Dean Baker's Blog, page 60

Wage Growth and the Shortage of Construction Workers

The NYT had an article reporting on how the reduction of immigration had led to a shortage of workers in many industries, highlighting the case of residential construction. While there have been modest increases in real wages in residential construction, the data don't provide evidence of a serious shortage of workers.

Since 2000, the inflation-adjusted average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers in the industry has increased by 14.3 percent, an average of 0.7 percent annual...

Deflation Is Not Preventing Consumers from Buying Items in Japan

The New York Times ran one of its periodic pieces on how bad things are in Japan. The gist of this piece is that China's economic slowdown is hurting Japan, so Japan may have been mistaken to rely on China as a major export market. As the subhead tells readers:

"A slump in exports raises questions about how effective Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies would have been without Chinese help."

This is a truly a bizarre sort of argument. China has the largest economy in the world on a p...

Buttigieg Says Flooding in the Midwest Is Not Big Deal, Just a Small Fraction of Year's Rainfall

That is not quite what he said, but it is pretty much in the same spirit as what Buttigieg said about trade and jobs, according to the Washington Post. The post told readers:

"Buttigieg has said six times as many jobs were lost because of automation as trade from 2000 to 2010."

This is more or less right in the same way that Nebraska will get far more rain over the course of 2019 than the rain that caused the recent flooding. And, the assertion makes about as much sense in the context of th...

Facebook Will Only Get "Flummoxed" in India if It Has Inadequate Staffing

The New York Times had an article about how Facebook is struggling to deal with an anticipated flood of fake news posts that will coincide with elections in India this month. The situation is presented as some sort of unforeseeable event that threatens to overwhelm Facebook in its efforts to weed out such posts.

Contrary to what is implied by the article, if Facebook is not prepared to deal with a large volume of fake posts it is because of the decision that the company has made not to hire a...

Who Will Get Poor from Uber, Lyft, and Other "Unicorns" that Go Public?

This would be a useful follow up to an NYT article telling readers who stands to make lots of money if these companies command high prices in IPOs, as seems likely to be the case. Some of these companies, like Uber, have never made a profit, and none of them make profits that could come anywhere close to justifying their IPO price.

Furthermore, at least in the case of Uber and Lyft, their business model seems to depend on breaking the law. Specifically, they hope to save money by having their...

Putting Numbers in Context: A Winnable Battle Our Side Doesn’t Want to Fight

Polls consistently show that the public hugely overestimates the share of the budget that goes to items like SNAP (food stamps), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and foreign aid. People will typically give answers in the range of 20 to 30 percent of the budget for these categories of spending. In reality, the shares are 1.5 percent for SNAP, 0.4 percent for TANF, and 0.4 percent for foreign aid.

I would argue that this matters, since the public’s willingness to support a program...

Anti-Trust and the Uber Gig Gang

The NYT had a good piece on efforts to have states classify gig workers, like Uber drivers, as independent contractors. The piece describes how Tusk Holdings, a lobbying firm, has been circumventing state legislatures and trying to get state agencies to make the determination that gig workers are contractors.

When explaining the problem with the independent contractor classification, the piece understated the anti-trust issue involved. It told readers:

"Uber and Lyft also determine pay rates...

Fred Hiatt Trashes the Left: Suppose a Billionaire Paid People to Trash the Center

Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post, used his column today to say that people on the left had developed Trumpian ways of viewing the world. For example, he said they value "the simple over the complex," using the example of people pushing the universal Medicare system in Canada as a solution to US health care problems. He warns about choosing "scapegoats over solutions," telling readers, "if your candidate starts telling you that everything would be fine if we just we...

Washington Post Highlights Harm that Climate Change and Over-Valued Dollar Have Done to Midwest Farmers

Just kidding, this is the Washington Post we're talking about. An article about how the Midwest floods are jeopardizing the survival of many family farms never once mentioned climate change. While it is impossible to link any specific weather event to climate change, in the sense that we can't know what the weather would look like had it not been for the rise in greenhouse gases (GHG) worldwide, we do know that climate change will lead to unusual weather patterns like the storms and flooding...

The Importance of Kicking Up: Changing Market Structures So the Rich Don’t Get All the Money

Most progressives focus their efforts on getting better pay and benefits for those at the bottom and middle. This includes policies like raising the minimum wage, stronger overtime rules, and better Medicaid benefits. This is good and important work, which I have often engaged in myself.

However, it is also important to address the other side of the equation, all the money going to the rich. Many want to do this by having a more progressive tax structure. That would be good and could help to...