Talk:Economic Policy Institute

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BetacommandBot 11:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

POV re-write
This page is predominantly advertising for the Economic Policy Institute. While there exists a good deal of good information on the Institute, much of it is written in a praising style which violates NPOV. Also, there is a lot of information which arguably serves just to imply the organization has superior credibility, including the references to Ph.d researchers and Nobel Prize laureate economists signing their letters. I already deleted the "Praise" section for their publication, and am considering further deletes on seemingly irrelevant praising facts. Alan.chatham (talk) 03:54, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have reverted back to the version before the edits of User:Tnle. —Centrx→talk &bull; 03:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Generic boilerplate
I follow the EPI on some issues, and they have some good researchers and commentators, with good positions, like Robert Kuttner. But this article is written from generic boilerplate that doesn't say anything. Half of that "Mission and core values" paragraph is platitudes that the Republicans have expropriated for themselves.

This entry doesn't even tell where the EPI stands on the issues.

When you write a PR release, you brag about all the conferences you've held, all the brochures you've printed, and all the things you've done with your contributors' money. You circulate it among everybody at the top who delete everything that anyone might possibly object to. By the time everybody has gotten through, it's inoffensive and meaningless.

But when you write a PR release, you don't deal with substantive issues, because people disagree on substantive issues -- as Robert Kuttner and Andrew Stern do -- and within an organization like this people want to paper over their disagreements.

This entry is a PR release. A Wikipedia entry isn't a PR release. We're supposed to be explaining to people what organizations like this are actually doing. And it would be better for the labor movement if workers understood this clearly. Hell, I think it would be better for the labor movement if workers knew what the critics of EPI were saying. --Nbauman (talk) 19:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Dead links
I've checked some of those links and a lot of them are dead links. Others demonstrate wholesale copying from the EPI's web site, in violation of WP rules. The institute was the first organization to focus on the economic conditions of working Americans and their families.

The aggrevating thing is that the EPI does a lot of good work (notably the State of Working America), and this WP page is an embarassment.

I think the best way to handle this page would be to blank out all the WP:COPYVIO, which would be essentially the entire article, and start over again from The State of Working America. --Nbauman (talk) 19:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Labelling
Article described EPI as left leaning sourced to a single Wall Street Journal article. We should be cautious about labelling organisations in this way; is a single media source (noting too that WSJ leans pretty right) sufficient? A self-description or a factual description would be preferable to a label. (An ambiguous and dismissive label at that - nobody ever described themselves as "left-leaning".) Rd232 talk 21:44, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It is more helpful to encyclopedia building if you do a bit research on the topic yourself instead of removing an important and factually correct information to push your POV under the guise of "single source", "ambiguous and dismissive label" etc. There are more sources than WSJ which describes EPI as left-leaning. --Defender of torch (talk) 02:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

This statement violates the NPOV requirement and is made as if it is fact and not opinion. Just because one or more organizations have this opinion about EPI does not make it factual. It would be factual to state that some right-wing groups have referred to EPI as left-leaning, but it is dishonest to represent it as a fact.```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by GaLiberal (talk • contribs) 21:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no question this is a "left leaning" think tank. To quote their latest The State of Working America 2008-2009 "Behind these changes lies the rise of YOYO economics, the “You’re-on-Your-Own” philosophy that has guided economic policy makers for too long. The YOYOs are market fundamentalists. They believe that unfettered market outcomes are always the best outcomes, and to nudge the invisible hand is to invite doom (unless you’re nudging it toward your well-endowed friends). The YOYOs want to replace Social Security with private retirement accounts, kill the minimum wage, weaken unions, and force everyone to buy health insurance in the individual market. Anything else, they argue, will create the “wrong incentives.”  This along with an obsession with wage inequality is progressive boilerplate.Govtrust (talk) 21:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

It is a left-leaning think tank. From their EPI Board of Directors page, the board of directors includes:

Barry Bluestone (served as a member of the senior policy staff of Congressman Richard Gephardt.)

