Media clips
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Data from the Economic Policy institute shows that inflation has been similar worldwide over the past year-plus, with little correlation to either pandemic spending or post-pandemic recovery as measured by unemployment levels.
Based on that data, EPI argues that supply chain disruptions, rising commodity costs and shifting consumption patterns are more to blame for inflation than the money printer. That is, the problem isn’t too much money but too few goods, in the wrong place.
Nasdaq September 30, 2022 -
Zoom in: According to the Economic Policy Institute, Cleveland-Elyria is the most unequal metropolitan area in the state.
- Average yearly income of the top 1% is over $1 million. The bottom 99% is just over $48,000.
Axios September 30, 2022 -
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), by contrast, has found that right-to-work laws did not boost job growth and are associated with lower wages and benefits for all workers. “By restricting the capacity of unions to bargain for workers and thus lowering wages and benefits, RTW laws lower tax revenues and reduce aggregate demand,” EPI said in a report published in 2018.
VOX September 30, 2022 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute, economists’ opinions vary on which is worse for an economy: a recession or rising inflation. One common argument is that inflation is worse than a recession because it impacts everyone. By contrast, a recession—and the associated job losses that come with it—may impact a smaller number of people.
Forbes September 30, 2022 -
When rates rise, “Any consumer item that people take on debt to buy — whether that’s automobiles or washing machines — gets more expensive,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute.
“Inflation will come down quite a bit faster if we actually hit a recession. But the cost of that is going to be much bigger,” said Bivens said.
The danger, Bivens said, is that the Fed has set off a runaway train. Once unemployment starts rising sharply, it’s hard to make it stop. Rather than neatly halting at the 4.4% rate projected by Fed officials, the jobless numbers could easily keep rising.
“This idea that there’s an inflation dial that the Fed can just haul on really hard and leave everything else untouched, that’s a fallacy,” Bivens said.
Instead of the soft landing for the economy the Fed says it’s aiming for, Bivens added, “we are now pointing the plane at the ground pretty hard and hitting the accelerator.
CBS September 30, 2022 -
2. Economics has finally recognized the existence of politics. For decades, or centuries even, economics gave no thought to politics. Wages, for example, were determined by a set of market forces, and politics had nothing to do with it. That’s how academics thought, but it’s not how the world works. In the world, workers make what they have the political power to make. That seems obvious to you and me, but economists were (and many still are) deeply resistant to acknowledging this. The book tells the story of how this change came about, through the work of people like Joseph Stiglitz and groups like the Economic Policy Institute. It’s a really important change because it rejects the assumption of classical economics that left alone, the market will find equilibrium. No—the state has to play an evening-out role.
American Prospect September 30, 2022 -
Over the past five years, the average LAUSD teacher earned between $74,000 and $79,000 annually, compared to a salary range of $94,000 to $101,000 for the average bachelor’s degree-holder in Los Angeles, the UTLA study found. Teacher salaries don’t reflect the rate of inflation, the report contends, a conclusion that a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) also makes. The EPI analysis found that teachers nationwide earn 23.5 percent less than comparable college graduates, while the UTLA study found that its members earned 22 percent less than similarly educated Angelenos during the 2019-20 school year. To make up for this deficit, 28 percent of UTLA educators work another job to supplement their income, with 24.4 percent of teachers who’ve worked for the district for more than 20 years doing so.
The 19th September 30, 2022 -
Rising child care costs is a burden for working families, and if it gets unaffordable, it can keep parents away from the workforce. Also, it could keep children out of early learning programs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the average cost of infant care in Pennsylvania is around $12,000.
24/7 Wall Street September 30, 2022 -
When it comes to income inequality, Ohio is a little better than average. It ranked 29th in 2018, with the top 1% of earners getting an average of $859,000 a year and everybody else earning an average of $46,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
ABC News 5 September 30, 2022 -
A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows what the Left has always argued: that our best tool in the fight against poverty is redistributive social spending.
In this respect, a new analysis recently published by Asha Banerjee and Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is just the latest addition to a vast body of data demonstrating that poverty is, straightforwardly, a policy choice. Drawing on the latest census data, Banerjee and Zipperer analyze the implications of various income support and pandemic-era programs in 2021 — finding that they protected tens of millions from falling into poverty, contributing to a rate that was lower than before the pandemic.
Not every program in EPI’s report dates from the pandemic. By far the largest impact (unsurprisingly) came from Social Security, which kept an estimated 26.3 million people from poverty in 2021.
But direct stimulus payments, unemployment checks, and tax credits also had a pronounced effect:
For decades, Democratic and Republican politicians alike have hacked away at the universality of various social programs — often, once again, on the absurd grounds that means-testing is more effective. It’s notable, then, that Banerjee and Zipperer find pandemic-era unemployment insurance (UI) benefits kept some 2.3 million out of poverty, one reason being that they did away with many of the restrictive eligibility requirements (the authors, in fact, note that estimates drawing on the existing census data likely understate the extent of UI’s anti-poverty impact, which was quite probably millions more). They conclude:
Given the overwhelming effectiveness of these programs in keeping people out of poverty, it is unconscionable that policymakers have allowed them to expire and added to the stress of low-income families in the years to come.
Banerjee and Zipperer are absolutely right. However, the pandemic — and the various discourse which ensued around particular benefits and credits — also underscored the extent to which the “debate” around the effectiveness (or supposed noneffectiveness) of social expenditure is an illusion.
Jacobin September 30, 2022