Dean Baker's Blog, page 184

What Does It Mean to Have Too Many Television Shows?

The NYT weakly posed this question in an article reporting on the proliferation of scripted TV shows coming largely from newcomers like Netflix. The concerns expressed about too much TV were more than a bit bizarre. For example, it told readers:

"sharing Mr. Landgraf’s [CEO at FX Networks] concern, some TV executives have said that they also felt audiences were becoming fatigued and having a difficult time finding the best shows out of the glut."

Really? People are getting tired from going...

Prescription Drugs: What's Wrong with Free Market Pricing?

The NYT ran a Reuters piece on the future of drug pricing. Guess what? No one is talking about good old-fashioned free market prices. The word from Reuters is that in the future drug companies will be paid based on the benefits provided by their drugs, not a per pill charge. As described in the piece, drug companies would be compensated by insurers for the use of their drugs based on the average improvement in health per patient treated.

As the piece hints, this will be an incredible burden t...

Robert Samuelson Spreads More Nonsense on Trades

There is apparently a very big market for spreading the story that trade has not been a major factor behind manufacturing job loss and wage stagnation. How else to explain the massive supply of such pieces.

Robert Samuelson gave us his latest contribution is his weekly Washington Post column. The trick is to say that productivity has been the major factor costing us jobs in manufacturing therefore we shouldn't be upset about job loss due to trade. This is one of those trivially true arguments...

Why Do the NYT and Economists Feel the Need to Lie to Push Trade Agreements?

The NYT is inadvertently doing a good job convincing people that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a really bad deal. (I'm picking on the TPP because that is the trade deal currently on the agenda.) The reason that the NYT is making readers believe that the TPP is a really bad deal is that it is obviously lying to push the case for trade — and you don't have to lie if you have a real case.

The outright lie in this case is its effort to trivialize the job loss due to trade in the United S...

Why Do the NYT and Economists Feel the Need to Lie to Push Trade Agreements

The NYT is inadvertently doing a good job convincing people that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a really bad deal. (I'm picking on the TPP because that is the trade deal currently on the agenda.) The reason that the NYT is making readers believe that the TPP is a really bad deal is that it is obviously lying to push the case for trade -- and you don't have to lie if you have a real case.

The outright lie in this case is its effort to trivialize the job loss due to trade in the United...

Why Does the NYT and Economists Feel the Need to Lie to Push Trade Agreements

The NYT is inadvertently doing a good job convincing people that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a really bad deal. (I'm picking on the TPP because that is the trade deal currently on the agenda.) The reason that the NYT is making readers believe that the TPP is a really bad deal is that it is obviously lying to push the case for trade -- and you don't have to lie if you have a real case.

The outright lie in this case is its effort to trivialize the job loss due to trade in the United...

Bart Chilton: The Donald Trump of Commodity Futures Trading Commissioners?

That's what folks who saw his letter to the editor in the Washington Post must be asking. The letter derided the idea of funding free college tuition with a modest tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Chilton tells readers:

"A tax on financial trading activity has been tried in other nations, where it failed miserably. Trading (and the jobs and economic activity associated with it) moves to nations without such a tax. Trading these days takes place on computers, not on physical tr...

Secret on Orphan Drugs: The Government Could Pay the Other Half of the Price Also

The Washington Post had a good column on the soaring prices of orphan drugs. Orphan drugs are drugs to treat conditions that affect less than 200,000 people. To encourage drug companies to research these drugs, the government picks up the half the cost of the clinical testing, pays the fees to bring it through the FDA approval process and then gives the drug companies seven years of marketing exclusivity.

The piece reported on how drug companies are increasingly getting orphan status for thei...

The Washington Post-President Obama TPP-Challenge

It's hard to resist a good challenge and the Washington Post gave us one this morning in an editorial pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The editorial criticized TPP opponents and praised President Obama for continuing to push the deal. It tells readers:

"Mr. Obama refused to back down on the merits of the issues, noting that other countries, not the United States, would do most of the market-opening under the TPP and challenging opponents to explain how 'existing trading rules are...

Charles Lane on Homeownership: Partly Right

Charles Lane gets the story on homeownership at least partly right in his Washington Post column today. It is not necessarily bad that fewer people are homeowners, if the drop is due to people with very little equity in serious danger of losing their home. It is also worth adding that in an economy where few people can count on stable employment, homeownership is not necessarily a plus, since it can make it more difficult for unemployed workers to move to areas with more jobs.

However Lane ge...