Dean Baker's Blog, page 20

The New York Times Hasn’t Heard About China’s Vaccines

That is the implication of a major piece on how the coronavirus vaccines are leading to greater worldwide inequality, since the rich countries have reserved the vast majority of the 2021 supplies of vaccines of the leading U.S.-European vaccines. While this is in fact a serious problem, as my co-authors and I have noted, China also has produced several effective vaccines and is distributing them too developing countries.

China has already made commitments to supply hundreds of millions of doses ...

Quick Note on the Federal Reserve Board

When Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, at the last minute, insisted on adding language to the pandemic rescue package, stripping the Fed of emergency powers, I was among those screaming “NO Deal.”  I have not always been a huge fan of the Fed, but I felt this plan was a deliberate effort to sabotage an effective response to any financial/economic crises that may arise in a Biden administration.

Just for background, we know that the Republicans are perfectly fine with sabotaging the economy in ord...

Vaccines, Vaccines, Vaccines – Why Doesn’t Everyone Have One or Two?

David Dayen, at The American Prospect, raises the question of why we didn’t do more planning, five, or six months, ago to ensure that when we had safe and effective vaccines, they could quickly be produced in huge quantities. Now we are being told that it won’t be until the summer or even fall until most people have been inoculated.  

If it’s not obvious, every day we delay mass availability of a vaccine comes with an enormous cost. We are seeing over two hundred thousand infections a day and cl...

Bloomberg Is Concerned that Janet Yellen’s Dollar Policy May Lessen Wealth Inequality

You don’t have to look far, it’s literally the first sentence in a Bloomberg piece on dollar policy under incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

“Janet Yellen once touted the benefits of a weaker greenback for exports, but as the incoming Treasury secretary, she faces pressure to return the U.S. to a “strong-dollar” policy — and may cause trembles on Wall Street if she doesn’t.”

For folks who don’t know, the vast majority of U.S. stock is held by the richest 10 percent of households in the co...

Helping the NYT Understand Its Reporting: China’s Coverup Was Not the Cause of the Worldwide Spread of the Coronavirus

The NYT had a very interesting piece on efforts by China’s government to conceal and downplay the threat posed by the coronavirus. The piece reports on a number of Chinese government documents and directives that sought to minimize the threat posed by the pandemic.

However the paper seriously misrepresents the meaning of its research, telling readers:

“It may never be clear whether a freer flow of information from China would have prevented the outbreak from morphing into a raging global health ...

Getting Serious About Repealing Section 230

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has been getting considerable attention lately for almost all the wrong reasons. Donald Trump has been yelling that he wants the provision repealed, and even threatened to veto the main military spending bill for next year if it does not include the repeal of Section 230. (It doesn’t.)

Trump apparently believes that repealing Section 230 would prevent Facebook from pulling down posts from Trump and his racist friends. He also is upset that Twitt...

China, Christmas, and the Coronavirus

As we hunker down this holiday season, waiting for our vaccines, or at least until the diffusion of the vaccines has slowed the spread of the pandemic, it’s worth thinking for a moment about an opportunity lost. Specifically, we lost an opportunity to have worldwide cooperation in the development of vaccines, bringing in not only Europe, but China.

While we now have two vaccines (counting Moderna’s) that have been approved by the FDA, China has one vaccine that has already been approved by the l...

And Now, for Something Somewhat Different

Dear Beat the Press Readers,

It’s that time of year again, when I hijack Dean’s blog to ask you to consider making a year-end donation to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. As many of you know, Dean pretty much gives his work away for free, which is great for the public but not so great for CEPR’s bottom line. Plus, it makes my job as CEPR’s Development Director a really difficult one. 

On the other hand, it’s inspiring that Dean lives up to the values he promotes. He doesn’t stray far...

Important Addition to Edsall Column on the Politics of Resentment: Downward Mobility Was by Design

Thomas Edsall had an interesting piece last week on the politics of resentment. The gist of that a large portion of non-college educated whites are voting based on their fear of losing their social status.

While there is undoubtedly much truth to Edsalls argument, there is an important point that Edsall leaves out. He tells readers:

Voters in the bottom half of the income distribution face a level of hypercompetition that has, in turn, served to elevate politicized status anxiety in a world...

Choice in Health Care Plans and Medicare: It’s More Complicated

Margot Sanger-Katz had a very good NYT piece on the difficulty of choosing among health insurance plans. The gist of the piece is that people have a very difficult time choosing among plans, and even well-educated people often make choices that are bad for them. (The highlight is that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman could not sort through the plan options at his university job.)

After presenting evidence that most people make bad choices, and low-income people do worst, at the end...