Dean Baker

Everyone knows that the dynamic U.S. economy generates new jobs at a much faster pace than the sclerotic economies of “Old Europe.” Well everyone is wrong. Since 2000, Old Europe (the EU-15) have generated jobs at a 0.9 percent annual rate compared to a 0.7 percent rate in the U.S.. This follows a decade in […]

The Times has an interesting article about a plan to get low-cost laptops to children in the developing world. To keep costs down, the computers will use Linux, an open source operating system, instead of Windows. The article reports that Bill Gates doesn’t think it’s a good idea to use laptops to connect the world’s […]

I tried really hard to ignore this, but I do have the business section of the Washington Post sitting on my dining room table staring at me. And it says, “You Might Have to Thank Him for Your Job.” Yes, that is the headline of the Washington Post’s article on Edmund Phelps winning the Nobel […]

The Washington Post published the results of a poll today showing that almost 40 percent of those expressing an opinion believe that the recent fall in gas prices is attributable to political manipulation of the market. While I don�t consider this a credible proposition (of course I also didn�t believe that Enron could be actively […]

The awarding of the non-Nobel prize (this prize was created by the Bank of Sweden in 1968, not Alfred Nobel) to Columbia University Professor Edmund Phelps, in part for his work on the theory of the natural rate of unemployment, provided the media with a good opportunity to talk about the current status of the […]

Most of the news articles on yesterday’s employment report noted that the Labor Department’s benchmark revision will add 810,000 jobs to the numbers reported in the establishment survey, as of March of 2006. This is an extraordinarily large revision that implies that job growth was considerably more rapid between March of 2005 and March of […]

To its credit, the New York Times can occasionally present substantially diverse viewpoints. Today�s paper includes an excellent piece by Paul Krugman, one of the country�s leading economists, about Wal-Mart plans to reduce its wage bill by hiring more part-time workers. Part-time workers get lower pay and fewer benefits. Right next to Krugman�s column, it […]

David Leonhardt sought to make amends for some of his recent columns by posing a very simple question, if corporate CEOs face a normal market, how come they never end up quitting jobs because of a pay dispute? He points out that the cases of CEOs just quitting for another job, as opposed to retiring […]

Every news article that reports on Fed Chairman Benjamin Bernanke’s assessment of the housing market should include a warning notice. Alan Greenspan has publicly stated that he deliberately chose to not to talk about the stock bubble while it was inflating, even though he recognized the bubble, because he thought it was inapproprate for the […]

Okay, that is not what Benjamin Bernanke said, but that is what his logic implies. How do I get there? Well, in a speech today, Mr. Bernanke complained about the huge projected rise in entitlement spending. He pointed out that Social Security and Medicare spending together are projected to rise from 7 percent of GDP […]