Dean Baker's Blog, page 152

Trump Promises to Save Public 0.0000004 Percent of Projected Spending by Keeping Meetings Secret

The Trump administration announced that would end the Obama administration's practice of revealing the list of people who visit the White House. This list was useful in letting the public know who President Trump was making deals with.

The administration claimed this move was taken as a security measure and also to save the country $70,000 over the next four years. Since the government is projected to spend roughly $16 trillion over the next four years, the savings will be equal to 0.00000004...

Trump Adviser Gets Story Confused on the Value of the Dollar Relative to Other Currencies

Washington Post economics reporter Max Ehrenfreund featured a piece highlighting former Donald Trump adviser Steven Moore's views of Trump's recent shifts on economic policy. In particular, Moore took issue with Trump's desire to see the value of the dollar fall. He argued that the dollar rose with strong economies under President Reagan and Clinton, while it was weak under Nixon, Ford, and Carter.

Actually, it is not especially accurate to claim the dollar rose under President Reagan. Using...

United Airlines CEO Pay and the Problem of Getting Good Help

The business media routinely feature stories about employers' difficulty in getting qualified workers. These pieces often leave economists scratching their heads, since the usual way to get better workers is to offer higher pay. And, the workers are almost invariably out there, most likely working for a competitor.

This means that if there were really shortages of workers with specific skills then we should see pay for workers with these skills rising rapidly. Since there is no major segment...

China and Currency Values: Fast Growing Countries Run Trade Deficits

I don't generally comment on pieces that reference me, but Jordan Weissman has given me such a beautiful teachable moment that I can't resist. Weissman wrote about Donald Trump's reversal on his campaign pledge to declare China a currency manipulator. Weissman assures us that Trump was completely wrong in his campaign rhetoric and that China does not in fact try to depress the value of its currency.

"It's pretty hard to argue with that. Far from devaluing its currency, China has actually spe...

It's Protectionism, not Technology that Boosts Yo-Yo Ma Relative to the 100th-Best Cellist

It is remarkable how the protectionist measures that redistribute income upward remain largely invisible to the folks who write about things like the upward redistribution of income. Thomas Edsall gave us a priceless example of this sort of oversight in a column talking about how non-metropolitan areas are losing out to major cities. 

The gem apperars in a quote from Andrew McAfee, the co-author The Second Machine Age. McAfee is warning about the course of future technology.

"We’ll cont...

U.S. Pursues Selective Protectionism: Not Free Trade

The Washington Post and other major news outlets are strong supporters of the trade policy pursued by administrations of both political parties. They routinely allow their position on this issue to spill over into their news reporting, touting the policy as "free trade." We got yet another example of this in the Washington Post today.

Of course the policy is very far from free trade. We have largely left in place the protectionist barriers that keep doctors and dentists from other countries f...

Robert Rubin, Who Made a Fortune on the Housing Bubble, Argues for Preserving Wall Street's Power Over the Fed

The Federal Reserve Board has more direct control over the economy than any other institution in the country. When it decides to raise interest rates to slow the economy, it can ensure that millions of workers don't get jobs and prevent tens of millions more from getting the bargaining power they need to gain wage increases. For this reason, it is very important who is making the calls on interest rates and who they are listening to.

Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clint...

Trump, China, and Trade

It is unfortunate that Donald Trump seems closer to the mark on China and trade than many economists and people who write on economic issues for major news outlets. Today, Eduardo Porter gets things partly right in his column telling readers "Trump isn't wrong on China currency manipulation just late." The thrust of the piece is that China did in fact deliberately prop up the dollar against its currency, thereby causing the U.S. trade deficit to explode. However, he argues this is all history...

WaPo Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt is Worried About Lying in Public Debates

The Washington Post editorial page is of course famous for absurdly claiming that Mexico's GDP had quadrupled between 1987 and 2007 in an editorial defending NAFTA. (According to the I.M.F, Mexico's GDP increased by 83 percent over this period.) Incredibly, the paper still has not corrected this egregious error in its online version.

This is why it is difficult to share the concern of Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor, that we will see increasingly dishonest public debates. Hiatt and his...

NPR Makes Case for Ending Public Subsidy in Coverage of Effort to Repeal Affordable Care Act

The Republicans have been working hard to find a way to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that doesn't leave most of their members of Congress unemployed. The basic problem is that their campaign against the ACA for the last seven years was a complete lie. They claimed that people were paying too much money for policies that were inadequate, leading people to believe that they had a way to provide better coverage for less money. They don't.

Unfortunately, NPR might have led listeners to be...