Dean Baker's Blog, page 166

How the Media is Helping Donald Trump Lie About Jobs

The NYT had an editorial arguing that major corporations are helping Donald Trump lie about job creation in order to get favors from his administration. The main example is the Japanese investment firm Soft Bank, which allowed Trump to get away with taking credit for investment decisions which had been announced in October, before Donald Trump was elected. It argues that Soft Bank is hoping that Trump will allow a merger between its Sprint subsidiary and T-Mobile. This merger had been opposed...

The Private Equity Boys Feast on Failing Pension Funds

Gretchen Morgenson had an interesting piece on the New York Teamsters pension fund, which appears likely to impose a substantial benefit cut on current and future retirees as a result of a large funding shortfall. While there are many causes for the shortfall, most importantly a declining number of active workers contributing to the fund, the situation has been made worse by the high fees paid to private equity companies.

It appears that the fund invested heavily in private equity in recent y...

Economists, Doctors' Cartels, and Uber

Breaking the taxi industry cartel's and promoting Uber has been somewhat of a cause celebre among economists in recent years. Any card carrying economist can give you the two minute tirade on the evils of the taxi cartel and the benefits of Uber. (I can too, but the argument should be for modernized regulation, not Uber gets to do whatever it wants because it's Uber, see pieces here, here, and here.)

What is striking is that the enthusiasm for the virtues of competition seems to disappear whe...

Denialism on Trade

It is really amazing how the political and economic establishment types feel the need to deny that trade can actually have a negative impact on manufacturing jobs and total employment in their arguments against Donald Trump's trade policies. George Will gave us a great lesson in this silliness in his column today.

Among the highlights were the claim that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the years after 2000 had little to do with the explosion of the trade deficit to almost 6 percent of GDP (...

Trump and Growth

Neil Irwin used an Upshot column to address the issue of whether Donald Trump can acheive the 4.0 percent annual growth rate he has promised over the next decade. He argues that insofar as it is possible it is likely to involve two items that Trump voters may not like: job displacing innovations and increased immigration. While Irwin is right in identifying these two factors in promoting growth, there are few additional points to add to his discussion.

In the case of job displacing innovation...

Can We Kill the "Young Invincibles" Once and For All?

Don't worry, I'm not advocating mass murder; I want to put to death a silly myth about Obamacare that keeps getting spread by people who should know better. The basic story is that Obamacare is dependent on getting large numbers of young and healthy people into the system. The premiums these people pay will help to cover the costs incurred by older and less healthy people.

The latest repetition of this myth appears in a NYT editorial urging Republicans not to destroy the Affordable Care Act (...

According to Thomas Edsall, Democrats Rely on Protectionist Voters

That is in fact what his NYT column said, even though he writes it as though the opposite is the case. The basic argument is that the core Democratic constituency is in places like Silicon Valley and other tech clusters which Edsall claims are thriving in the global economy based on free trade. By contrast, he argues that Democratic populists like Keith Ellison and Bernie Sanders are trying to rally those left behind with a protectionist agenda. Edsall warns that this would run both counter t...

What's Different About Stagnating Wages for Workers Without College Degrees?

There seems to be a great effort to convince people that the displacement due to the trade deficit over the last fifteen years didn't really happen. The NYT contributed to this effort with a piece telling readers that over the long-run job loss has been primarily due to automation not trade.

While the impact of automation over a long enough period of time certainly swamps the impact of trade, over the last 20 years there is little doubt that the impact of the exploding trade deficit has had m...

Someone Has to Tell John Williams Inflation Is Not Accelerating

The Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates last week and seem poised to do so again in the not distant future. The rationale is that the economy is now near or at full employment and that if job growth continues at its recent pace it will lead to a harmful acceleration in the inflation rate.

We have numerous pieces raising serious questions about whether the labor market is really at full employment, noting for example the sharp drop in employment rates (for all groups) from pre-recessio...

How to Get New Drugs at Generic Prices

The NYT had an interesting piece discussing the National Institutes of Health collaboration with private companies in the development of new cancer drugs. As the piece points out, this collaboration has proven very profitable for the drug companies, but leads to drugs that are very expensive because the drug companies are allowed to have patent monopolies, with no restriction on the price they charge.

It also suggests an alternative path. It shows, contrary to conventional wisdom in right-win...