Dean Baker's Blog, page 115

The Atlantic Tries to Push Generational Warfare to Divert Attention from the Rich Taking Everything

Fox News and Atlantic Magazine have zero shame. The latter has a major article telling readers that Social Security is "the grandparents stealing from the grandchildren."

The piece is a cornucopia of misstatements about Social Security and Medicare, most importantly implying that today seniors get some big windfall from the programs and that it somehow comes at the expense of our grandchildren. Both parts of this claim are seriously wrong.

In the case of Social Security, most people retiring...

Republican Tax Jokes

Did you hear the one about...? Okay, it's not that funny, but the Washington Post tells us that the Republicans are now considering a 21 percent corporate tax rate instead of the 20 percent rate that was in the bill passed by both the House and Senate.

The reason this matters is that the Republicans are assuming their tax bill will lead to additional growth, which they claim means $1.5 trillion in new revenue over the next decade. While virtually no economists outside of the administration ac...

Is It Hard to Get Good Help?

As the labor market has tightened, many of us have looked to trends in wage growth to see evidence that we could be hitting full employment. While the tighter labor market has led to gains for those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution, it has not led to a general acceleration in wage growth. The year-over-year increase in the average hourly wage was just 2.5 percent for November, roughly the same as it has been for the last two years.

In spite of the weak wage growth, news outle...

David Brooks Shows the Corruption of "Meritocracy"

After all, being a columnist at the NYT is a pretty good gig. Yet he repeatedly shows he doesn't have a clue on the issues on which he pontificates.

In his latest effort he criticizes the people he dubs "radicals" and contrasts them with radicals of prior years. He tells readers:

"Today’s radicals do not want to upend the meritocracy, which is creating a caste system of inherited inequality. They don’t want to stop technical innovation, which is displacing millions of workers."

Really, it i...

When Did the Republican Tax Plan Ever Focus on the Middle Class?

A Washington Post article on the Republican tax proposals being considered by Congress implies that they are sharp departure from the plans Donald Trump put forward in the campaign in the benefits it provides to the rich. The headline is "as tax plan gained steam GOP lost focus on the middle class."

This description is pretty much 180 degrees at odds with reality. While Donald Trump always promised to help the middle class, the proposals he put forward during his campaign were hugely tilted t...

Food Stamps Cost 1.8 Percent of the Federal Budget

This would have been useful information to include in an article on various proposals to alter the program. While the article does helpfully point out the limited size of benefits to the typical recipient, it reports the total cost as $73 billion a year.

Since most people are not very familiar with the size of the federal budget, they may think the food stamp program accounts for a substantial share of their tax dollars. For this reason it would have been helpful to express this figure as a s...

Washington Post Tells Readers Republicans Believe Tax Cuts Will Make Rich Donors Happy

Of course the Washington Post would never make such an assertion, even if there is good reason to think that it is true. Instead an article on Friday's jobs report told readers:

"President Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill have said they hope to pass sweeping changes to the tax code by the end of December, a move they believe will create more good-paying jobs and supercharge economic growth."

This is again an inexplicable excursion into mind reading. The Post really has no idea what Repub...

Mr. Big Wants to Hire Workers, but Doesn't Want to Pay the Market Wage

The NYT article on the November jobs report notes the fact that the rate of wage growth does not appear to be appear accelerating. To explain why it presents the views of Michael Big, a general contractor in the Chicago area.

The piece tells readers that Mr. Big has had to turn away jobs in recent months because he can't find the needed workers:

"'Unfortunately we don’t have the labor to take all the projects that are coming in,' Mr. Big said. His competitors are having the same problem, he...

The Reagan Boom, Kind of Like the Ford-Carter Boom

A Morning Edition segment on the Republican tax cut plan made comparisons to the Reagan tax cuts and referred to the "boom" that occurred following the tax cuts. While the economy did grow rapidly in the years from 1983 to 1986, the main reason was the severity of the 1981–82 recession. Economies tend to bounce back quickly following a severe recession. 

We saw the same story in the 1970s. The economy grew at a 5.7 percent annual rate in the thirteen quarters from the fourth quarter of 1...

The Washington Post’s NAFTA Fantasy: 10 Years Later

Making mistakes is part of life. Serious people own up to them and correct themselves. Unfortunately, when it comes to NAFTA, this is not the practice of the Washington Post.

Ten years ago today, December 7, 2007, a Washington Post editorial attacked the three leading contenders for the Democratic nomination over their pledge to renegotiate NAFTA. The Post had long been a strong supporter of NAFTA, biasing both its news coverage and opinion pages to push pro-NAFTA views. Its editorial page st...