Dean Baker's Blog, page 151

Do We Need More Jobs in Health Care? More of the Which Way Is Up Problem in Economics

On the day of the march for science the NYT ran a column by Chad Terhune, a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News and California Healthline, telling readers that the economy was dependent on the health care sector to generate employment.

"The country has grown increasingly dependent on the health sector to power the economy, and it will be a tough habit to break. Thirty-five percent of the nation’s job growth has come from health care since the recession hit in late 2007, the single big...

Reuters Gives Us He Said/She Said Reporting on German Trade Surplus, with a Little Ad Hominem for Good Measure

Germany is running an annual trade surplus of more than 8.0 percent of its GDP (equivalent to $1.6 trillion in the U.S. economy). This huge trade surplus translates into large deficits for the rest of the world. This is the largest single cause of the problems facing Greece, Italy, Spain, and even France. All are seeing their growth and employment seriously constrained as a result of the large German trade surpluses.

In the good old days before the euro, Germany's trade surplus would have led...

More Evidence of a Skills Shortage Among Employers

The Washington Post had an interesting piece on how employers in traditionally male dominated industries, like construction and trucking, are increasingly looking to hire women. While opening up these relatively high-paying sectors to women is certainly good news, the argument in the article really does not make sense.

The piece asserts that employers are having difficulty finding qualified workers, in large part because of the retirement of large numbers of baby boomers. If employers are re...

NYT Inadvertently Exposes Tax Scam

The New York Times ran a column by Michael Rips that inadvertently called attention to a major tax scam. Rips is unhappy because when artists and other creative workers donate their work to a museum or other charitable institution they can only deduct the value of the materials on their taxes. They cannot deduct the full market value of the work, nor any amount for their labor.

There is a simple reason why they can't deduct the value of their labor from their taxes, they never paid taxes on t...

It's Not Really Possible to Oppose the Elite, Because It's All So Confusing

That's the gist of Anne Applebaum's Washington Post column . In a discussion of the upcoming election in the United Kingdom, she refers to the political stances of the Labor Party, the Conservative Party, and the Scottish National Party:

"Curiously, the three parties do have one thing in common: They all claim to be fighting for “the people” against an unnamed and ill-defined “elite.” They all offer their followers a new sort of identity: Voters can now define themselves as “Brexiteers,...

Actually, Germany Can Do Something About Its Trade Surplus

The NYT ran a Reuters article which reported on the German government's response to I.M.F. complaints about its trade surplus. The essence of the response was the German government lacked the competence to reduce its trade surplus, which is currently more than 8.0 percent of GDP ($1.6 trillion in the U.S.). The German trade surplus is of course a deficit for other countries, which are seeing a loss of output and employment as a result.

Because Germany is in the euro, the most important tool f...

The I.M.F. Is Not the Most Ardent Defender of Free-Trade Policies

A New York Times article on the newest growth forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) described the I.M.F. as "the most ardent defender of traditional free-trade policies." This is not accurate. 

The I.M.F. has been fine with ever stronger and longer patent and copyright protections. These government imposed monopolies raise the price of protected items by factors or ten or even a hundred above the free market price, making them equivalent to tariffs of hundreds or thousa...

Paul Krugman Gets Retail Wrong: They are Not Very Good Jobs

Paul Krugman used his column this morning to ask why we don't pay as much attention to the loss of jobs in retail as we do to jobs lost in mining and manufacturing. His answer is that in large part the latter jobs tend to be more white and male than the latter. While this is true, although African Americans have historically been over-represented in manufacturing, there is another simpler explanation: retail jobs tend to not be very good jobs.

The basic story is that jobs in mining and manufa...

WaPo Gets It Wrong: An $800 Billion Stimulus Following the Collapse of the Housing Bubble Was Not "Big"

In fact, it wasn't even $800 billion, but the Washington Post has never been very good with numbers. The issue came up in a column by Paul Kane telling Republicans that they don't have to just focus on really big items. The second paragraph refers to the Democrat's big agenda after President Obama took office:

"Everyone knows the big agenda they pursued — an $800 billion economic stimulus, a sweeping health-care law and an overhaul of Wall Street regulations."

The stimulus was actually closer...

Overall and Core CPI Fall in March

I know Donald Trump is lots of fun and everything, but people should be paying at least a little attention to inflation, or the lack thereof. Remember, last time we tuned in the Federal Reserve Board was embarked on a process of tightening through a sequence of interest rates hikes. The concern expressed by proponents of higher rates was that the economy was too strong and that inflation would soon be rising above its 2.0 percent target. (Actually, the target is supposed to be an average, whi...