Dean Baker's Blog, page 339

Norwegian Researcher Shows Election of Republican Governor in North Carolina Sends Employment Plummeting

Brad Plummer calls our attention to a study by an economist at the University of Oslo showing that employment in North Carolina plummeted immediately following the election of Republican Governor Pat McCrory. According to the study, whose lead author is University of Oslo Professor Marcus Hagedorn, employment fell by 295,000 or 7.0 percent in the three months from November, 2012 to February, 2013. This plunge in employment was associated with a 5.3 percentage point drop in the employment to p...

The Myth of the German Boom Persists in Roger Cohen's Columns

The mythical German economic boom, along with Santa Claus and the Loch Ness Monster, made an appearance in Roger Cohen's NYT column this morning. (Actually, Santa is still recovering from his busy Christmas and Nessie is hiding, but the German boom is there, really.) Cohen tells readers that Germany did the right thing when its Social Democratic government weakened its welfare state. He now is pleased that France's Socialist President Francois Hollande is about to follow suit.

"The German lef...

The Other World Of The Obamacare Opponents

For all its many flaws Obamacare will prove to be a great thing for the simple reason that it will guarantee most of the population affordable health care insurance. The key group here is not the uninsured, many of whom will be able to get insurance as a result of the law, but rather the bulk of the under age 65 population whose insurance depends on their job. For the first time, these people will be in a situation where if they lose their job, they will still be able to get insurance they ca...

The WSJ Says the Elderly Are Rich But We Didn't Know It

Sylvester Scheiber and Andrew Biggs have good news for us in a Wall Street Journal column, apparently the elderly are much better off than we realized.  Scheiber, a pension consultant and former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, and Biggs, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute and former Deputy Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, tell readers that the standard numbers on income for the elderly are way off.

The most commonly used measures of incom...

Did We Need a Landmark Study to Tell Us Mobility Didn't Decrease for People Entering the Labor Market Between 1990 and 2007?

The Washington Post gave front page coverage to some serious non-news when it highlighted a "landmark" study showing no substantial changes in mobility for children born in the early 1990s relative to children born in the early 1970s. While this findings is presented as surprising to both people who expected an increase or decrease in mobility, it really would have been surprising if the study had found otherwise.

The big shift in the income distribution against workers at the bottom occurre...

1.5 Million Fracking Jobs? Is Legalized Marijuana Affecting the NYT

That's what readers must be asking after seeing this piece discussing the prospects for fracking in Australia. The piece tell readers:

"Whereas about 1.5 million fracking jobs have taken place in the United States, only 2,500 have occurred in Australia, according to the Victoria report."

It's not clear where the NYT got the 1.5 million jobs figure, but it's a safe bet that it is not from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The December, 2013 jobs figure for oil and gas extraction 48,400 hig...

WSJ Can't Figure Out Why Hiring Lags When Factories Are Not Humming

Actually the headline of the WSJ piece is "why hiring lags behind even as factories hum." It then presents accounts of several companies putting off hiring and expansion plans because of uncertainty about the course of the economy. Several factory owners or managers report increasing the length of the workweek or investing in new technology as an alternative to new hiring.

While the anecdotes are interesting, the reality is that the main reason that firms are not hiring is that manufacturing...

When Someone Says Paul Krugman Called for Greenspan to Create a Housing Bubble Back in 2002, They are Trying to Say That They are Either a Fool or a Liar

Paul Krugman is a very smart person who does a fine job of defending himself. But he has enough detractors who repeat the same nonsense enough times that some reasonable people may actually be deceived.

For this reason, I will briefly intervene to point out that the people claiming Krugman called on Greenspan to create a housing bubble in 2002, like Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal today, are just making stuff up.

The basis for this absurd claim was a 2002 column on the weak recovery...

The Davos Crew Is Worried That Aging Populations Will Lead to Higher Wages

Yep, that sounds like a true world crisis. And you can read about it right here in the NYT. The headline of the article tells readers that this year's meeting of the world's rich will focus on the aging of Asia's population. As the piece explains:

"Asia’s aging has big implications globally. It ultimately means fewer workers and higher wages, adding to the cost of goods manufactured in Asia. And it could mean less dynamic growth in a region that is increasingly important to the world economy....

The Damage From the Housing Bubble: How Much Did the Greenspan-Rubin Gang Cost Us?

Eduardo Porter asks how much the housing bubble and its collapse cost us in his column today. (He actually asks about the financial crisis, but this was secondary. The damage was caused by the loss of demand driven by bubble wealth in a context where we had nothing to replace it.) Porter throws out some estimates from different sources, but there are some fairly straightforward ways to get some numbers from authoritative sources.

We can use as a starting point the Congressional Budget Office'...