Dean Baker's Blog, page 82

We Will See Real Wage Growth

No, I'm not being a Trump cheerleader, I am just looking at the numbers. This piece in the Washington Post noted the lack of real wage growth and indicated the future prospects were dubious.

The year-over-year rate of inflation was 2.9 percent in July, slightly exceeding the 2.7 percent rate of growth in the average hourly wage. However, this figure was inflated by jumps in oil prices last August and September. In the next two months, these jumps fall out of the 12-month window.

If we assume...

The Cost of the Medicare Drug Benefit Has Actually Been Far Less Than Projected

Austin Frakt had an NYT Upshot piece complaining that the cost of the Medicare prescription drug plan to taxpayers has been soaring:

"But the stability in the premiums belies much larger growth in the cost for taxpayers. In 2007, Part D cost taxpayers $46 billion. By 2016, the figure reached $79 billion, a 72 percent increase."

This is a peculiar complaint because the plan is actually costing the government far less than had been projected. The 2004 Medicare Trustees report projected that P...

Scott Walker Boasts About the Sun Coming Up in the Washington Post

Politicians like to take credit for things they have little to do with it. Serious newspapers point this fact out when it happens.

The Washington Post fell down on the job in a piece that quoted Wisconsin governor Scott Walker saying, "There are more people in the workforce in Wisconsin than ever before in the history of the state."

This is a pretty empty claim since it will be true most of the time (except recessions) for most states. Since populations generally grow, unless there is a downt...

The Unemployment Rate In Minnesota Is 3.1 Percent

That might have been worth mentioning in this NYT piece on Wisconsin's political situation. The piece notes the conservative policies put in place by the state's Republican governor, Scott Walker. It then notes that the unemployment rate has fallen below 3.0 percent.

In this context, it might have been worth mentioing that Minnesota, Wisconsin's neighboring state, has an unemployment rate of 3.1 percent. Minnesota has been led by a liberal Democrat. This suggests that Wisconsin's relatively s...

NYT Says Partisanship Determines Thinking on Economy, but Its Chart Shows Partisanship Determines Republican Thinking on the Economy

I am not in the habit of defending Democrats (it's not part of my job description), but come on folks. The central graph in this piece shows little change in the views of Democrats on the economy pre and post-2016. It shows the percentage of Republicans who rate the economy good or excellent jumping from around 20 percent to 77 percent in the most recent reading.

This is a story of Republican attitudes reflecting who is in the White House. It shows the exact opposite for Democrats. We know th...

Fact Checking the Fact Checker on Medicare for All

I see that Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, is being pretty liberal in dishing out the Pinocchios over Democrats' claim that a study from a right-wing think tank found that a Medicare-for-all system would save $2 trillion over the course of the decade. Kessler's main complaints are that these savings assume that providers accept a 40 percent reduction in payments and that Democrats' have ignored the study's projection that Medicare-for-all would add $32.6 trillion to the feder...

NYT Effort to Fill the Insatiable Market for Financial Crisis Stories: William D. Cohan Edition

Prior to the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis there was little interest in major news outlets in pieces warning about the bubble and the risks it posed to the economy. These days there seems to be a large demand for such pieces. Unfortunately, in choosing these pieces, news outlets seem little better informed today than they were in the housing bubble years.

Today’s contribution comes from William D. Cohan and appears in the New York Times. The center of his s...

NYT Effort to Fill the Insatiable Market for Financial Crisis Stories: William D. Cohen Edition

Prior to the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis there was little interest in major news outlets in pieces warning about the bubble and the risks it posed to the economy. These days there seems to be a large demand for such pieces. Unfortunately, in choosing these pieces, news outlets seem little better informed today than they were in the years.

Today’s contribution comes from William D. Cohen and appears in the New York Times. The center of his story is corpora...

Secret Info for CEOs: Your Competitors Have Workers You Can Hire

We all know how hard it is to get help these days. Companies are shelling out $15 or $20 million a year for CEOs who can't seem to figure out how to tie their own shoes. Marketplace radio ran a piece on how companies are turning to older workers, people with prison records, and people who failed drug tests to find workers. While this is great news, since these people are now getting opportunities as a result of the low unemployment rate, companies seem to be ignoring the most obvious place to...

NYT Falls Victim to Trump Derangement Syndrome in Warning of Clouds for the Economy

Donald Trump provides no shortage of grounds for criticism, but the NYT is really grasping at straws in it editorial headlined, "clouds darken Trump's sunny economic view." The confusion that characterizes the piece starts in the first paragraph when it tells us "the stock market seemed unimpressed" by the 157,000 jobs reported for July.

This is bizarre for two reasons. First, a major complaint of the piece is that workers are not getting their share of productivity gains, instead it is going...