Dana Milbank Tells Readers He Has an Incredibly Weak Imagination

April 10, 2016

10 Abril 2016

We know that the Washington Post editors really hate Bernie Sanders and rarely miss an opportunity to show it. Dana Milbank got in the act big time today as he once again denounced Sanders (along with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz) in his column.

There was much good stuff in the column but my favorite was when he told readers:

“MacGuineas’s group [the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget] calculates that Sanders would increase government spending to unimaginable levels: to as much as 35 percent of gross domestic product, from the current 22 percent.”

The key word here is “unimaginable.” Most western European governments have ratios of government spending to GDP of more than 40 percent and some have ratios of more than 50 percent. Apparently, Mr. Milbank finds the whole European continent unimaginable.

What is especially striking is that most of the increase in government spending would be the result of the government diverting payments for employer provided health insurance to a government-run universal Medicare system. Apparently, Milbank thinks it intolerable that the money taken out of workers’ paychecks to be sent to private insurers would instead be taken out of workers paychecks to be sent to the government, even if it would lead to savings of several hundred billion dollars a year in administrative costs and insurance industry profits. In Dana Milbank-land this is the height of irresponsibility.

What is perhaps most incredible is Milbank’s notion of irresponsible. His sole measure of responsibility is the size of the government budget deficit and debt, which are for all practical purposes meaningless numbers. (If the government puts in place patent protection that requires us to pay an extra $400 billion a year for prescription drugs, this adds zero to the budget deficit or debt and therefore doesn’t concern Milbank. However, if it borrowed an extra $400 billion a year to pay for developing new drugs, he would be furious.)

On the other hand, forcing millions of people to be out of work because of deficits that are too small apparently does not bother Milbank in the least. Since the crash in 2008 we have needlessly foregone more than $7 trillion in potential output. Millions of people have been kept out of work with their children thereby growing up in families that were in or near poverty levels. We also have the stories like the children in Flint exposed to lead, all because Milbank and his friends want to whine about budget deficits.

Many might view this set of policies as being irresponsible. But in Milbank’s worldview, which is widely shared in Washington policy circles, it doesn’t matter what you do to the country as long as you keep the deficit down.

We know that the Washington Post editors really hate Bernie Sanders and rarely miss an opportunity to show it. Dana Milbank got in the act big time today as he once again denounced Sanders (along with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz) in his column.

There was much good stuff in the column but my favorite was when he told readers:

“MacGuineas’s group [the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget] calculates that Sanders would increase government spending to unimaginable levels: to as much as 35 percent of gross domestic product, from the current 22 percent.”

The key word here is “unimaginable.” Most western European governments have ratios of government spending to GDP of more than 40 percent and some have ratios of more than 50 percent. Apparently, Mr. Milbank finds the whole European continent unimaginable.

What is especially striking is that most of the increase in government spending would be the result of the government diverting payments for employer provided health insurance to a government-run universal Medicare system. Apparently, Milbank thinks it intolerable that the money taken out of workers’ paychecks to be sent to private insurers would instead be taken out of workers paychecks to be sent to the government, even if it would lead to savings of several hundred billion dollars a year in administrative costs and insurance industry profits. In Dana Milbank-land this is the height of irresponsibility.

What is perhaps most incredible is Milbank’s notion of irresponsible. His sole measure of responsibility is the size of the government budget deficit and debt, which are for all practical purposes meaningless numbers. (If the government puts in place patent protection that requires us to pay an extra $400 billion a year for prescription drugs, this adds zero to the budget deficit or debt and therefore doesn’t concern Milbank. However, if it borrowed an extra $400 billion a year to pay for developing new drugs, he would be furious.)

On the other hand, forcing millions of people to be out of work because of deficits that are too small apparently does not bother Milbank in the least. Since the crash in 2008 we have needlessly foregone more than $7 trillion in potential output. Millions of people have been kept out of work with their children thereby growing up in families that were in or near poverty levels. We also have the stories like the children in Flint exposed to lead, all because Milbank and his friends want to whine about budget deficits.

Many might view this set of policies as being irresponsible. But in Milbank’s worldview, which is widely shared in Washington policy circles, it doesn’t matter what you do to the country as long as you keep the deficit down.

