Last week the Washington Post ran a column by Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, one of the many pro-austerity organizations that received generous funding from the late Peter Peterson. The immediate target of the column was the standoff over the debt ceiling, but the usual complaints about debt and deficits were right up front in the first two paragraphs.

“At the same time, the federal debt as a share of the economy is the highest it has ever been other than just after World War II. ….”

“So our plan is to borrow a jaw-dropping roughly $900 billion in each of those years — much of it from foreign countries — without a strategy or even an acknowledgment of the choices being made because no one wants to be held accountable.”

This passes for wisdom at the Washington Post, but it is actually dangerously wrong-headed thinking that rich people (like the owner of the Washington Post) use their power to endlessly barrage the public with.

The basic story of the twelve years since the collapse of the housing bubble is that the U.S. economy has suffered from a lack of demand. We need actors in the economy to spend more money. The lack of spending over this period has cost us trillions of dollars in lost output.

This should not just be an abstraction. Millions of people who wanted jobs in the decade from 2008 to 2018 did not have them because the Washington Post and its clique of “responsible” budget types joined in calls for austerity. This meant millions of families took a whack to their income, throwing some into poverty, leading many to lose houses, and some to become homeless.

At this point, the evidence from the harm from austerity in the United States (it’s worse in Europe) is overwhelming, but just like the Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union, we never see the Washington Post, or most other major news outlets, acknowledge the horrible cost of unnecessary austerity. We just get more of the same, as though the paper is hoping its readers will simply ignore the damage done by austerity.

David RosnickMarketWatch, July 22, 2019

Dean Baker
Truthout, July 22, 2019

(This post was originally published on my Patreon page.) One of the central themes in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was that U.S. workers were being badly hurt by trade. His story was that the country had signed bad trade deals that were put togeth

July 9, 2019, Shawn Fremstad

July 18, 2019, Eileen Appelbaum

Julio 2019, Mark Weisbrot y Andrés Arauz

July 2019, Mark Weisbrot and Andrés Arauz

Dean Baker
Truthout, July 15, 2019

(This post first appeared on my Patreon page.)

The June jobs report showed the economy created 224,000 jobs in the month, a sharp increase from the revised level of 72,000 reported for May. With considerable evidence that the economy is slowing, and the ADP report showing the economy created just 102,000 jobs in June, the jobs growth number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was much higher than most analysts had expected.

It led the markets to reverse their expectations of a July cut in the federal funds rate. With average job growth of 171,000 over the last three months, the thinking was that the Fed did not need to provide any additional boost to growth. A bit deeper look suggests that additional stimulus may still be a good idea.

First, it is important to remember where the labor market is. The June unemployment rate of 3.7 percent certainly looks very good relative to almost any other point in the last fifty years.

However, if we look at employment rates (EPOP) for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54), the labor market does not look so great. The June EPOP was 79.7 percent. That is down from a pre-recession peak of 80.3 percent. It is far below the 2000 peak of 81.9 percent. It’s even down from the 79.9 percent peak for the recovery hit in January and February of this year.

The weak EPOP suggests that the economy has room to expand. There have been repeated efforts throughout this recovery to attribute low EPOPs to workers’ reduced interest in working, primarily among young men. This story does not work well for two reasons.

July 11, 2019

July 11, 2019 (Prices Byte)

CEPR regularly publishes a curated collection of original research from academic institutions and nonprofits on the state of the US labor market. The compilation is part of our ongoing effort to promote informed debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

Policy Basics: How Many Weeks of Unemployment Compensation Are Available? 

The federal-state unemployment insurance system provides temporary income support for many people when they lose their jobs. But how many weeks of compensation are available for those that lose their job? It depends on the state. Most states offer the standard maximum of 26 weeks, but others may offer fewer or extended periods of compensation based on various criteria (e.g., unemployment rate). See how many weeks of unemployment compensation each state offers.

This May, millions of new graduates found themselves torn between triumph and trepidation, as looming obligations to begin repaying student loans tempered celebrations nationwide. Still others had no cause to celebrate, having accrued debt without obtaini