Dean Baker's Blog, page 53

Can We Find a Taxi Driver to Bring Thomas Friedman to Planet Earth?

I can't say I know anyone who reads Thomas Friedman, but I suppose such people must exist since the NYT keeps running his column. Anyhow, while the guy probably hasn't had a real insight for at least two decades, his column this week really paves new ground in absurdity.

The piece boldly tells readers in the headline, "the answers to our problems aren't as simple as left or right," this followed with the subhead, "the old binary choices no longer work." 

The piece is then filled with sma...

Washington Post Budget Article Tells Readers Nothing About the Budget

Hey, but why would anyone expect otherwise from the Washington Post. The piece gave the outlines of a budget deal between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House, which is intended to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.

According to the article:

"Agreeing on new spending levels also avoids onerous budget caps that would otherwise snap into place automatically under an Obama-era deal, and indiscriminately slash $126 billion from domestic and Pentagon budgets."

Is this $126 billion over one...

The U.S.-China Trade War: Will Workers Lose?

(This post was originally published on my Patreon page.)

One of the central themes in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was that U.S. workers were being badly hurt by trade. His story was that the country had signed bad trade deals that were put together by “stupid” trade negotiators.

Trump’s story was half right. Workers in the United States were badly hurt by trade, a fact that many in the mainstream are still reluctant to acknowledge in spite of overwhelming evidence.

The basic point is...

It's Not an Accident Medicare Doesn't Cover Retirees Overseas: No One in the Media Supports Free Trade!

The New York Times ran a piece warning retirees thinking of moving overseas that Medicare will not cover their medical expenses in other countries. This is true, but the NYT piece never once pointed out that this is conscious policy, not something that just happened.

Readers of the paper may recall that it reports on trade agreements all the time. These trade agreements cover a wide range of issues, including things like enforcing patent and copyright monopolies and rules on Internet commerce...

The New York Times Can't Even Talk About Publicly Funded Drug Research

Austin Frakt had a peculiar piece in the NYT Upshot section, which told readers, "there is no single, best policy for drug prices." The piece is peculiar because for some reason Frakt opts not to even consider the policy of direct public funding for research, which would then allow all new drugs to be sold at generic prices.

While there are problems with any system, direct funding, which could be done through various mechanisms, would permanently end the problem of high-priced drugs. With the...

The Coal Industry Is Not a Major Employer

The NYT had a column by Eliza Griswold talking about the prospect of job loss in coal mining areas due to efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. While it is often traumatic for workers to lose jobs, especially long-held jobs, it is important to realize that relatively few jobs are at stake in the coal mining industry.

For example, in Pennsylvania, one of the states mentioned in the piece, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are now 5,000 coal mining jobs in the state. The...

The June Jobs Report and the State of the Economy

(This post first appeared on my Patreon page.)

The June jobs report showed the economy created 224,000 jobs in the month, a sharp increase from the revised level of 72,000 reported for May. With considerable evidence that the economy is slowing, and the ADP report showing the economy created just 102,000 jobs in June, the jobs growth number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was much higher than most analysts had expected.

It led the markets to reverse their expectations of a July cut in the...

Cheap Shots at the Trump Economy

I am not anxious to defend Donald Trump's economic performance, but a complaint by Steven Rattner in his New York Times column caught my attention. The column features a graph showing that the ratio of the median wage for blacks has fallen relative to the median wage for white workers since 2016.

This bothered me, because in general the situation for blacks, and other groups who face discrimination, improves in a tight labor market. While it is possible that the plight of blacks has deteriora...

Roger Cohen Celebrates the Victory of Austerity in Greece

Greece's economy has recovered modestly from the depths of it hit at the peak of its crisis in 2014 and 2015, but with an unemployment rate that is still close to 19 percent, there hardly seems like great cause for celebration. The overall economic picture in Greece still look horrible even compared with disasters like the Great Depression in the United States.

Employment is still down by almost 20 percent from its pre-crisis peak in 2008, the equivalent of 30 million people losing work in th...

Increasing Home Ownership Does Not Reduce Demand for Rental Units

Sorry to pick on a NYT editorial with which I mostly agree, but the assertion that plans by Democratic presidential candidates to increase homeownership, "if successful, could ease the demand for rental units," really needs to be called out.

Let's say these plans are successful. Where do the additional units come from that the new homeowners now occupy? Some may come from existing homeowners who decide to sell at the higher prices resulting from these plans, and then become renters.

Some of t...