R. Thomas Buffenbarger (President, International Association of Machinists & Allied Workers (IAMAW))

Anna Burger (Top-ranking officer, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and chair Change-to-Win)

Larry Cohen (President, Communications Workers of America (CWA))

Leo W. Gerard (President, United Steelworkers of America (USWA))

Ron Gettelfinger (President, United Auto Workers (UAW))

Alexis Herman (Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and former DNC chief of staff)

Robert Johnson (served as a managing director of Soros Fund Management)

Robert Kuttner (co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect)

Gerald W. McEntee (President, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME))

Debra Ness (President, National Partnership for Women and Families)

Bruce S. Raynor (President, Workers United, also served as General President of UNITE HERE.)

Robert B. Reich (co-founding editor of The American Prospect and U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton)

Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (Democrat, California's 39th Congressional District)

Andrew L. Stern (President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU))

Richard L. Trumka (President, AFL-CIO)

Randi Weingarten (President, American Federation of Teachers)

Raul Yzaguirre (Arizona State University, long-time president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.100.44.230 (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

editorial
Why is an editorial quoted in the top section? It seems that this:

Described as "a creature of the national AFL-CIO" in a New York Post editorial,[44] the Economic Policy Institute received the founding capital from trade unions[45] and has many union leaders in its board.[46]

is really not important enough (or encyclopedic enough) to be in the first section. The funding is dealt with latter. The "many union leaders" aspect is vague (if it is necessary, it shouldn't be in the top section at least). And the "creature of the national AFL-CIO" part seems to be there (especially when its at the top) to unjustly characterize this group for those who don't support unions. I would move this part, but as an unregistered user, I do not want to cause any controversy, although I hope someone else will put this sentence in a more appropriate spot that doesn't seem to threaten the NPOV of the article.129.133.143.39 (talk) 21:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The opinion of the New York Post editors is not especially notable in and of itself, but if a think tank is as closely linked to union interests as this one, it would be unencyclopedic to fail to call attention to this, as acknowledged by many news organizations which identify these connections (or a "liberal" or "left" political lean) at the same time that this think tank is first referred to in a news story. NPOV does not mean portraying lobby groups and think tanks as "nonpartisan".  Rather, it means an objective presentation as opposed to one that is slanted or biased.  Presenting a partisan organization as non-partisan is, in fact, a violation of the NPOV principle if an impartial view would consider the organization partisan.--Brian Dell (talk) 03:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Tobacco Industry Funding
Removed last paragraph which erroneously referenced an article on the Consumer Tax Alliance, stating that the EPI had been funded by the tobacco industry. The article makes no mention of the EPI, it is about the CTA being tobacco-funded. Was this a politically motivated attempt to dirty the EPI's reputation?! See referenced article : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2772174/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.153.42.255 (talk) 01:08, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Budget information
If there aren't 2017/2018 updates to their budgetshouldn't it be removed? It seems a bit silly to include 4-year old revenue and expenses. Darryl.jensen (talk) 20:15, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Majority of article is SELF-SOURCED - recent edit attempted to fix this
It doesn't matter that it isn't POV pushing or weasel wording, it is them promoting what they want to show off that they do. Who says that any of their CLAIMED areas of research are of any value to anyone? That's what we need INDEPENDENT SOURCES for. If their research is of some significance, than there should be Independent Sources talking about it.

As I said in my edit summary: the list of their areas of research is promotional. WP:PROMOTION From WP:IS

In addition, as the article stands now, AT LEAST 50% of the content of the article is based SOLELY on SELF-SOURCED links. The statement for WP:ABOUTSELF says that self sourcing MAY be ok. That is clearly NOT the case for the article now. --- Avatar317 (talk) 22:27, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Duplication of "left-leaning"
The first sentence of the article describes the EPI as "left-leaning". However, the very next sentence also describes the think tank in the same terms. Both are not needed. Kornatice (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2023 (UTC)


 * It doesn't seem redundant to me. We typically quality ideological entities in the first sentence ("conservative think tank", "progressive advocacy group", etc.) and in this instance, the rest of the lede fleshes that out in more detail. Marquardtika (talk) 01:20, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I kind of think of the first sentence of articles as the "lead to the lead" as in that they introduce the subject. I've reverted my change, but I think that characterizing the agency in the first sentence is important.  I was trying to figure out how to reword it by maybe removing the "based in Washington DC" as less important, but since they work at the federal level a lot that is probably an important fact to be there.  I support having the "left-leaning" in the first sentence, but we can wait and see if anyone else offers an opinion. --- Avatar317 (talk) 01:33, 24 August 2023 (UTC)