Wall Street Journal
April 5, 2013
The Washington Post
April 5, 2013
The New York Times
April 5, 2013
The NOW panel discusses the late night voting in the Senate on their first budget plan in four years and the wee hour amendments that got added in.
Now with Alex Wagner
March 29, 2013
In 1995, Princeton economist Paul Krugman developed a simple model to estimate how globalization was affecting the wages of low-skilled workers in the United States. He found there wasn’t much effect at all. Eighteen years later, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute has re-run the numbers with updated data and has come to a strikingly different conclusion.
The Washington Post
March 26, 2013
Income inequality in the U.S. has skyrocketed over the past few decades, and this study suggests that this recent increase is not going away soon. The incomes of the top 1 percent of households by income spiked 241 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the incomes of the middle fifth grew just 19 percent, when adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The U.S. has more income inequality than most advanced countries.
The Huffington Post
March 26, 2013
The fate of workers who earn tips in New York could have national implications as the conversation around the minimum wage continues at the federal level.
ROC United has campaigned for a higher minimum wage for tipped workers on the federal level. Such an increase would affect millions of American workers. As of 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that some 2.3 million Americans were employed as waiters and waitresses alone–and about 73% of tipped workers are women, according to a 2011 report [PDF] by the Economic Policy Institute.
As the Economic Policy Institute points out, “Many tipped workers are unaware that their tips and hourly wages must add up to at least the minimum wage. At the same time, employers are unlikely to ensure that their workers are paid appropriately—it is up to the employees to know and understand this law.”
MSNBC
March 26, 2013
It is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated.
Time Magazine
March 26, 2013
Larry Mishel, of the Economic Policy Institute, makes the case from the left against using the chain-weighted CPI to adjust Social Security benefits for inflation, as President Obama proposes in his latest deficit-reduction plan. It’s simply a way to cut benefits, he says. If the goal is a better inflation measure, then develop one tailored to the elderly’s spending patterns. [EPI]
Wall Street Journal
March 26, 2013
Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said Obama shoulders part of the blame. Since 2010, he said, Obama has spent too much time focused on the debt, including agreeing to significantly shrink domestic spending as part of his own budget proposals.
“I think they brought it on themselves to the extent that they validated the deficit issue,” Mishel said. “It was always the case that the actual budget policy being pursued contradicted the rhetoric in the campaign. Now it’s even worse.”
The Washington Post
March 26, 2013