Dean Baker's Blog, page 43

Washington Post Columnist Charles Lane Is Confident Fossil Fuel Industry Has Enough Political Power to Destroy the Planet

Charles Lane used his Washington Post column to brag about the fact that the fossil fuel industry and climate denialists have had enough political power to prevent more widespread use of electrical cars, as he had apparently predicted would be the case a decade ago. He seems very proud of this fact. He also concludes by citing a prediction that there will be 125 million electric vehicles on the road worldwide in a decade, less than one-tenth of the total. And he is confident that the actual...

Washington Post Gets Lost in Really Big Budget Numbers

The Washington Post ran a classic "really big numbers" piece on how much Democratic presidential candidates want to spend on the various initiatives they are proposing. These stories are known as "really big numbers" pieces because they provide basically zero context as they throw really big numbers at readers that they know almost none of them would understand.

The piece starts off by telling us that Bernie Sanders wants to spend $50 trillion over the next decade. It tells us that Warren...

Bill Greider and Secular Stagnation

My friend, Bill Greider, died on Christmas day. Greider, who was 83, was an old-time journalist who believed that the job meant exposing the corruption of the rich and powerful, rather than becoming their friends in order to get inside stories. This meant that he was never very popular with elite types, as perhaps best evidenced by his minimal obituary at the Washington Post, where he had worked for a decade as a reporter and an editor.

Greider's writing had a large impact on my thinking...

The Future of Trade Deals

(This piece first appeared on my Patreon page.)

Last week, to take some of the sting off his impeachment, Donald Trump was celebrating his trade deals as evidence of the great success of his presidency. Specially, he has touted his revised NAFTA, which the Democratic leadership agreed to, and his first round trade agreement with China. Neither deal is likely to have a noticeable impact on the U.S. economy, but this does provide a good opportunity to think about the shape of future trade...

Christmas Present for Public Health Experts: We Don't Need Patent Monopolies to Develop New Antibiotics

The New York Times had an interesting piece about how developers of antibiotics are finding it impossible to make a profit, which most abandoning the field or going bankrupt. Incredibly, no one the piece talked to seems to have thought of a solution that does not rely on government-granted patent monopolies as the main financing mechanism for research.

"Public health experts say the crisis calls for government intervention. Among the ideas that have wide backing are increased reimbursements...

New York Times Doesn't Have Access to Data on Russia's GDP

That is the inevitable conclusion for readers of a NYT article on Putin and Russia that had the headline, "Russia is a mess. Why is Putin such a formidable enemy." While the article notes the recent economic stagnation in Russia, it misses the extraordinary turnaround that took place under Putin.

According to I.M.F. data, Russia's per capita income fell by almost 50 percent between 1990 and 1998.

Source: International Monetary Fund.

 

This unprecedented peace time collapse took place...

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Right to Dump Sewage on Your Lawn

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

In debates over protecting the environment, and especially global warming, it is standard practice to refer to the pro-protection side as being in favor of government regulation and the anti-protection side as being pro-free market. This is nonsense and it is nonsense in a way that strongly benefits the enemies of environmental protection.

There is a simple way to think about environmental protection. If I build a home and want to dispose of...

Trade Deals Are About Increasing Protectionist Barriers

The NYT had a piece describing the departure of the UK from the EU as the end of an era:

"The notion that global economic integration amounts to human progress had a good run, dominating the thinking of the powers that be for more than seven decades. But a new era is underway in which national interests take primacy over collective concerns, with trading arrangements negotiated among individual countries."

This fundamentally misrepresents past trade policies and totally misrepresents the crux...

Soybean Markets Are Unimpressed with Trump-China Trade Deal

People who remember the 1990s stock bubble and the housing bubble of the last decade know that markets are not always right. But it is nonetheless worth following their response to events to see how ostensibly knowledgeable people see them.

In the case of Trump's trade deal with China, where the big highlight was an announcement of new soybean purchases, the response was a big thumbs down. While soybean prices did go up by close to 1.0 percent yesterday, they are still around 3.0 percent...

The Free College Battle

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

The prospect of free public college is shaping up as one of the major divides between the more progressive candidates (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and the more centrist candidates (Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg). Buttigieg in particular has been especially vocal in his opposition to making college free for everyone.

He has argued that it would be regressive to tax middle class people to pay for the children of the wealthy to go to...