Dean Baker's Blog, page 31

The New York Times Doesn’t Like It When Workers Have Job Security: The Case of Japan

The New York Times had a fascinating piece pointing out that Japan’s unemployment rate has barely budged in response to the pandemic recession, even as the U.S. rate (adjusted for measurement issues) has topped 15.0 percent. But the piece comes with an important warning:

“Critics say it makes companies reluctant to take risks in hiring new employees, reducing options for the country’s young workers. It may also make it more difficult for businesses to retool their work forces to adapt to changin...

Patents and the Pandemic, Again

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

I know I have been pounding on this a lot, but it is important and there is a lot of money at stake. All we need (okay, maybe not all) is some clear thinking.

The Washington Post had a good piece this week talking about how a company set up by a hedge fund, with no background or expertise in pharmacology, arranged to get rights to drug that was developed by researchers at Emory University on a $16 million contract with the government. The drug,...

Nonsense About China that “Everyone” Knows

I want to do a bit more beating up on a NYT piece this morning on breaking ties with China. There is a widely held view in policy circles that the pandemic showed that our extensive economic ties with China are a bad thing. I will ask a simple question, how?

First to get over some obvious points, yes, China has an authoritarian government that does not respect basic human rights. That is true, but what exactly do we hope to do about it? If we cut our imports from China by half or even put a comp...

NYT Gives Up on Logic in News Reporting — Tells Readers of Risk of Relying on China, with Zero Argument

The NYT ran a piece with a headline that began “break the China Habit,” and featured the subhead, “the risks of relying economically on the Asian superpower have never seemed clearer. But as the world tries to get moving again, it needs China more than ever.”

Perhaps the paper considered the risks so apparent that it didn’t need to mention them in the article, because it didn’t. Yes, we all know the coronavirus originated in China and that its government was not forthcoming with information abou...

The Simple Way to Prevent Hedge Funds from Gaming Government Pandemic Research Funding: Don’t Give Patent Monopolies

The Washington Post had an interesting piece on how a hedge fund managed to secure $16 million in public funds (10,000 food stamp person-years) for a shell company, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which then used the money to contract for research with Emory University. When the results showed some promise, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics then sold the rights to Merck, which is doing further testing.

This problem would have been easy to avoid if the government had a rule that when it pays for research, all...

Government-Granted Patent Monopolies and Structural Racism

No, I have not gone off the deep end, there is an important connection that I will get to in a moment. First, I want to be clear that I am not trying to take anything away from the immediate issue that has brought hundreds of thousands into the streets, the police killing of George Floyd. (We even had a protest in my little town in Utah.)

It is encouraging to see so many people of all races marching to demand justice. Perhaps these mass protests will lead to a lasting change in the way the polic...

Ending Emergency Unemployment Insurance Supplements

The Republicans have been working hard to ensure that the $600 weekly supplement to unemployment insurance benefits, which was put in place as part of the pandemic rescue package, is not extended beyond the current July 31 cutoff. They argue that we need people to return to work.

They do have a point. The supplement is equivalent to pay of $15 an hour for someone working a 40-hour week, and this is in addition to a regular benefit that is typically equal to 40 to 50 percent of workers’ pay. The ...

The Enemy is Government-Granted Patent Monopolies, not the Market

(This is the first entry in an exchange with Leigh Phillips. I am responding to a piece he wrote in Jacobin last week about the drug industry’s response to the pandemic.)

Leigh Phillips had a very useful piece in Jacobin on how patent protections are impeding progress in developing and distributing vaccines or treatments for the Coronavirus. The piece points out how the United States has engaged in a pointless competition with the rest of the world, which has involved trying to procure control o...

NYT Says Farmers to Get 10 Million Food Stamp Person Years of Government Aid

That is not precisely what the newspaper said because it prefers to use really big numbers that it knows are meaningless to almost all of its readers. It instead told readers that the aid is expected to be $16 billion. This is in addition to the 7.5 million food stamp person-years that farmers got in 2018 as relief from Trump’s trade war and the 10 million food stamp person-years that they got in relief last year. 

Anyhow, the NYT knows that when it writes $16 billion or any other really big bud...

Washington Post Invents a Growth Dividend from Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy

Sweden has stood apart from most other wealthy countries in dealing with the pandemic, by not imposing some sort of shutdown, where non-essential businesses are closed and travel is kept to a minimum. Its Nordic neighbors all went this route and then engaged in extensive testing and tracing strategies.

As a result, Sweden has seen a much higher infection and fatality rate than the other Nordic countries. Sweden’s fatality rate to date is 450 per million, which compares to 101 per million for Den...