Dean Baker's Blog, page 197

Paul Krugman Refuses to Give Paul Ryan Credit for His Positions

Paul Krugman complains that the media have not exposed the inconsistencies in Paul Ryan's budgets. While there is some truth to that (Ryan never identifies any of the loopholes he would close to cover the cost of lower tax rates), it is more serious that it never reports what Ryan actually proposes.

Ryan's budgets, as analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office under his direction, call for eliminating the whole of the federal government by 2050, except for Social Security, Medicare and Medic...

One Million Manufacturing Jobs Was Not a Ridiculous Goal

The Washington Post had a piece noting that it is unlikely that the economy will produce the 1 million new jobs in manufacturing by 2016, as promised by President Obama in 2012. The piece is implies that this was an unrealistic promise that Obama should not have made. In fact, the economy had lost more than 2 million manufacturing jobs in the recession, so it was very reasonable to expect that it would get at least half of these jobs back, as it had in prior recoveries.

Jobs in Manufacturing

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David Brooks and Coal Mining Jobs

David Brooks used his column today to complain about Hillary Clinton's lack of imagination. (She will face a candidate in the general election with considerable imagination.) One of his highlights is that she has no plan to deal with the problem faced by coal miners and their communities as a result of the loss of coal mining jobs. He tells readers:

"A few decades ago there were 175,000 coal jobs in the U.S. Now there are 57,000. That economic dislocation has hit local economies in the form...

Did Donald Trump Get the Story on Buying Back Debt at a Discount Right?

Trying to make sense of Donald Trump's comments can be a risky business, but it is actually possible that he got it right and the NYT's Neil Irwin got it wrong on dealing with the national debt. Irwin had a NYT Upshot piece in which he discussed Trump's comments on monetary policy. Trump essentially endorsed the low interest rate policy being pursued by Janet Yellen and indicated that he would seek to appoint a Fed chair who would continue to this policy. (FWIW, we have yet to hear anything f...

Why Does the NYT Feel the Need to Tell Readers Things That Are Untrue About Trade and Manufacturing Jobs?

It is bizarre how many people feel the need to claim that a large trade deficit in manufactured goods does not cost manufacturing jobs. You can argue all sorts of things about the merits of trade, and even make a story about how a trade deficit is good (pretty hard, when we're below full employment), but it is almost impossible to tell a story that the explosion of the trade deficit between 1997 and 2006 did not cost manufacturing jobs.

Nonetheless that is the story the NYT gave its readers w...

Thomas Friedman's Grand Bargain Scheme: Lie About the Folks You Disagree With

Thomas Friedman really is a gift to the world. As a long established New York Times columnist and author of many widely touted books, he is a great source of insight into establishment thinking. He comes through brilliantly in his column today.

Friedman's basic story is that the two parties need to work out compromises, like the "Grand Bargain" on the budget, that President Obama tried to negotiate in 2011 with then Speaker John Boehner. Friedman blames the intransigence of the Republicans fo...

Patents and Copyrights are Trade Barriers

Eduardo Porter used his weekly column to chronicle Brazil's economic course over the last two decades. He argues that many of its current problems are due to excessive government involvement in the economy in imposing price controls and trade barriers.

While there is likely some truth to this argument, it is worth extending Porter's warning to patent and copyright protection. These forms of protection are equivalent to tariffs of many thousand percent, they typically raise the price of protec...

Some of the Richest, Smartest and Most Powerful Humans Don't Have Access to the BLS Website

That's what a Reuters article in the NYT inadvertently told readers. The piece begins by telling readers:

"Some of the richest, smartest and most powerful humans have an important message for the rest of us as they convened this week to discuss pressing global issues: the robots are coming.

"At the Milken Institute's Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, at least four panels so far have focused on technology taking over markets to mining - and most importantly, jobs."

The piece goes...

President Obama Pushes a Weak Case on TPP

President Obama continued the administration’s boasting about how the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will eliminate Vietnam’s tariff on exports of U.S. whale meat. You may have missed it, but this tariff, along with Malaysia’s tariff on U.S. exports of shark fins, and Japan’s tariff on our ivory exports, are among the 18,000 tariffs that President Obama said would be eliminated by the TPP in a Washington Post today.

This 18,000 tariff figure was intended to sound very impressive, but...

It's Actually Not Hard to Distinguish Between Quantitative Easing and Currency Management

A NYT article on Donald Trump's threats to impose high tariffs on Chinese imports discussed the possibility that Trump might seek rules that addressed policies aimed at currency management. The piece included the strange assertion that:

"A central problem is defining currency manipulation in a way that excludes the United States — in particular, the Federal Reserve’s post-recession stimulus campaign, which had the effect of weakening the dollar much in the same way that other countries do to...