For most people, the country’s national debt and annual deficit are not major concerns. However, for a substantial portion of the policy types who make, write, and talk about economic and budget policy, debt and deficits are really big deals. And, the fact that our budget deficit and debt are both large by historic standards, and growing rapidly, is an especially big deal.

The list of people in this category is lengthy. It starts with the Peter J. Peterson Foundation (which displays the debt in big numbers right on its home page) and the many groups funded by them. The most important is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is virtually guaranteed prominent placement in stories on the budget by major news outlets.

The Washington Post (both its news and opinion sections) has a high standing in deficit hawk circles. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic leadership have at least one foot in the deficit hawk camp. And, of course, Republicans are big deficit hawks when a Democrat is in the White House.

In order to make these deficit hawks happy, I have a proposal – we’ll call it the “Baker Budget Fix” – that can eliminate debts and deficits forever. It’s fun, simple, and can give us balanced budgets for all eternity.

The basic point is that the government can sell off all sorts of patent and copyright monopolies and collect massive amounts of revenue. Regular readers know that I am not a big fan of patents and copyrights, but since I’ve made little headway in getting these policies questioned in public debate, why not just embrace them? After all, since everyone who matters seems to be just fine with ever longer and stronger patent and copyright protection, let’s use them to raise a ton of money for the government and make the deficit hawks happy.

Alexander Main????, 23 ??????????? 2019

We should be far more interested in ensuring our access to China’s innovations than worrying about protecting Boeing and GE’s patents.

September 23, 2019

در حال حاضر تحریم های آمریکا هزاران ایرانی را می ‌‌کشند. با کنترل سیستم بانکی دنیا، قدرت تحریم گذاری آمریکا حقوق بشر را پایمال میکند و دنیا را تهدید می‌کند

September 2019, Dean Baker

September 18, 2019

The dominant framework for measuring poverty in the United States is too technocratic and too ideologically conservative.

Mark WeisbrotPágina/12, 16 de septiembre, 2019

September 2019, Dean Baker

Just as we saw President Trump looking like a fool with his Sharpie-altered hurricane map, perhaps we will see him holding up a chart showing a half percentage point drop in the unemployment rate on the last Friday before next year’s election.

There's an old joke about a lawyer who is questioning a doctor on an autopsy they had done on someone who was allegedly a murder victim.

The lawyer asked the doctor, "did you check whether the patient was breathing?"

The doctor answers "no."

The lawyer then asks "did you check whether the patient had a pulse?"

The doctor again answers "no."

The lawyer then asks, "so how did you know that the patient was dead," to which the doctor responds, "because his brains were sitting in a jar on my desk."

The lawyer then triumphantly asks, "so he could have still been alive?" To which the doctor responds, "I suppose he could have been practicing law somewhere."

Our doctor may want to amend their answer to allow for the possibility that the patient could be a political pundit for a leading news outlet.

Our pundit class have to decided to make a crusade out of forcing Senators Warren and Sanders into saying that their proposals for universal Medicare will require a tax increase. Both have repeatedly responded by saying that total costs for the vast majority of people will fall, since Medicare for All will lead to a large reduction in costs by all accounts, because it reduces waste in the health care system.

Our pundit class have insisted that this is some sort of dodge. While there may be no hope in addressing arguments to people who have their brains in a jar on a doctor's desk, there is a simple point that everyone else should understand.

Last week I was asked on Twitter why proposals for replacing patent monopoly financing of prescription drugs with direct public financing have gained so little traction. After all, this would mean that drugs would be cheap; no one would have to struggle with paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for drugs that are needed for their health or to save their life. (This is discussed in chapter 5 of Rigged [it’s free].)

Public funding would also eliminate the incentive to misrepresent the safety and effectiveness of drugs in order to maximize sales at the patent monopoly price. Without patent monopolies, the drug companies would not have had the same incentive to push opioids, as well as many other drugs of questionable safety and effectiveness.

The idea of direct funding of biomedical research also should not seem strange to people. We currently spend close to $45 billion a year on research through the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. The idea of doubling or tripling this funding to replace the roughly $70 billion of patent supported research now done by the pharmaceutical industry, should not appear outlandish, especially since the potential savings from free-market drugs would be close to $400 billion annually (1.9 percent of GDP).

So why is there so little interest in reforming the prescription drug industry along these lines? I can think of two plausible answers. The first is a self-serving one for the elites who dominate policy debates. They don’t like to have questions raised about the basic underpinnings of the distribution of income.

The second is perhaps a more simple proposition. Intellectuals have a hard time dealing with new ideas and paying for innovation outside of the patent system or creative work outside of the copyright system is a new idea that most intellectual types would rather not wrestle with.

September 12, 2019

September 12, 2019 (Prices Byte)