The WaPo’s “Unluckiest Generation” Are Doing Relatively Well in Becoming Homeowners

August 13, 2023

13 Agosto 2023

The Washington Post told readers that the current generation of young people is finding it much harder to become homeowners than young people did in the past. The data disagree with this claim. While young people (under age 35) did become homeowners at higher rates in the early and mid-eighties and the late 1990s until the collapse of the housing bubble, the group that was young from 1990 to 1997, and since 2011, were less likely to be homeowners that those under age 35 today, as shown below.

China Doesn’t Need to Fear Deflation

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 10, 2023

10 Agosto 2023

In the wake of the Great Recession there was a spate of news articles warning of the menace of deflation. The story was that something really bad would happen if the rate of inflation went from a modest positive rate to a modest negative rate. This means something really bad would happen if the rate of inflation was -0.5 percent, as opposed to 0.5 percent. This made zero sense then and it also makes zero sense now.

Taxing Share Buybacks: The Cheapest Tax EVER!

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 07, 2023

07 Agosto 2023

I just saw a piece touting the tax on share buybacks as the basis of the investment boom we are seeing in factory construction. I’m a bit skeptical on that one, I think the incentives provided by the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are a far bigger deal, but if taxing buybacks gave a little extra kick, I’m fine with that.

The July Jobs Report: The Good News Keeps Coming

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 06, 2023

06 Agosto 2023

It would be hard to imagine a much better jobs report than what we got Friday. The economy generated 187,000 jobs for the month, somewhat fewer than the consensus. The jobs numbers for the prior two months were also revised down by 90,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent, just 0.1 percentage point above the half-century low reached in April. We have now have had below 4.0 percent unemployment for the last 18 months. The last time we had a streak this long was in

Manufacturing Jobs and Trade: A Tale of Two Graphs

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 06, 2023

06 Agosto 2023

The first decade of this century was pretty awful for manufacturing workers. In December of 1999, we had 17.3 million manufacturing jobs. This number had fallen to 11.5 million by December of 2009. This amounted to a loss of 5.8 million jobs, or one-third of all the manufacturing jobs that had existed at the start of the decade. That looks like a pretty big deal.

Playing Games with GDP Numbers: China’s Growth Has Not Slowed to a Crawl

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 04, 2023

04 Agosto 2023

GDP growth in the United States is always reported as an annual rate. This means that if the economy grew 0.5 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter, it would be universally reported as 2.0 percent growth, with reporters always giving the annual rate. This is basically four times the quarterly rate. (It's actually the first quarter's growth rate taken to the fourth power, but this will be the same for small numbers.)

Review of the Myth that Made Us, by Jeff Fuhrer

By Dean BakerDean Baker

August 03, 2023

03 Agosto 2023

The full title of this book is The Myth that Made Us, How False Beliefs About Racism and Meritocracy Broke Our Economy and How to Fix It. The book is a direct attack on how economists, and probably most people, are inclined to see the economy and society, arguing against the idea that outcomes reflect merit and effort.

Bad Things That Could End the Good Times

By Dean BakerDean Baker

July 29, 2023

29 Julio 2023

Along with everyone else (okay, not Republicans), I have been celebrating the great economic news we’ve been getting the last few weeks. Inflation is clearly slowing, the unemployment rate remains low, real wages are rising, investment is growing rapidly, and the green conversion is going faster than any of us could have imagined, even if it’s nowhere near fast enough.

Why We Do This Crap: Review of The Ends of Freedom, by Mark Paul

By Dean BakerDean Baker

July 25, 2023

25 Julio 2023

Mark Paul has done a useful public service in etching out the goals of progressive economic policy. Many of us get bogged down in debate over things like whether the Average Hourly Earnings series is more accurate than the Employment Cost Index, or whether Section 230 protection is giving Facebook, Twitter and other Internet giants a subsidy compared to competitors in print and broadcast media.

Patent Monopolies Lead to Corruption #64,526

By Dean BakerDean Baker

July 22, 2023

22 Julio 2023

The New York Times ran a piece this morning claiming that Gilead delayed the introduction of a new drug for treating HIV because it wanted to take full advantage of the patent life for its drug Truvada, which was a huge blockbuster for the company. The new drug has a patent life that runs to 2031. Truvada’s patent expired in 2017.