Dean Baker's Blog, page 141

Washington Post Says Trump May be Right About Projections of Fast Growth: The Robots Are Coming!

Donald Trump's economic team has been widely ridiculed for its projection that economic growth will average 3.0 percent annually over the next decade. However, a Washington Post article implies that Trump's team may actually have been overly pessimistic. The article discusses the possibility that robots will be used to replace cashiers at Whole Foods, now that it has been purchased by Amazon.

The piece also raises the concern that automation will displace large numbers of workers throughout t...

Washington Post Says Post May be Right About Projections of Fast Growth: The Robots Are Coming!

Donald Trump's economic team has been widely ridiculed for its projection that economic growth will average 3.0 percent annually over the next decade. However, a Washington Post article implies that Trump's team may actually have been overly pessimistic. The article discusses the possibility that robots will be used to replace cashiers at Whole Foods, now that it has been purchased by Amazon.

The piece also raises the concern that automation will displace large numbers of workers throughout t...

Taxpayer Dollars for Bill Gates' Charitable Impulses

David Callahan had an interesting NYT column on the philanthropical efforts of the latest cohort of the newly rich. The piece makes the important point that people like Bill Gates, the Walton family, and Mark Zuckerberg often use their givings to push their specific political agenda. As Callahan points out, these contributions involve a large amount of taxpayer dollars, these very rich people are getting their taxes reduced by roughly 40 cents for every dollar they give. This means, in effect...

The Skills Gap that Always Explains Unemployment

Donald Trump went to Wisconsin today to tout the virtues of apprenticeship programs, which he claimed would give workers the skills they need to fill available jobs. Fortunately, the NYT had a good piece by Noam Scheiber that pointed out there is little evidence to support the view that the economy is suffering from a serious skills shortage.

The skills shortage is a recurring theme which businesses and pundit types routinely use to blame unemployment on workers rather than a lack of jobs in...

Plans to Reduce the Fed's Asset Holdings: Doesn't Anyone Care About the Budget Deficit?

Apparently, at least no one at the New York Times cares about the budget deficit. An article that reported on the Fed's plans to reduce its holdings of assets never once mentioned the implication for the budget deficit. Currently the Fed is refunding close to $100 billion a year to the Treasury based on the earnings from these assets. If its holdings were to drop to pre-crisis levels, measured as a share of GDP, this amount would fall to around $30–$40 billion. The difference could be close t...

The High Cost of Patent Protection #43,567

The NYT had an interesting article on how the pharmaceutical company Alkermes had successfully promoted its drug Vivitrol as a treatment for opioid addiction, even though there is little evidence the drug is more effective than older and cheaper alternatives. This effort has involved a massive marketing campaign that has included campaign contributions to politicians in a position to influence the choice of drugs, as well as the lobbying of judges in a position to determine the course of a tr...

The Affordable Care Act Gives Workers Flexibility: Who Could Have Known?

It's a bit painful to see this piece in the NYT this morning, which tells readers that the Affordable Care Act gave workers the flexibility to leave jobs they didn't like and to retire early. The latter option is especially important for people in bad health, who desperately need insurance, but often could not get it outside of employment before the ACA.

The reason it is painful to see this piece is because this benefit of the ACA is pretty damn obvious. There is an extensive literature datin...

Robert Samuelson Seems to Be Arguing That Men Dropped Out of the Labor Force Because Women Entered the Labor Force

That would seem to be the implication of the part of his discussion of the loss of "social capital" that deals with the increase in the percentage of women in the labor force. He tells readers:

"Work: The main trend was the gradual entrance of millions of women into the job market. In 2015, 74 percent of prime-working-age women (25 to 54) were in the labor force, up from 35 percent in 1948. However, there were social costs. There was more 'reliance on markets for child care,' and 'community-b...

Washington Post's Dan Balz Absolves Pollsters on UK Miss: "No One" Saw It!

I usually don't stray directly into political contests and polling here at BTP, but I think there is a very important economic phenomenon here. Dan Balz, the Washington Post's lead political analyst, had a piece on the election results in the UK. The last paragraph begins by telling readers:

"No one saw Thursday’s British results ahead of time. Even more than the Brexit vote and more than Trump’s victory, this was a shocker."

This is not true. The polling firm YouGov's model nailed the result...

The Federal Government Pays 50 Percent of Testing Costs for Orphan Drugs

That would have been a useful point to mention in a Washington Post article that reports on an orphan drug with a list price of $750,000 for a year's treatment. The piece reports that the drug's manufacturer, Biogen, offers the drug at concessionary prices to people who sign away privacy rights.

The piece notes the price being charged, then tells readers:

"But the Laskos [the family profiled in the piece] know it is expensive and risky for a company to develop a drug for a disease that affect...