For decades, there has been a maddening gap between what the US economy could be delivering for working families and what it actually does deliver. The richest country in the world chronically fails to offer broad-based economic prosperity and security, because policymaking has been captured by the wealthy and privileged. In pursuit of their own financial interests, the well-off have piled one boulder after another in the way of a typical household’s ability to carve out an economically secure life.
This has been a long-going, incremental process, so there is no magic-bullet solution that could immediately clear the path. Each presidential administration must be graded on how many boulders it removed (or added). Viewed in this light, the economic-policy priorities of former President Joe Biden’s administration deserve much more credit than they have received. Biden chalked up significant achievements on behalf of American families, and even those that were stymied by Congress were well worth pursuing.
Project Syndicate
January 24, 2025
Resources:
Economic Policy Institute: How Vouchers Harm Public Schools
KALW
January 24, 2025
About 30 states and dozens of cities have increased the effective minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But federally, the minimum wage isn’t likely to rise over the next four years.
WORT-FM
January 23, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Indiana ranks 18th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia for most expensive infant care at $12,612 per year or $1,051 per month. Childcare for a 4-year-old costs $9,557 per year or $796 per month.
Indianapolis Star
January 23, 2025
Theoretically, as leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk could push for budget cuts and regulatory changes that benefit his companies.
“You’re seeing it in the executive orders that roll out. You’re seeing it in the reshaping of the federal government,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It is not the way government is supposed to work.”
The concern, McNicholas said, is that Musk and other billionaire insiders might push Trump to adopt policies that help themselves and their companies, rather than the nation as a whole.
The USA Today
January 23, 2025
There are an estimated 600,000 immigrant workers in the US on H-1B visas, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank.
Al Jazeera
January 23, 2025
It’s also left to be seen if Trump will quickly oust NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who the Economic Policy Institute has said is “arguably one of the most effective forces for workers in the Biden administration.”
McKnight’s Senior Living
January 23, 2025
“What happened here was an unwillingness of HHS to muscle back [at] Maximus,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s a bad precedent and, frankly, a betrayal of that workforce not to have fought the fight — instead to be held hostage by this firm to the tune of $6 billion in taxpayer funding. It’s a failure over years.”
Capital & Main
January 23, 2025
About 30 states and dozens of cities have increased the effective minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But federally, the minimum wage isn’t likely to rise over the next four years.
WORT-FM
January 23, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Indiana ranks 18th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia for most expensive infant care at $12,612 per year or $1,051 per month. Childcare for a 4-year-old costs $9,557 per year or $796 per month.
Indianapolis Star
January 23, 2025