Article Artículo
Dylan Matthews Is Upset that Bernie Sanders Thinks that U.S. Citizens Should Live Better Than ChadiansDean Baker / July 30, 2015
report informe
Latin America and the Caribbean
Aggregate Demand and the Slowdown of Brazilian Economic Growth from 2011-2014CEPR / July 29, 2015
Article Artículo
What the Export-Import Bank Debate Tells Us About EconomistsDean Baker
Al Jazeera America, July 29, 2015
Dean Baker / July 29, 2015
Article Artículo
Holy Wage Stagnation Batman, Income Shares Are Not Changing!Dean Baker / July 29, 2015
Article Artículo
Does Foreign Investment Make the U.S. Economy More Vulnerable?Dean Baker / July 28, 2015
Article Artículo
Social Security Trustees Report Without the HysteriaDean Baker
Truthout, July 27, 2015
Dean Baker / July 27, 2015
Article Artículo
Are People Less Willing to Pay for Education Because of Medicare and Medicaid?Dean Baker / July 27, 2015
Article Artículo
Governments Are Still Obligated to Pay Pensions Even If Their Pension Funds Are DepletedDean Baker / July 26, 2015
Article Artículo
Will Hillary Clinton Have a Serious Plan to Persuade Companies to Invest in Workers?Dean Baker / July 25, 2015
Article Artículo
Can We Stop With the Stories of China's Stock Market Crash Sinking Its Economy?Dean Baker / July 24, 2015
Article Artículo
The Lowest Minimum: Why We Still Have a $2 Tipped Minimum WageYesterday, CEPR released a short study asking how high the minimum wage would be if it had risen in line with productivity since 1968. Between January and February of that year, the minimum wage increased 14 percent from $1.40 to $1.60; instead of shedding jobs, the labor market seemed to improve. Between 1967 and 1968, the prime-age employment rate increased half a percentage point, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent.
Such an experience would ordinarily give policymakers little reason to fear minimum wage hikes. However, since 1968, the minimum wage has failed to rise in line with either productivity or inflation. Had it risen in line with productivity, it would have been $18.42 in 2014; had it risen in line with inflation, it would have been $9.54.
CEPR and / July 24, 2015
Article Artículo
Why the Fed’s Policy on Interest Rates Is Key to Fighting PovertyDean Baker
PBS Newshour, July 23, 2015
Dean Baker / July 23, 2015
Article Artículo
We Don't Need Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug ResearchDean Baker / July 23, 2015
Article Artículo
An $18.42 Minimum Wage?Last year, President Obama called for increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by the end of 2015. He argued that after 2015, increases in the minimum wage should be tied to inflation, with the minimum wage rising in line with the consumer price index.
The purchasing power of the minimum wage peaked in the late 1960s at $9.54 an hour in 2014 dollars. That is over two dollars above the current level of $7.25 an hour. While raising the minimum wage to $9.54 would provide a large improvement in living standards for millions of workers who are currently paid at or near the minimum wage, it is worth asking a slightly different question: what if the minimum wage had kept in step with productivity growth over the last 44 years? In other words, rather than just keeping purchasing power constant at the 1968 level, suppose that our lowest paid workers shared evenly in the economic growth over the intervening years.
This should not seem like a far-fetched idea. In the years from 1947 to 1969, the minimum wage actually did keep pace with productivity growth. (This is probably also true for the decade from when the federal minimum wage was first established in 1938 to 1947, but we don’t have good data on productivity for this period.)
Dean Baker and / July 23, 2015
Article Artículo
Latin America and the Caribbean
USAID financió grupo político vinculado a Martelly en 2011Jake Johnston
Al Jazeera America, July 15, 2015
Jake Johnston / July 22, 2015
Article Artículo
Latin America and the Caribbean
Deportations from the Dominican Republic: The IOM Changes its TuneOn July 14, 2015, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) released a statement regarding the situation on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. The IOM interviewed some 1,133 individuals who had crossed the border between June 16 and July 3, finding that “408 persons (or 36.0 per cent) said that they had been deported by different entities, including the military, police, immigration officials and civilians.” These findings directly contradicted statements from the Dominican Republic and U.S. officials that no deportations had occurred.
However, within two days the press release was pulled from the IOM website and on July 21, IOM issued a new press release making no mention of deportations.
U.S. Special Coordinator for Haiti Thomas Adams, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 15, 2015, stated, “They -- they [the Dominican Republic] have assured us that there will be no mass deportations and none have begun yet.” He added: “There were reports of others that when they investigated, they found out that they weren't -- they weren't really deportees.” A day later the IOM press release had been pulled from the website.
When contacted by HRRW last week, Ilaria Lanzoni, a press officer with the IOM, e-mailed that “They [IOM Headquarters] are currently revising the note.” When the release was re-posted, however, all mentions of deportations were removed. The original release contained a quote from Gregoire Goodstein, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Haiti, stating: “A proper monitoring system is essential to overcome the current uncertainty about the conditions and number of deportations …” However in the updated release, Goodstein’s quote has been changed to “… the current uncertainty about returns.” The rest of the changes can be seen in the screen grabs, below.
Jake Johnston / July 22, 2015
