Dean Baker

David Leonhard pronounced the death of the Employee Free Choice Act [ECFA] (it was stopped by a Senate filibuster) a good thing. He missed two key points. First, he worried about the fact that the bill could allow unions to be formed without a secret ballot. Actually, unions can already be formed without a secret […]

Is there a reason that reporters cannot speak to someone who does not have a direct stake in promoting home sales when they report on home sales data? The NYT again committed this sin when it published an AP story on the May drop in existing home sales. Would the NYT rely on the United […]

There is a common refrain in policy debates that our budget deficit is the cause of the trade defict. The NYT is at the forefront of those arguing this position. Last week (while I was away), they again made the case in attacking a Senate proposal to deliberately lower the value of the dollar against […]

The NYT perpetuated the silly debate on whether H-1B visas lower the wages of highly-skilled U.S. workers. For those of us who believe in markets this is a straight no-brainer. If you increase supply, you lower the price, in this case the wages of highly skilled workers. But, the NYT does the old Keystone cops […]

I’m out of here until Monday, June 25th. In the meantime, don’t believe anything you read in the paper. –Dean Baker

It’s contract time for the United Auto Workers and the Wall Street Journal is working hard to build the case for big pay cuts. The paper tells us that compensation for UAW members is in the range of $70-$75 an hour. Well that’s serious money. At that rate, with overtime, an autoworker can earn as […]

My guess is that they can and will, but the NYT doesn’t seem to agree. In a bit over a month, the 10-year treasury rate has gone from around 4.6 percent to more than 5.25 percent. This rise will be passed on almost one to one in higher mortgage rates. With many people already stretching […]

Those of us old-fashioned types think that doctors should be prescribing drugs based on the health needs of their patients. But hey, what do we know? According to the NYT, the pharmaceutical industry thought it was very important that doctors know exactly how much they could profit from prescribing their drugs for different types of […]

The Washington Post headlined a front page business section article “Blue Dogs Take Aim At Record Deficits.” The article tells us how a group of conservative Democrats are unhappy with the budget deficit and hope to place new restrictions on spending. Let’s hope that they are better at arithmetic than the Washington Post. Measured as […]

Robert Samuelson is back pushing the case for inequality. He tells Newsweek readers that “the economy that produces these growing inequalities outperforms the one that created more statistical equality.” He must be using some new math in this claim, because the old math doesn’t support his claim. While the period 1973-1980 does look very bad, […]