Gerald C. Friedman, economics, comments in a column about how the layoffs announced by General Motors highlight the ever-larger holes in the retirement system for most American workers. He says, “Companies don’t offer pensions anymore. Social Security, when it was established, was meant to be one leg of a stool. One leg would be the private pension through employment, a second leg personal savings, and a third leg Social Security. Social Security is now the only source of income a lot of elderly have.” (NBC News, 11/27/18)
Month: November 2018
Ina Ganguli, economics, is quoted in a story about how immigrant businesses play a key role in the economy of the Worcester area. She says immigrants have a higher rate of obtaining patents or more upstart capital, but the reason for this isn’t known. (Telegram & Gazette, 11/19/18)
A columnist writing about issues that should be addressed by the new Congress says raising the minimum wage is high on his list. He cites recent research done by Arindrajit Dube, economics, that finds that a 10-percent increase in the minimum wage will tend to increase the incomes for the poorest 15 percent of families by about 3.3 percent after three years, while cutting the poverty rate substantially. The writer notes that Dube uses publicly available survey data and is able to analyze a large number of wage increases at both the federal and state levels. (Bloomberg, 11/13/18)
Research done by James K. Boyce, emeritus professor of economics, and Michael A. Ash, economics, on how minority communities are often the site of polluting industries, but see very little of the economic benefit from those facilities, especially in the form of jobs, is cited in a news story. (Pacific Standard, 11/9/18)
Leonce Ndikumana, economics and Political Economy Research Institute, is interviewed about how the global tax system allows capital to flow from developing countries into global tax havens. He says globalized corporations take advantage of the patchwork of taxation policies that leads to loss of revenue for poorer countries where natural resources are mined or collected. (The Real News Network, 11/5/18)