Media clips

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• Income Malaise of Middle Class Complicates Democrats’ Stance in Talks

  The mounting concentration of wealth is even more dramatic. A recent Economic Policy Institute study found that between 1983 and 2010 about three-quarters of all new wealth accrued to the wealthiest 5 percent of households. Over the same period, the bottom 60 percent actually became poorer.

  The New York Times December 14, 2012
• Unionizing the Bottom of the Pay Scale

  More than two million workers toil in food preparation jobs at limited-service restaurants like McDonald’s, according to government statistics. They are the lowest-paid workers in the country, government figures show, typically earning $8.69 an hour. A study by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning research organization, concluded that almost three-quarters of them live in poverty. And they are unlikely to have ever contemplated joining a union.

  The New York Times December 7, 2012
• The No Good, Very Bad Outlook for the Working-Class American Man

  “This is something that has been happening and building for years and is now really rooted in the economy, and it’s vicious,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington. “There’s a remarkable disconnect. The problem isn’t a lack of the economy producing sufficient income to make everybody’s living standards improve—it’s that the economy is structured so that the majority don’t benefit.” Or, to state the point more cautiously, the majority doesn’t benefit from productivity gains very much—certainly, less than our parents and grandparents did.

  National Journal December 7, 2012
• The GOP’s bizarre ‘doomsday plan’

  At the end of the year, we would still go over the fiscal cliff. Remember that the Bush tax cuts are one of the least stimulative policies in the negotiations. According to the Economic Policy Institute, extending the middle-class tax cuts would wipe out about 11 percent of the  fiscal cliff’s economic impact.

  The Washington Post December 7, 2012
• Fewer in U.S. get health insurance through jobs

  In 2011, 58.3 percent of the nation’s workers under 65 had job-based health insurance, according to a report released Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute.

  That marks a decline of 0.3 percentage points from the previous year, after precipitous declines starting in 2008, when companies were laying off workers, shuttering plants or going out of business in the wake of the global financial crisis.

  “What is so clear is that workers have lost bargaining power,” said Elise Gould, author of the study and director of health policy research at the Washington-based think tank. “There are so many workers for every job out there, and workers don’t have any way to get higher wages or better benefits. That’s why that trend is not going to improve.”

  Minneapolis Star Tribune December 7, 2012
• If tech is so important, why are IT wages flat?

  In 2000, the average hourly wage was $37.27 in computer and math occupations for workers with at least a bachelor’s degree. In 2011, it was $39.24, adjusted for inflation, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

  Computerworld December 7, 2012
• Paid sick leave a wise investment

  Currently, 40 percent of private sector employees nationwide cannot earn paid sick days, and lower-paid service workers in the restaurant and fast-food industries are particularly unlikely to have this safeguard. Food service workers, health care workers, child care workers and others who come into physical contact with the public or handle our food are among the least likely to have paid leave.

  Baltimore Sun December 1, 2012
• Median Net Worth In 2010 At Lowest Level Since 1969: Report

  The decline in wages may have, in part, contributed to growing wealth inequality, resulting in a member of the 1 percent’s worth equaling 288 times that of the median U.S. household, the Economic Policy Institute found in a report released in September.

  The Huffington Post November 29, 2012
• Obama must push for another extension of unemployment insurance

  What would happen if unemployment benefits were to expire in January? Earlier this month, the Economic Policy Institute found that the economy would save 400,000 jobs if unemployment benefits were extended through 2013. It’s not hard to see why — as with food stamps and other forms of federal assistance, unemployment benefits are spent on necessities like rent, groceries and fuel. They provide a direct boost to the economy, and provide significant bang for the buck; you get more than a dollar’s worth of stimulus (a multiplier of 150 percent) for every dollar spent on unemployment insurance.

  The Washington Post November 29, 2012
• State employees could be caught in austerity bomb’s blast radius

  Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said it’s “tough to say” how fiscal cliff negotiations could affect state employees. “You’re talking about two slightly different areas of the budget,” he told MSNBC.

  “Usually, operations is funded internally by the state, and a lot of the stuff that the federal government provides is more for specific activities,” Pollack said.

  This means, for example, that budget cuts resulting from the fiscal cliff negotiations could have an impact on a state’s bridge-building project, but not on whether the state would be hiring new bus drivers to transport people along that highway.

  On the other hand, said Pollack, budget cuts to specific federally-funded projects would likely have an indirect impact on other parts of state budgets. “Money is fungible, and the more you try to crimp state budgets, the more [state governments] try to go for the low-hanging fruit, politically.”

  “Unfortunately, that tends to be public employees,” said Pollack.

  MSNBC.com November 29, 2012