corporations flowing into your bank account like a fire hose. But some do — they make up a tiny percentage of our country, but they have most of the power. There are, however, ways to fix that.

  I know — nothing new there, right? What is new is a fantastic interactive website where you can start to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how we can fix it. Check it out: Inequality.Is.

  Upworthy July 19, 2013
• What Happens If You Try To Live On McDonald’s Wages: A Budget

  So AOL Jobs decided to write up a second budget for a McDonald’s employee who is a single parent with one child living in Newaygo County, Mich., which has the average cost of living for the country. The income numbers are the same, but the expenses are based on the “budget calculator” from the liberal think tank the Economic Policy Institute, excluding tax, but with the original budget’s ambitious $100 of monthly savings.

  As you can see below, our McDonald’s employee with a second job and one child will go into $1,548 of debt each month, or $51.60 a day.

  AOL Jobs July 19, 2013
• Is Senate Immigration Bill Better Than the Status Quo?

  Senate passage of immigration reform legislation, S 744, begs the question: Is it better than current law? Probably, but the answer could change.

  Parts of the bill do improve both the immigration system and the labor market. New rules limit abuses of internationally recruited workers, make union organizing easier and protect immigrants from employer retaliation. S 744 also prioritizes permanent immigrants with skills over family connections and creates a Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research that would make the system more data-driven. And regularizing unauthorized migrants would bring exploitable workers and their families out of the shadows, allowing them to assert their rights and bargain collectively. Both immigrants and Americans would benefit as wages rise, and law-abiding employers would no longer have to compete in a race to the bottom.

  Roll Call July 19, 2013
• D.C. Council stands for fair wages and against Wal-Mart

  On average, Wal-Mart pays its workers $12.67 an hour — which means that a huge number of its 1.4 million U.S. employees make a good deal less than that. By paying so little, the Bentonville behemoth compels thousands of its employees to use food stamps to feed their families and Medicaid to pay their doctor bills. It compels taxpayers to pick up a tab that wouldn’t even exist if the company paid its workers enough to get them out of poverty.

  The Washington Post July 19, 2013
• New chart makes case for linking minimum wage to productivity

  The Economic Policy Institute posted a blog this week comparing the federal minimum wage to productivity rates. According to the blog, which also contained a chart based on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, the wage would be $18.67 per hour. And if median wages had tracked productivity increases, it would be $28.42 instead of closer to $16 today

  Sacramento Business Journal July 16, 2013