Dean Baker

The Post wants us to root for the rich to get richer so that they will spend money and get the economy back on a healthy growth path. Actually, the poor spend a much higher share of their income, so if we just need spending then we should hope that the rich take a beating […]

The Washington Post cited a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that claimed that a proposal by Senator Max Baucus would cost the jobs of low-wage workers, who are disproportionately women and minorities. The report claimed that a requirement, that large employers (more than 50 workers) reimburse the government for any health […]

If the Post applied the same standard to the statements from Democrats as it does to Republicans, it would do a he said, she said, where it reported Democrats complaining that the invasion had not removed Saddam Hussein as president of Iraq, while the Republicans would be insisting that he had been removed, tried, and […]

It must be hard to get news about finance and economics in New York. That is the only thing that one can conclude when they see David Brooks tell readers that: “the nation has made a series of lavishly unaffordable promises. The legacy costs are piling up. By the end of 2019, the nation’s debt […]

The Washington Post gets to the bottom of Japan’s health care system quoting a professor of health policy that: “more than one-third of the workers’ premiums are used to transfer wealth from the young, healthy and rich to the old, unhealthy and poor.” That’s a striking statement. Fire insurance transfers wealth from people who don’t […]

Alan Blinder is a very good economist, but that does not keep him from occasionally saying very silly things. He has been a big advocate of creating a “systemic risk regulator” and making it the Federal Reserve Board. This systemic risk regulator would have the responsibility for preventing the sort of explosive growth of risk […]

Morning Edition had a Planet Money segment this morning that discussed the high price of health care. The piece focused on the high cost of medical devices. It noted the high price for many items used in medical operations, but never once mentioned that the high prices are largely due to the fact that these […]

Strange but true, NPR featured a discussion of the economy this morning, including the foreclosure crisis, without ever once mentioning the housing bubble. It’s sort of like reporting on the sinking of the Titanic and not mentioning the iceberg. –Dean Baker

A Washington Post article discussed the various estimates of the impact of the stimulus. It notes two private forecasts that put the number of jobs generated at between 2.0 -2.5 million, compared to a forecast by the Obama administration of between 3.0-3.5 million. It is worth noting that much of this difference is due to […]

Last week the number of new unemployment claims was reported as 570,000. This week, the number of new unemployment claims was reported as 570,000. Naturally, the headline is “jobless claims dip. ….” Actually, the headline is literally true, because jobless claims for the previous week were revised up to 574,000. Still, the slight fall against […]