Dean Baker's Blog, page 128

The Great Inequity Republicans Hope to Address by Repealing Obamacare

The NYT had an article on the most recent Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It included a quote from Senator Bill Cassady, a co-sponsor of the bill:

"'Right now, 37 percent of the revenue from the Affordable Care Act goes to Americans in four states' — California, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland, Mr. Cassidy said. 'That is frankly not fair.'"

If just four states getting 37 percent of the money sounds unfair to you, it might be worth keeping in mind that these four...

NYT Goes Hard Core Protectionist

We all know how hard it is for people with advanced degrees to compete in the global economy, but how much government help do we have to give them? Apparently whatever we give them in strong patent and copyright protections (yes folks, this is protectionism, no matter how much you like it), is not enough.

In an editorial on relations with China, the NYT offers this encouraging (to the rich) pronouncement:

"On intellectual property, now that China is putting energy into developing its own tech...

Washington Post Warns Readers of Republican Accounting Trick on 401(k)s

Of course the paper did not actually warn of the cheap trick the Republicans are considering, it just mentioned it in passing as though it was a serious policy proposal:

"House Republicans are considering a key change to 401(k)s as part of their tax overhaul package: Taxing the money that workers place in their savings plans upfront instead of years later when they take it out in retirement."

The only possible rationale for taxing money when it is put into a 401(k) account rather than when it...

David Brooks Gets Story on Wage Growth and Productivity Completely Wrong

Yeah, what else is new. After all no one thinks that a conservative columnist writing for the country's most important newspaper should have any clue about the topics they cover.

Brooks uses his column today to tell us that workers are getting their share of the economic pie and the real problem is productivity growth.

"The problem of the middle-class squeeze, in short, may not be with how the fruits of productivity are distributed, but the fact that there isn’t much productivity growth at al...

Fighting Bubbles: High Interest Rates Are Not the Best Route

Ruchir Sharma, the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, used his NYT column to argue that central banks have to include fighting asset bubbles on their agenda, in addition to promoting high employment and low inflation. As someone who has argued this for two decades, I am sympathetic to the point, however Sharma gets a couple of big things wrong.

First, the big issue with bubbles is whether they are moving the economy. This is something that is easy to determine fo...

The Big Problem in Media Coverage of Foreign Aid: No Context

Morning Edition had a segment on efforts to counter the Trump administration's proposal to cut foreign aid, including money going to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The segment featured a comment from Bill Gates, whose foundation also supports this fund.

Gates noted the lack of support for foreign aid and attributed it to the media's tendency to highlight failures, where money is poorly spent or stolen, as opposed to the success stories. While there is undoubtedly so...

Uninsured Continue to Decline in 2016, Part-time Workers Biggest Beneficiaries

The Census Bureau reported that the percentage of people without health insurance fell by 0.3 percentage points in 2016 to 8.8 percent. This puts the cumulative gain in coverage since 2013, when the main Affordable Care Act provisions took effect, at 4.5 percentage points.

By state, the largest drop in the percent of the population that is uninsured was in California, which had a decline of 9.8 percentage points to 7.3 percent. Next was New Mexico with a decline of 9.5 percentage points, givi...

Uninsured Continue to Decline in 2016, Part-Time Workers Biggest Beneficiaries

The Census Bureau reported that the percentage of people without health insurance fell by 0.3 percentage points in 2016 to 8.8 percent. This puts the cumulative gain in coverage since 2013, when the main Affordable Care Act provisions took effect, at 4.5 percentage points.

By state, the largest drop in the percent of the population that is uninsured was in California, which had a decline of 9.8 percentage points to 7.3 percent. Next was New Mexico with a decline of 9.5 percentage points, givi...

Wall Street Journal Says that Low Unemployment Is Solving the Skills Shortage

According to an article in Sunday's paper, employers are now able to find the workers they need by going to cities with large amounts of unemployment or underemployment.

NYT Says Trump Administration Has Been Lying About the Impact of the Estate Tax on Family Farms

Readers may have missed this fact, but this is what the NYT said in an article on the prospect for tax reform when it told readers:

"Democrats have also been deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s plans to repeal the estate tax, which it has said has been harmful to family farmers."

If the Trump administration has been saying the estate tax has been harmful to family farmers it is lying, since virtually no family farmers will owe a penny as a result of the estate tax. This would be kn...