Dean Baker

That is what readers could infer from Jackie Calmes’ blognote in which she listed Social Security alongside Medicare and Medicaid as “fast-growing entitlement benefit program.” Social Security is projected to grow at a 5.3 percent annual rate over the next decade, only slightly faster than the 4.4 percent projected growth rate of nominal GDP over […]

The media reported on a 0.3 percent rise in retail sales in February, which was described as a surprisingly strong result compared with the consensus expectation of a 0.2 percent decline. However, the news was not as good as this may appear, since January’s sales data was revised down by 0.4 percent. In other words, […]

It would be great if people who reported on the budget deficit for major news outlets could be required to know the basic accounting identities that get taught in every introductory economics class. The key one that almost none of them seem to know is that the trade deficit (X-M) is equal to the sum […]

The Washington Post is a huge supporter of trade agreements like NAFTA that put non-college educated workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, while largely protecting the most highly educated workers like doctors and lawyers. They push this selective protectionism by calling it “free trade.” They also call anyone who disagrees […]

Peter Peterson, the billionaire Wall Street investment banker, is devoting more than $1 billion to a campaign to whip up fears about budget deficits in order to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. It almost looks as though the NYT has joined the effort. It printed an article today that uses a measure of […]

The Washington Post reports that Senator Gregg does not know why the government is spending money to create jobs. According to the Post, Mr. Gregg said of a jobs bill: “Why do we keep doing this? …. Why do we keep passing debt on to our children? Why do we keep running program after program […]

In a discussion of the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the Washington Post noted that the government had committed $125 billion to cover their losses. While the article reports that these losses have been a major political issue, it would have been useful to point out that the losses were, in effect, subsidies […]

The NYT reports that opponents of a measure that would save money by putting private lenders out of the government guaranteed student loan business warn that it could cost jobs. This is of course true. Suppose there is an efficient computer company that sells computers for $500 each and an inefficient computer company that sell […]

Anyone seriously interested in controlling health care costs would be actively discussing alternatives to patent protection for financing the development of prescription drugs and medical equipment. Everyone who has taken even an intro economics class knows that there will be horrible waste and corruption when goods can sell for hundreds of times their competitive market […]

The NYT reports that the Fed is debating whether much of current unemployment is due to a skills mismatch between workers and the available jobs as opposed to simply a cyclical shortfall in demand. It is worth noting that the assertion of skills mismatch is a predictable behavior of economists in policy positions in every […]