Dean Baker's Blog, page 454

Astounding Development: Post Columnist Discovers the Problem Is the U.S. Health Care System, Not Medicare

Okay folks, mark August 25, 2012 in your calendar. That is the day that Matt Miller clearly stated on the Washington Post op-ed page that the problem is not Medicare, but the broken U.S. health care system. Miller noted that we spend more than twice as large a share of our GDP on health care as the average for other wealthy countries and have little to show for it in terms of outcomes.

He attributes this additional expense to the medical-industrial complex. Miller tells readers:

"It’s [health...

Astounding Development: Post Columinist Discovers the Problem Is the U.S. Health Care System, Not Medicare

Okay folks, mark August 25, 2012 in your calendar. That is the day that Matt Miller clearly stated on the Washington Post oped page that the problem is not Medicare, but the broken U.S. health care system. Miller noted that we spend more than twice as large a share of our GDP on health care as the average for other wealthy countries and have little to show for it in terms of outcomes.

He attributes this additional expense to the medical-industrial complex. Miller tells readers:

"It’s [health...

David Brooks Bemoans the Fact that We Didn't Have the Fiscal Cliff a Year Ago

He didn't use exactly those words, but that is one implication of his column on Paul Ryan's decision to not support the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan when he was a member of the deficit commission back in 2010. (Brooks attributes Ryan's action to his hope for a larger scale overhaul of Medicare. More cynical types might attribute it to his adherence to the Republican dogma of never supporting tax increases.)

Anyhow, fans of the Bowles-Simpson report might recall that it would have first put bud...

Housing Sales Are Back to Trend

Both the NYT and USA Today have convinced themselves that house sales are well below their trend level, with the latter telling us that a 5.5 million annual sales rate of existing homes considered healthy. In fact, we are pretty much back to trend levels of sales. In the mid-90s before the bubble began to distort the market, sales averaged about 3.5 million a year. A simple adjustment for the 15 percent population growth over this period would imply an annual sales rate of 4 million existing...

Niall Ferguson Is the Gift That Just Keeps Giving

Niall Ferguson is really upset. He heard about the conspiracy among progressive bloggers to pay Newsweek to print his error filled piece trashing President Obama. He fires back with this piece in the Daily Beast. It's just as much fun as the last one.

To start with, Ferguson is intent on digging himself deeper into a hole on his original claims:

"The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that...

The Washington Post Loses It on the Fiscal Cliff

The headline of a front page Washington Post article warned readers:

"Recession imminent if ‘fiscal cliff’ of tax hikes, budget cuts not averted, CBO says."

Nope, that is not true as all faithful BTP readers know.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for a recession are not based on Congress taking action before January 1 when the tax increases and spending cuts first take effect. The CBO projections are based on the assumption that Congress never does anything to offset the sche...

Housing Recovery: It's Better Than the NYT Thinks

The NYT had an article that was far more hesitant about the housing recovery than is warranted by the data. In fact, house prices have pretty much stabilized at a normal level, as have existing home sales.

The problem is that the NYT still does not seem to understand that we had a housing bubble, at one point warning readers that:

"She [Michelle Meyer, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch] expected home prices to rise 2 percent annually in 2012 and 2013, with momentum gradually in...

George Will Says Paternalistic Health Measures are Bad Policy and Don't Work

The context is efforts to limit the consumption of sugary soft drinks, which Will assures us will not work and are a waste of government money. Will is appalled that the Centers for Disease Control gave a $3 million grant to the State of Rhode Island to study how procurement strategies in schools and other public institutions can be altered to reduce the consumption of sugary soft drinks.

It would be difficult to determine whether this $3 million grant (approximately 0.00008 percent of feder...

David Brooks, Santa Claus, and the Serious Mr. Ryan

NYT readers must be wondering whether David Brooks believes in Santa Claus. After all, he repeatedly professes his belief in the serious Mr. Ryan. This faith persists in spite of all the evidence to the opposite, including evidence that Brooks cites in arguing his case.

Today in an Opinionator discussion with Gail Collins in the NYT, Brooks told readers:

"I don’t see how anybody can say that Ryan is unserious when, unlike most national pols, he actually has a budget detailed enough for C.B.O....

The Fiscal Cliff Is Not as Steep As It Seems

The Congressional Budget Office came out with its mid-year budget update. The update included a warning that if the Bush tax cut and the payroll tax cut are both allowed to expire and the cuts from last year's budget agreement take effect, the economy will sink into recession in 2013 and the unemployment rate will rise to 9.0 percent. The NYT immediately picked up on this warning in a news article on the new projections.

It is important to realize that this projection for a shrinking economy...