Dean Baker's Blog, page 564

Bill Clinton and Mrs. O'Leary

According to legend, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was started when Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocked over a latern in her barn setting it on fire. While Mrs. O'Leary certainly didn't set the fire on purpose, she is probably not the person we would consult on fire control. In the same vein, it is reasonable to ask why anyone would consult Bill Clinton about the country's current economic problems.

While the economy performed well during the second half of the Clinton administration, it was...

Cheap Tricks on Social Security

The business-backed group Third Way has been making a big point of going after Social Security lately. Today it had a column telling us that Social Security is in crisis, even though the most recent projections from the Social Security trustees show that the program can pay full scheduled benefits with no changes whatsoever for a quarter century. Even after that point, the program would always be able to pay a higher benefit than what current retirees receive.

Third Way's crisis argument...

NPR Invents Republican Flexibility In the Absence of Evidence

NPR decided to do a cutesy piece in which it implied that the debate over the debt ceiling amounted to the semantics of what constitutes a tax increase. It told listeners that there appears to be some movement by Republicans who are now willing to consider the elimination of some tax breaks, although these would have to be offset by reductions in tax rates. In other words, there would be no increase in revenue.

This is ZERO movement. Most Republicans have been on record as being willing to...

Do Obama's Advisors Really Not Know About the Housing Bubble?

This is the point that the Post should have been highlighting in an article about President Obama's comments on the housing market in his twitter townhall yesterday. Nationwide house prices had just tracked the overall rate of inflation from 1896 to 1996. In the decade from 1996 to 2006 house prices outpaced the overall rate of inflation by more than 70 percent.

At the point where President Obama took office, house prices had fallen by about 20 percent from their bubble peaks. Since there is ...

Front Page at the Washington Post: Employment Rates Are Dropping Less Rapidly for Men Than Women

There are a large number of organizations that produce interesting research on the labor market on a regular basis (including CEPR). Today the Post ran a front page piece on a study from the Pew Research Center that told readers: "Men Getting Jobs Faster than Women."

Those who read the article would discover that neither men nor women are getting jobs at a very rapid pace. In fact, the employment to population ratio (the percent of people over age 20 who are employed) has fallen for both men ...

More He Said/She Said on Minnesota's Budget from NPR

Morning Edition had another piece on the standoff over Minnesota's budget. Again it gave listeners no background that would allow them to determine the validity of Republican claims that state spending is soaring out of control. As noted before, the state is spending less relative to the size of the economy than it did in the early 90s. This means that the Republicans either are unfamiliar with the state budget or they are not being honest.

NPR Doesn't Know How They Balanced the Budget in the 1990s

That's the problem when you have young reporters. They can't remember back to the 1990s.

If NPR did have reporters who remembered back to the 1990s they would not be telling listeners that Ohio Governor John Kasich was:

  "chairman of the House Budget Committee when he balanced the budget with President Clinton in the 1990s."

Actually, neither John Kasich nor President Clinton balanced the budget in the 1990s. The 1996 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for the fiscal year 2000...

Yet More Editorializing in the Post's News Section

An article on the congressional debate over a new transportation bill began:

"The next flash point in the debate over the nation's will to live within its means may emerge this week as House Republicans present a long-term transportation bill expected to cut funding for highways and mass transit by almost one third."

Characterizing the battle over the transportation bill as a "flash point in the debate over the nation's will to live within its means," is crude editorializing that would not...

When It Comes to Budget Deficits, the Post Again Makes It Up

The Post reported on President Obama's assertion that it is necessary to make large cuts in projected deficits, telling readers:

"Obama weighed in Tuesday, noting that a remarkable bipartisan consensus has emerged about the scope and severity of the nation's debt problem. 'Most of us already agree that to truly solve our deficit problem, we need to find trillions in savings over the next decade, and significantly more in the decades that follow,'"

It would have been more appropriate to use...

Mexico's Secret Economic Boom

In an article on the decline in illegal immigration from Mexico, the NYT cited a "prominent economist" as saying that Mexico's per capita GDP had increased by more than 45 percent since 2000. This view of Mexico experiencing an economic boom is radically at odds with the official data. The IMF data show that Mexico's per capita has increased by just 10 percent since 2000, including a 4 percent increase projected for 2011. This is considerable less than per capital GDP growth in the U.S. over ...