News & Stories

From the New York Times Economix Blog, by Nancy Folbre: Social Security, the most transparently self-financed program of the federal government, is not increasing our budget deficit. The most recent trustees’ report shows sufficient funds to pay full benefits until 2033. No one is making out like a bandit: Social Security beneficiaries who retired in 2010 are expected […]

Tuition-free postsecondary education may seem like a stretch in our current economic climate, but it is not impossible, as Jordan Weissman describes in an interesting thought experiment over at the Atlantic. More people need to go to college than ever before in order to have a shot at a living wage. Why not make college […]

Via the Washington Post Wonkblog: Nowadays, whenever Social Security comes up in policy debates around Washington, the discussion often focuses on how best to cut benefits in order to shore up the program’s finances. But a big new report (pdf) from the New America Foundation suggests that the conventional wisdom is exactly backward. Congress should be looking […]

As local paid sick days law become more popular around the nation – with three cities establishing paid sick days standards in March 2013 alone – Republican state legislators are moving to repeal the laws and/or block future implementation of city ordinances governing paid sick time. The first instance came in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2011. Following a citizen’s initiative […]

Today, Washington’s State Senate released a no-new taxes budget for the 2013-15 biennium. The Senate’s proposed budget does increase funding for education – at least in selected areas. But without any new funding, it does so at the expense of pretty much everything else. Low income working parents would lose childcare, disabled adults and homeless […]

Our state budget is one of the main ways elected leaders make decisions on our behalf about the future our children and our state will have. Will we continue to underfund education and overcrowd classrooms, or provide adequate resources so kids in every zip code have access to high quality schools? Well, Governor Inslee was […]

These days many Americans, whether political or not, are tuned into discussions about social insurance programs. Retirees and younger generations alike are questioning whether Social Security benefits will be ample enough to carry them through their retirement years. Despite solvency for the next two decades, a number of options are being explored to ensure Social […]

The Heritage Foundation, the uber-conservative D.C. thinktank headed by former Senator and Tea Party darling Jim DeMint, is an unashamed opponent of Social Security. Past proposals from Heritage have included raising the retirement age, means-testing benefits, and privatizing the entire Social Security system. Their latest policy recommendation – the Chained CPI – swims in the […]

First it was Portland, Oregon on March 13th. Then Philadelphia on the 14th. And just last night, Council members in New York City settled on a compromise to make the Big Apple the latest U.S. city – and the third this month – to pass a minimum standard for paid sick days. Passage of paid […]

If you didn’t catch The Atlantic’s recent 12 States of America feature, it’s worth a look. Using demographic, economic, cultural, and political data, the authors categorize each of the nation’s 3,141 counties into one of 12 statistically distinct “types of place,” then look at family income over the past 30 years through that prism. By […]

How policies for low-wage airport workers can make you sick. Yoseph Diallo’s dad is the one who encouraged him to look for work at Sea-Tac airport, based on stories his family had heard over the years about stable, good-paying jobs with decent benefits. So the 19-year-old was happy to get a job last year as […]

It’s fine to expect instant gratification when downloading an app to your smartphone or streaming a movie to your computer. But we can fairly expect our elected representatives to behave differently than the average consumer, by making choices that are less about short-run returns and more about building for the long-term. Most of the rhetoric […]

By Dean Baker, from the Huffington Post There are few areas where the corruption of the national media is more apparent than in its treatment of Social Security. Most of the elite media have made it clear in both their opinion and news pages that they want to see benefits cut. In keeping with this […]

Research shows good workplace benefits, including paid sick days and family and medical leave, reduce turnover and boost productivity. Essentially, healthy employees make for a healthy business. But ensuring all workers have access to paid leave benefits isn’t just about business owners stepping up for economic gain. It’s about helping kids get the best possible […]

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10/hour would help reverse the ongoing erosion of wages that has contributed significantly to growing income inequality. It would also provide a modest stimulus to the entire economy, as increased wages would lead to increased consumer spending, which would contribute […]

Currently, forty percent of private-sector workers, including seventy percent of low-wage workers, have no paid sick days. Nearly two-thirds of restaurant workers have reported cooking or serving food while sick. Hoping to change that, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) have reintroduced the Healthy Families Act. The legislation would allow workers to […]

My job as state treasurer is to get the best value at the lowest possible cost for taxpayers. This is why I oppose recent efforts to replace Washington’s successful and affordable public pension system with a defined-contribution plan. If implemented, this solution in search of a problem would undermine one of the nation’s most successful […]

A $2/hour minimum wage bump is just the beginning, as local labor and business leaders team up to promote a unique “Earn ‘n’ Spend in San Jose” campaign. San Jose is expected to gain an additional $70 million a year in consumer spending as workers put extra income from a $2/hour minimum wage increase back […]

In 1983, the so-called “Reagan Reforms” made some big changes to Social Security including eliminating the survivors benefits for college students, boosting the payroll tax, and raising the retirement age from 65 to 67.  As a result, anyone born after 1960 must now wait until age 67 to receive their full Social Security retirement benefits. […]

Americans pay far higher prices for prescription drugs than do people in other wealthy countries. The reason that other countries spend so much less on drugs is that their governments negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical industry. The United States government could adopt the same approach with the Medicare drug program and use its market leverage […]

The Economic Opportunity Institute’s innovative proposal to re-imagine college tuition financing is getting some serious attention in the state of Oregon. The proposal, dubbed Pay It Forward: The Debt-Free Degree Plan, would allow students to attend any public college or university without up-front tuition costs. Instead, they would pay a small percentage of their income for […]

By tracking the results of different states’ fiscal policies, economists are finding out what kind of economic medicine helps – and harms – job creation. Economist-to-be Owen Zidar recently highlighted some recent findings from these laboratories of democracy. As the economy slowly climbs out of the recession, here are three fiscal “lessons learned” for local […]

Economist Arthur Laffer is touted as a go-to source of wisdom by conservative think tanks and corporate lobby groups in Washington state like the Washington Policy Center, Evergreen Freedom Foundation, National Federation of Independent Businesses, and Association of Washington Business. But a recent report shows Laffer’s economic prescriptions are more likely to hurt than heal […]

By Stan Sorscher, EOI Board Member This January, Senators Hatch and Klobuchar introduced The Immigration Innovation Act, known as “I-Squared.” It will triple the number of foreign temporary workers from about 800,000 to over 2.3 million. This will distort the labor market for jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), which has only 4 million […]

Childcare costs more than college. Mothers with equal resumes are hired 80 percent less of the time than non-mothers and are offered lower starting salaries. It costs over $200,000 to raise one child from birth to age 18 (not including college). All of this is happening every day in the backdrop of a national a […]