Dean Baker's Blog, page 22

How Many Lives Would Have Been Saved if We Had Collaborated on Vaccines With China?

We know that Republican office holders are not allowed to say that Joe Biden won the election. Apparently there is a similar ban in place for news outlets when it comes to the question of the United States collaborating with China, and other countries, in developing vaccines against the pandemic.

In recent days, there have been articles in several major news outlets about how China vaccinated close to 1 million people, under an Emergency Use Authorization, for vaccines that are currently in Phas...

The Krugman Boom: Don’t Bank on It

I have largely been in agreement with Paul Krugman in his assessment of the economy over the last dozen years or so, but I think in his latest column he let the promise of a post-Trump era get the better of him. Krugman notes that the distribution of effective vaccines should allow people to return to their normal lives.

He argues that this will lead to a spending boom, as consumers have accumulated savings through the slump and will now be in a position to spend lots of money. As a model he poi...

Moderna Vaccine Follows Pfizer with Very Strong Results on Effectiveness: What This Means

Last week, we got the very good news that preliminary results from its Phase 3 trial showed that Pfizer’s vaccine had an effectiveness rate of 92 percent. (We now have final results that put it at 95 percent.) This week, Moderna released results showing that its vaccine also has a 95 percent effectiveness rate. In both cases, the companies reported a relatively small number of instances of adverse effects, which were in almost all cases minor (e.g. headaches or sore arms).

It was great to hear t...

“Protecting Intellectual Property” Against China Means Redistributing Income Upward

The New York Times had an article discussing the prospects for U.S. trade relations with China during Biden’s presidency. At one point it tells readers:

“Mr. Biden has given few details about his plans for U.S.-China relations, other than saying he wants to recruit American allies such as Europe and Japan to pressure China to make economic reforms, like protecting intellectual property.” 

Stronger and longer patent and copyright protections have redistributed enormous amounts of income upward ov...

Lowering the Bar on Success: Megan McArdle on Drug Development

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle was anxious to tell readers that drug development in the pandemic has been a great success story. After all, look at all the treatments we have, and now it appears that Pfizer/BioNtech have developed a highly effective vaccine. What could be better than that?

Well, first we need a bit of perspective. Yes, we place an enormous value on our health and our lives, so getting effective treatments and vaccines quickly are extremely important. But we do also care...

The Biden 8.1 Million Vote Landslide! (corrected post)

Some folks are seeing this election as a squeaker for Biden since we saw close races in key states. This has concealed the fact that Biden actually is winning the popular vote by a large margin. Since many votes are still not counted across the country I thought I would do a simple exercise where I projected margins for the votes outstanding in each state.

Much of this is naturally guesswork, but hopefully not too nutty. I applied some simple rules. As we have seen, the vast majority of mail-in ...

The Biden 9 Million Vote Landslide! (corrected post)

Some folks are seeing this election as a squeaker for Biden since we saw close races in key states. This has concealed the fact that Biden actually is winning the popular vote by a large margin. Since many votes are still not counted across the country I thought I would do a simple exercise where I projected margins for the votes outstanding in each state.

Much of this is naturally guess work, but hopefully not too nutty. I applied some simple rules. As we have seen, the vast majority of mail-in...

Donald Trump and Being Deplorable

As it increasingly looks like Joe Biden has won the election, I see many people around me appalled that so many of their fellow citizens can vote for someone as racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive as Donald Trump. Given what we know about the guy, and think everyone else should know about him as well, it is hard not to be appalled.

But we will not get anywhere politically by looking at half the country with disgust. Trying to win over some of Trump’s voters doesn’t mean giving in to Trump’s ...

As We Wait to Figure Out Who We Elected, New York Times Feeds Us Pablum on Our Social Problems

In its efforts to provide us exactly what we don’t need now, the New York Times gave us an utterly pointless piece by Yuval Levin telling us that we shouldn’t worry about national politics and instead focus on helping our neighbors and communities. This paragraph tells it all:

“More often, though, our deepest problems aren’t really amenable to resolution by a president. These problems have been adding up to something of a social crisis, evident not only in the breakdown of our political culture ...

The NYT Prints Usual Nonsense About Bubbles

The NYT has apparently assigned Ruchir Sharma the task of writing periodic pieces about the prospect of a crashing bubble giving us another horrible recession. These pieces always show a failure to understand the most basic features of the Great Recession. This fits with the need of elite-types to pretends that the risks of the housing bubble were hard to see, as opposed to requiring a passing glance at quarterly GDP data.

Shamir’s latest tells us that we should be worried because house prices a...