Media clips
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The critics argue, moreover, that companies have exploited the H1-B program to fuel outsourcing, bringing in foreign employees into the U.S. to train them and then sending them back their native countries to run their offshore operations: They point out that the top 10 companies that petitioned for H1-B visas in FY 2012 were all outsourcing giants.
Their preferred course of action is anti-fraud and anti-abuse legislation just introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which would require companies to do more to hire native-born workers, raise wages for foreign-born workers, and make it more difficult to use the program to fuel outsourcing. The underlying message is, “don’t think about expanding the H1-B before examining the problems,” explains Ross Eisenbery, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and a vocal critic of the visa program.
The Washington Post March 22, 2013 -
Many economists say that Republican plans to slash spending would hurt the economy. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed budget would destroy 2 million jobs in 2014 alone if it were implemented, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post March 22, 2013 -
Not surprisingly, liberal economists have jumped on Brooks’s arguments. Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute argues that the economy is still performing so under par — $985 billion below its potential output if all our factories were going full tilt — that it needs a major boost from government-financed economic activity to increase production, employment and consumption. Coincidentally, the day after Brooks’s column was published, Gallup released a poll showing that 72 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, would support a major federally financed infrastructure repair program and a federal program creating 1 million jobs. Nearly 80 years after Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration, it seems the American people would like the government to re-create it.
The Washington Post March 22, 2013 -
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the country’s labor market is in crisis, and it’s projected the unemployment rate will not drop below 6 percent for another four years.
“This is precisely the time that we should provide legal status and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, because it will actually make things better,” she said. “It will actually improve the economy and generate some jobs, so this is a very good time to do it given the economic context.”
Progress Illinois March 21, 2013 -
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C., said Nutter appears to be taking a hard line stance similar to that of Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, whose tussle with his city’s teacher’s union resulted in a strike last year.
Emanuel, Eisenbray said, is among a breed of new Democratic leaders who aren’t as beholden to unions as their predecessors were; instead, they’re more beholden to wealthy contributors who are more likely to want tax cuts.
Workers, meanwhile, are feeling increasingly marginalized. Despite the recession, the nation’s income has continued to grow, but a larger portion of it goes to the wealthy, Eisenbray said.
“Part of what’s going on is that everyone, all blue collar workers and even white collar college-educated workers, have seen their wages stagnate or fall in the past 10 or 12 years,” Eisenbray said. “They’ve lost their retiree health benefits, their employer-covered health care, their pensions have been virtually wiped out. There has been this huge erosion across the board in the compensation of the American middle- and working-class, and the public employees have held out longest. They had a good relationship with the politicians they bargained with. But now they’re under attack.”
NBC Philadelphia March 21, 2013 -
“Lower-wage jobs are coming back first,” said labor economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-leaning think tank. “But it’s all bleak and it’s all due to lack of demand for work to be done. We’re still not getting more than just what we need to hang on,” Shierholz said. “These last few months have looked better, but we cannot yet claim robust recovery by any stretch.”
Associated Press March 21, 2013 -
The debate over what to do with Apple’s reserve money has been “one-dimensional, with a nearly exclusive focus on how the reserves should be used to reward its shareholders,” writes the Economic Policy Institute’s Isaac Shapiro. The workers who manufacture and sell Apple products, he notes, have been left entirely out of the debate. Despite the notoriously grim conditions at some factories which make Apple products, low-level employees are unlikely to see any benefit from a massive corporate surplus.
MSNBC March 21, 2013 -
Social Security
In These Times
These critically important findings are contained in the report “Strengthening Social Security: What do Americans Want?” compiled by the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI). “The American people, contrary to popular belief, are overwhelmingly willing to pay more for Social Security, and that includes every age and income group, across party lines, and even Tea Partiers,” observes Monique Morrissey, an Economic Policy Institute economist specializing in retirement security issues.
“There is a lot of support for increasing benefits,” Morrissey told Working In These Times, noting that the report found 84 percent of respondents believe that benefits are not high enough, and 75 percent support higher benefits—a finding that runs directly counter to the push for lower benefits promoted by long-time austerity champion billionaire Pete Peterson and the corporate-led Fix the Debt coalition.
In These Times March 19, 2013 -
The Gantz brothers are doing their best to get Washington’s policy community involved. They screened the film at the Economic Policy Institute and had planned a screening at the Center for American Progress that was canceled by weather.
Politico March 19, 2013 -
RYAN’S BUDGET COULD COST 2 MILLION JOBS According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget would decrease gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.7 percent and cost 2. million jobs by next year. EPI also estimated that Ryan’s budget would increase the unemployment rate by between 0.6 percentage points and 0.8 percentage points.
Fiscal Times March 19, 2013