Dean Baker's Blog, page 236

Are People Less Willing to Pay for Education Because of Medicare and Medicaid?

That's the assertion at the end of Robert Samuelson's piece on the 50th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Samuelson tells readers:

"By 2030, the number of Medicare beneficiaries is projected to reach 81 million, an almost 50 percent increase from today. Meanwhile, higher health spending has squeezed other programs. That’s an ironic footnote for the triumph of ’65: By threatening the rest of government, the instruments of a liberal agenda — Medicare and Medicaid —...

Are People Less Welling to Pay for Education Because of Medicare and Medicaid?

That's the assertion at the end of Robert Samuelson's piece on the 50th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. Samuelson tells readers:

"By 2030, the number of Medicare beneficiaries is projected to reach 81 million, an almost 50 percent increase from today. Meanwhile, higher health spending has squeezed other programs. That’s an ironic footnote for the triumph of ’65: By threatening the rest of government, the instruments of a liberal agenda — Medicare and Medicaid —...

Governments Are Still Obligated to Pay Pensions Even If Their Pension Funds Are Depleted

A New York Times article may have misled readers by implying that a state or local government with inadequate pension funds is relieved of its pension liabilities. In the context of a court ruling on the constitutionality of a plan negotiated between the city of Chicago and most of its unions, the article told readers:

"An insolvent system would be able to pay retirees only about 30 percent of their benefits. The cuts before the court were less drastic, and in combination with other changes,...

Will Hillary Clinton Have a Serious Plan to Persuade Companies to Invest in Workers?

The Washington Post reported on a speech by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she decried corporate America's short-term focus and called on companies to invest in their workers. She did not indicate any specific proposals for bringing this about. In an earlier speech she had suggested tax incentives to promote profit sharing.

It actually is not hard to give companies more incentive to invest in their workers, we can just make it harder for them to fire them. According to the...

Can We Stop With the Stories of China's Stock Market Crash Sinking Its Economy?

Bloomberg got into the act today with a quote from a Chinese economist telling readers:

"'A lot of entrepreneurs probably have invested in the stock market and now they have seen a significant loss,' Liu Li-Gang, chief Greater China economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Hong Kong, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. 'As a result business confidence has lowered. In the past, sentiment tends to have a lot of impact on this survey.'"

The problem with story for arit...

We Don't Need Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug Research

This NYT article on various state bills calling for drug companies to reveal their spending on research for high-priced drugs might have been a good place to mention that we have alternatives to patent financing for prescription drug research. For example, the federal government already spends more than $30 billion a year on research through the National Institutes of Health. If this sum were doubled or tripled, it could likely replace the patent supported research now being down by the drug...

He Said, She Said on the Export-Import Bank

The NYT gave us a bit of the old "he said, she said" in an article reporting on the Obama administration's latest push for reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. It told readers:

"While opponents contend that most of the bank’s money benefits corporate giants like Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar, the small-business owners invited to the White House underscored supporters’ counterargument that most of the bank’s beneficiaries are smaller companies. Mr. Obama’s guests included the owner...

Uber Tries to Get Its Drivers to Push for Lower Pay

You've got to admire those Silicon Valley boys, they hire one of President Obama's top political advisers as a lobbyist, put out misleading studies on drivers' pay, and now they are trying to get their drivers to lobby to reduce their own pay.

The context for the latter was their urging of their "partners" to come to a rally against New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's decision to freeze the number of new cars for hire that Uber and other Internet based companies can put on the city's streets. De...

Headline Repair on Child Poverty

This one needs a really big "oy." The lead headline of the Huffington Post tells readers that "child poverty higher now than great recession." This is based on an AP story headlined "more U.S. children are living in poverty than during the great recession." This article is in turn based on the annual Kids Count Data Book that is produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

It turns out that this is not quite the story as the second paragraph of the article indicates:

"Twenty-two percent of Ame...

Government Granted Patent Monopolies Are Not the Free Market

Those folks at the Wall Street Journal are really turning reality on its head. Today it ran a column by Robert Ingram, a former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, complaining about efforts to pass "transparency" legislation in Massachusetts, New York, and a number of other states. This legislation would require drug companies to report their profits on certain expensive drugs as well as government funding that contributed to their development.

Ingram sees such laws as a prelude to price controls. He the...