September 22, 2016. James Parrott, a member of the New York City Council’s Task Force on Economic Development Tax Expenditures chaired by Finance Committee Chair Julissa Ferreras, presented this testimony at a September 22 hearing on the Task Force report and recommendations for a rigorous, ongoing evaluation procedure.  He also urged the Council to convene a hearing on the Hudson Yards property tax breaks, the costs of which are rapidly rising.

PDF of Testimony… (read more)

September 19, 2016. New York has reason to be optimistic as poverty is declining and incomes are on the upswing, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

FPI notes that there were significant declines in the overall poverty rates for New York State and New York City in 2015 from 2014 (but no other significant year-over-year changes).

The New York State poverty rate for 2015 was 15.4%, down 0.5% from 2014 (15.9%) resulting in approximately 90,000 fewer New … (read more)

Friday, July 22. David Dyssegaard Kallick, Director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute since 2007, will be presenting at The Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities’s 2016 CUMU Conference’s Opening Keynote.

David Dyssegaard Kallick’s keynote speech, titled “Can Immigrants Revitalize America’s Shrinking Cities?” will take place on Monday, October 24th from 8:30-10:00 AM at the 22nd Annual CUMU Conference: Charting the Future of Metropolitan Universities in Washington, D.C. His speech will explain why institutions in urban … (read more)

July 5, 2016.  Last week, the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia organizations that are part of the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative (MSSRC), released two new reports: a handbook for local officials entitled Lessons from the Gas Patch: A Local Government Guide for Dealing with Drilling; and A Report Card on Shale Gas Policies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

The new reports build upon

• The MSSRC’s December 2014 report, The Shale Tipping Point: The Relationship of Shale

June 16, 2016. In Income inequality in the US by state, metropolitan area, and county, a new report published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) for the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), Mark Price, an economist at the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, PA and Estelle Sommeiller, a socio-economist at the Institute for Research in Economic and Social Sciences in Greater Paris, France detail the incomes of the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent by state, … (read more)

June 15, 2016.  In testimony before the Baltimore City Council, James Parrott, says it would be sound public policy for the City of Baltimore to phase in a $15 an hour minimum wage. Considerable compelling and economically sound research supports the conclusion that businesses can accommodate such an increase. A higher wage floor would generate significant cost savings due to reduced turnover and there is room for modest price increases to ease the adjustment without jeopardizing overall employment levels or … (read more)

June 2, 2016. The following article by James Parrott appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine.

If you want to learn about the latest manifestations of inequality in urban America, read the real-estate sections of newspapers and magazines and check out the photo spreads on luxury condos in new residential skyscrapers. The palatial size, lavish finishes, and breathtaking price tags of these properties are advertisements of our new Gilded Age. In the area immediately south of … (read more)

May 18, 2016. FPI applauds the White House and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez in announcing a new federal overtime regulation today requiring overtime pay for most salaried workers earning up to $47,476 a year (or $913 weekly). FPI’s James Parrott stated, “This will benefit an estimated 982,000 New York salaried workers with either additional pay for more than 40 hours a week, or by scaling back the long hours they work each week without any reduction in pay.”

The Washington, … (read more)

May 12, 2016. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is under attack by forces that favor privatization and oppose sensible proposals to invest in expanding its package delivery services and in re-introducing postal banking services that exist in many countries and that were provided in the United States from 1910 to 1966. With the Postal Service’s unparalleled network of post offices in every neighborhood and village in the country, postal banking has the potential to provide affordable, consumer-friendly financial services to … (read more)

March 31, 2016. The Fiscal Policy Institute is pleased to hear that a deal has been reached on increasing the minimum wage and that New York is on a path to $15 for all workers. This historic decision will provide wage increases to over 3.1 million New Yorkers that need and deserve a raise. Approximately 46 percent of workers benefiting from this increase, those in New York City, will see their wages rise to $15 per hour by the end … (read more)