Dean Baker

USA Today pulled out all the stops in a news story today that argued the case for Clinton-Bush trade policies. The article begins by decrying the fact that �globalization� is losing support around the world and that countries are embracing �long-discredited economic strategies.� Let�s start at the beginning. What are the �long-discredited economic strategies� to […]

A small item in the Washington Post last week reports that the Senate budget committee is apparently planning to set up a panel to operate in secret to devise a plan for restructuring Social Security. According to the short piece, the intention is to produce a “bipartisan” plan which will then be put up for […]

The consensus estimate for retail sales growth in December was 0.5 percent. Naturally, people were surprised when growth was reported at 0.9 percent, as the NYT (among others) told us. Well, they really should not have been surprised, because the November numbers were revised down by 0.4 percent, which means that the December sales level […]

Here at BTP, I try to focus my comments on news reporting, not columns or editorials. I may occasionally bash David Brooks or mock Thomas Friedman�s latest letter on behalf of a national leader, but I realize that these are expressions of opinion and therefore should be allowed a bit more leeway than straight news […]

Anyone who thought that the reason we are paying so much for drugs under Medicare Part D is that it’s difficult to design better policies should read the front page article in today’s Post. The article explains that the Democratic leadership backed away from the most obvious steps, like having Medicare offer its own drug […]

I have been asleep at the wheel again. I failed to reprimand the media for failing to highlight the drop in the trade deficit over the last two months. The deficit for October and November averaged $58.5 billion, $10 billion less than the peak of $68.5 billion in August. As I�ve said in the past, […]

The Washington Post is going out all out to try to convince readers that the Medicare drug plan is just as good as it gets. Today it tells readers (in a news story) that “Experts Fault House Bill on Medicare Drug Prices,” and goes on to muster every argument it can, no matter how fallacious, […]

That would have been my headline. David Neumark, an economist who has devoted much of his career to research that is intended to show why the minimum wage is bad, was quoted in an NYT article as saying that the proposed minimum wage hike would reduce employment among the least skilled workers by 4 percent. […]

Remember that nasty fight over Social Security a couple of years ago? President Bush wanted to privatize part of the existing program by cutting the guaranteed benefit and giving people private accounts. This provoked large amounts of opposition by supporters of the current program. Well, Marketplace Radio gave Glenn Hubbard, formerly President Bush’s top economic […]

The Washington Post has an interesting piece discussing the life of the low-wage workforce in small town Kansas. It also tells us of the problems that low-wage employers will face in paying the higher minimum. At one point it asserts that “most economists agree [that the proposed minimum wage hike] would cause a modest increase […]