“Labor is on the defensive,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Insitute, a liberal research and policy organization in Washington, D.C. “This could very well be a turning point if the people of Michigan affirm collective bargaining.”
Associated Press
October 23, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute also estimated the holiday’s expiration would deliver one of the fiscal cliff’s biggest hits to economic growth next year. In fact, EPI’s analysis found it does more damage to the economy per dollar than to the budget. For most parts of the fiscal cliff, the opposite was the case. So by keeping some parts of the fiscal cliff while canceling others — such as the payroll tax holiday expiration — damage to both the economy and the budget could be minimized.
EPI acknowledged that the payroll tax cut as it stands is not optimal stimulus. But it added, “optimal policy responses are hard to come by these days.”
Think Progress
October 23, 2012
“The initial stimulus deserves very high marks, but it could have been more effective with fewer tax cuts,” said Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning research organization. “In some ways, it has to do with Obama’s political tactic of incorporating things he thinks the opposition wants thinking they would say yes. But, as we saw, they didn’t.”
The Washington Post
October 19, 2012
According to the Economic Policy Institute, poverty is on the rise in the U.S. and the “poor are getting poorer.” Despite great strides for poverty alleviation in Mexico (Slim’s home), a large part of the workforce, informal workers — defined as non-salaried workers who are self-employed — remain in poverty and are considered a “basic challenge to the country’s development.”
AARP
October 19, 2012
Is your job green?
Compared with the local, state and private sectors, the federal government has the highest percentage of green jobs.
That’s the word from the Economic Policy Institute, which analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data. EPI says 5.3 percent of federal jobs are considered green, compared with 4.9 percent of state jobs, 3.4 percent of local government jobs and 2.1 percent of private-sector gigs.
But what is a green job?
The EPI paper says green jobs “produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.” But finding out if your job is green isn’t easy. Ethan Pollack, the report’s author, said BLS data indicate that public administration accounts for 82 percent of federal green jobs, leisure and hospitality about 9 percent and utilities about 6 percent.
Unfortunately, the report doesn’t give specific examples of green federal jobs.
“Public administration jobs can be office jobs, but not exclusively,” Pollack said by e-mail. “Remember, public administration is an industry rather than an occupation, so it doesn’t define what workers do on a day-to-day basis so much as it defines the types of organizations they work for.”
The Washington Post
October 19, 2012
According to the Economic Policy Institute, households in the wealthiest 1 percent of the U.S. population now have 288 times the amount of wealth of the average middle-class American family.
US News and World Report
October 19, 2012
A new study by the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, has found that the top 1 percent of households now hold a larger share of overall wealth than the bottom 90 percent does.
The New York Times
October 17, 2012
Seniors, especially, feel the effects of that, said Ross Eisenbrey, a labor- and employment-law expert and a vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. The CPI is used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits, but it fails to account for the fact that a big portion of senior spending goes to health care, he said.
“Anyone who has the goal of having a better measure—a more technically accurate measure—of what the effects of inflation are on the Social Security population would want to much more heavily weigh health than the CPI-U does,” he said.
National Journal
October 17, 2012
Some economists even have found that Romney’s budget plan would destroy jobs, not create them, when taking into account his plan to slash government spending by 18 to 26 percent. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that Romney’s budget plan would destroy 1.9 million jobs over the next two years. The left-leaning Center for American Progress estimated in a report released Tuesday that Romney’s plan would destroy at least 360,000 jobs next year alone.
The Huffington Post
October 17, 2012
In addition, median middle-class income decreased by 5 percent in the last decade, while total wealth dropped 28 percent. According to the Economic Policy Institute, households in the wealthiest 1 percent of the U.S. population now have 288 times the amount of wealth of the average middle-class American family.
US News and World Report
October 17, 2012