Dean Baker's Blog, page 40

New York Times Flunks Putting Numbers in Context in Chicago

The New York Times had an interesting piece about three generations of an African American family, focusing on a man who moved from the South to Chicago in the mid-1950s. He had enjoyed a reasonably comfortable working class life in the city, but one of his daughters moved to the suburbs, because she saw it as a safer place to raise her daughter. The daughter eventually moved to Houston where she had better career prospects. This is given as an example of the outflow of African Americans from...

We Shouldn’t Have to Beg Mark Zuckerberg to Respect Democracy

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.) Last month George Soros had a New York Times column arguing that Mark Zuckerberg should not be running Facebook. (Does the NYT reserve space on its opinion page for billionaires?) The gist of Soros’ piece is that Zuckerberg has made a deal with Trump. He will allow all manner of outrageous lies to be spread on Facebook to benefit Trump’s re-election campaign. In exchange, Trump will defend Zuckerberg from efforts to regulate Facebook.

Soros...

Remember the Trade Deficit? Washington Post Forgets It in Drawing Up Trump’s Report Card

Perhaps 2016 was too far back, but those of us old enough to remember recall Donald Trump making the trade deficit a huge campaign issue. He railed about how the United States was giving away so much money to China, Mexico, and other countries with whom we had trade deficits. He promised that this would end when he was in the White House.

For some reason, the issue of the trade deficit did not enter the Washington Post’s assessment of the extent to which Trump has followed through on his...

We Can Develop New Drugs Without Patent Monopolies # 54,217

It is often said that intellectual have a hard time dealing with new ideas. This is perhaps nowhere better demonstrated with the fixation with patent monopolies as the primary mechanism for financing the development of new drugs.

Bloomberg gave us a beautiful example of this narrow mindedness with a column from Max Nisen on the possibility that China may require the compulsory licensing of a patent on a drug developed by Gilead, in order to produce a treatment for the Coronavirus. A...

The Left Becomes Center: Financial Transactions Taxes and Beyond

Last week, Antonio Weiss, along with co-author Laura Kawano, released a paper advocating a financial transactions tax (FTT). I have long been an advocate of FTTs, so I’m always glad to see another paper making the case.

However, what made this paper especially noteworthy is Weiss’s background. Weiss had been a top Treasury official under President Obama, and previously a partner at the investment bank, Lazard, so he is not the sort of person who would typically be expected to support a FTT.

...

Technology, Patents, and Inequality: An Explanation that Even Economists Can Understand

It is popular for people, especially economist-type people, to claim that technology has been a major driver of the increase in inequality over the last four decades. This view is very convenient for those on the winning side of the inequality divide, since it implies that the growth in inequality was largely an organic process independent of government policy. Inequality might be an unfortunate outcome, but who would be opposed to the advance of technology?

However convenient the technology...

Yes, It's Monday Morning and Robert Samuelson Is Worried About Budget Deficits

It’s amazing how Samuelson can continue to push his concerns about the budget deficit when all the evidence points to it not being a problem. In his latest tirade he tells us the problems of the deficit:

“First: As government debt piles up, it increasingly crowds out private investment. This, in turn, weakens productivity growth, which is a major source of higher living standards. With interest rates now so low, this doesn’t seem a problem — which is why it is.

“Second: The truly scary...

Yes, It's Monday Morning and Robert Samuelson Is Worried About Budget Deficits

It's amazing how Samuelson can continue to push his concerns about the budget deficit when all the evidence points to it not being a problem. In his latest tirade he tells us the problems of the deficit:

"First: As government debt piles up, it increasingly crowds out private investment. This, in turn, weakens productivity growth, which is a major source of higher living standards. With interest rates now so low, this doesn’t seem a problem — which is why it is.

"Second: The truly scary...

Can Manufacturing Workers Take Many More of Trump’s Trade Victories?

(This piece first appeared on my Patreon page.)

Last week, as Donald Trump was trying to distract attention from his impeachment trial, he was holding events touting his big trade victories. The two items for celebration were the new NAFTA, dubbed by Trump as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and a “phase one” trade deal with China. While these deals may be useful props for the impeachment distraction, they are unlikely to offer much to the manufacturing workers who Trump claims are at the...

Can Manufacturing Workers Take Many More of Trump’s Trade Victories?

(This piece first appeared on my Patreon page.)

Last week, as Donald Trump was trying to distract attention from his impeachment trial, he was holding events touting his big trade victories. The two items for celebration were the new NAFTA, dubbed by Trump as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and a “phase one” trade deal with China. While these deals may be useful props for the impeachment distraction, they are unlikely to offer much to the manufacturing workers who Trump claims are at the...