Dean Baker's Blog, page 142

The Evidence Does Not Support Macron's Claim that Deregulating Labor Market Will Boost Economy

In her Washington Post , Catherine Rampell repeats some ill-founded conventional wisdom in telling readers that French president Emmanuel Macron's plans to weaken labor unions and reduce restrictions on laying off workers are the path to revitalizing France's economy. In fact, this claim is not supported by the evidence. There is little evidence that strong unions or labor market protections are associated with high unemployment.

The most obvious reason that France has had high unemploy...

Economic Populism Doesn't Have to Involve More Government

Thomas Edsall's NYT piece is ostensibly bad news for Democrats since it argues that the working-class populism among non-college educated Trump voters is anti-government. He argues this means that they are suspicious of government programs Democrats favor that redistribute from the wealthy to poor and working class.

While Edsall presents this as insoluble problem for Democrats looking to rebuild majority support, that is not really the case. The upward redistribution of the last four decades...

The Opioid Crisis: Another Example of the High Cost of Protectionism

A Washington Post editorial praised Ohio's decision to sue pharmaceutical companies for promoting opioid pain medication.The claim being made in the suit is that the companies minimized the risk of addiction in order to increase their market.

Incredibly, the piece does not mention the protectionism that gives these drug companies the incentive to push their drugs for improper uses. Government-granted patent monopolies allow the companies to sell their drugs for twenty, thirty, or forty times...

Japan's Dismal Future: Less Crowded Subways and Declining Rents

The NYT featured yet another piece on a country, in this case Japan, facing a future with a lower population. The piece warns that it will be difficult to maintain economic growth with a declining population and that Japan's labor shortage would get more severe.

This doesn't sound like too bad of a story to people familiar with economics. Thus far the labor shortage has not been serious enough to cause wages to rise in Japan. If it eventually does get more severe and wages do rise then it jus...

The Washington Post's War on Disability Continues

At a time when an ever larger share of national income is going to the richest one percent, and large segments of the working class population are seeing rising mortality rates, the Washington Post naturally turns to the country's most pressing problem, the number of people receiving disability payments from the government.

Its second piece on the topic profiled a family with multiple generations receiving disability benefits. It seemed to go out of its way to include every possible negative...

Washington Post Tells Us that Donald Trump's "Swamp" Was Government Workers, not Crony Capitalists

Many folks might have thought Donald Trump had abandoned his pledge about "draining the swamp" when he began filling his administration with Goldman Sachs alums and other Wall Street types and reversed all the ethics rules put in place for the last five decades to prevent corruption. But the Washington Post tells us this is not true.

According to the Washington Post "draining the swamp" just meant firing government workers. So apparently if Wall Streeters and rich folks (including Trump famil...

Here Come the Job Killing Robots!

One of the largely overlooked implications of Friday's weak job report is that it likely means that we will see a strong rebound in productivity growth for the second quarter. GDP growth is likely to bounce back from the first quarter's weak 1.2 percent number, most likely coming in between 3.0 percent to 4.0 percent. With the rate of growth of hours worked likely less than 1.0 percent, we will be looking at productivity growth in the 2.0 percent to 3.0 percent range for the quarter.

Here are...

George Will Wants to Kill Public Broadcasting and Save Taxpayers $1.40 Per Year

Yes folks, your friend on the Washington Post opinion page, George Will, wants to reduce your tax burden. He argues that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It is forcing average taxpayers to foot the bill for radio and TV shows that members of Congress value.

Naturally Mr. Will is concerned about the burden that CPB is putting on the pocketbook of Joe and Jill Sixpack. He tells us that it has cost the country $12 billion. Most people may not offhand...

Does the NYT Know How the Republicans "View" Global Warming?

The NYT had a very good article on how the fossil fuel industry and other rich donors got the Republican party to be committed to denying the reality of global warming, Unfortunately the article carried a headline that asserted the Republicans "view" climate change as fake science.

There is nothing in the article to indicate what Republicans actually believe about climate change. There is no reason not to assume that the Republican leadership believes anything different about climate change t...

Controlling CEO Pay: The Case of Marissa Mayer's $239 Million Paycheck

The NYT had an article on Yahoo CEO's $239 million payout for her five years as CEO of Yahoo. The article says that from the standpoint of shareholders, since the value of the company's stock tripled, she earned her pay. This assessment is extremely misleading. It would be like saying that a firefighter getting paid $10 million earned her pay, because she got three people out of a burning house.

The question is not just the return to the shareholders, but the return compared to what they woul...