Dumping on Trump: Tariffs Aren’t Part of the Apocalypse

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 08, 2016

08 Abril 2016

Let me start this one by saying that I think Trump’s threats of a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports are a bad idea. We should take steps to lower the value of the dollar against the yuan, but the public threat of large tariffs is probably not the best way to go. The route is obviously through negotiations where we would have to give up things, like protections for Microsoft’s copyrights and Pfizer’s patents. But that aside, the fact that a particular policy is unwise should not be a license for the media to say absurd things to discredit it. The NYT seems to take this path in an Upshot piece by Michael Schuman that purports to tell readers, “how a tariff on Chinese imports would ripple through American life.” The piece tells readers: “But if there were a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods, at least part of that would probably be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices. Americans would end up buying fewer Chinese things, and fewer things from anywhere else. ... “For this reason and others, quite a lot of the money spent on Chinese goods actually ends up in the wallets of Americans. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco figured that 55 cents of every $1 spent by an American shopper on a “Made in China” product goes to the Americans selling, transporting and marketing that product. Suppressing Chinese imports would harm shopkeepers and truck drivers. “In fact, making Chinese-made goods more expensive would ripple through American shopping malls. An extra $20 for, say, children’s clothing from China is $20 not spent on a new baseball glove for a child, or a birthday gift for a grandmother. A tariff on China would dent the sales of all kinds of products, even those made in the United States.” Note what is being argued here. Higher prices on imports from China will lead to less consumption in the U.S. economy. That means an increase in the savings rate. (This is definitional. If you don’t consume you save.) Many economists have been troubled by the low savings rate in the United States. I have never seen any models that try to explain low savings as the result of cheap imports from China and other countries, but apparently this is what Mr. Schuman and the NYT would have us believe. I look forward to article writing up this theory linking savings rates to import prices. If it’s not clear, this argument is silly. People will likely spend the same with the tariffs as they did without the tariffs. They will buy fewer goods imported from China, end of story. No need for the truck drivers to fear mass layoffs.

There is No Problem of Deflation, Just Low Inflation (see addendum)

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 08, 2016

08 Abril 2016

The problem of deflation just refuses to go away. I don't mean the problem of weak economies with very low inflation rates, I mean the media's obsession with the idea that something really bad happens if the rate of price change crosses zero and turns negative. We got another example of this strange concern in the NYT this morning. The piece noted the European Central Bank's (ECB) concern: "Still, the central bank acknowledged its deep concern about the risk that the eurozone’s economic doldrums, characterized by a worrisomely low rate of inflation, could devolve into outright deflation, a vicious circle of falling prices and demand that can undercut corporate profits and cause unemployment to soar. ... "Deflation sets in when falling prices prompt people to delay purchases because they expect prices to fall even further. Consumer spending and investment collapse, companies dismiss workers, and spending falls even further as people lose their jobs and incomes. Central bankers fear deflation because once it sets in, it is notoriously difficult to reverse." To see the silliness of this line of argument, consider first what falling prices literally mean. Suppose that the price of shoes is declining at a 0.5 percent annual rate. How long will you put off a purchase of a $100 pair, knowing that it you wait a year it will save you 50 cents?

The Elite's Comforting Myth: We Had to Screw Rich Country Workers to Help the World's Poor

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 05, 2016

05 Abril 2016

Roger Cohen gave us yet another example of touching hand-wringing from elite types about the plight of the working class in rich countries. The gist of the piece is that in Europe and the U.S. we have seen growing support for candidates outside of the mainstream on both the left and the right. Cohen acknowledges that there is a real basis for their rejection of the mainstream: they have seen decades of stagnating wages. However, Cohen tells us the plus side of this story, we have seen huge improvements in living standards among the poor in the developing world. In Cohen's story, the economic difficulties of these relatively privileged workers is justified by the enormous gains they allowed those who are truly poor. The only problem is that these workers are now looking to these extreme candidates. Cohen effectively calls for a more generous welfare state to head off this turn to extremism, saying that we may have to restrain "liberty" (he means the market) in order to protect it. This is a touching and self-serving story. The idea is that elite types like Cohen were winners in the global economy. That's just the way it is. Cohen is smart and hard working, that's why he and his friends did well. Their doing well also went along with the globalization process that produced enormous gains for the world's poor. But now he recognizes the problems of the working class in rich countries, so he says he and his rich friends need to toss them some crumbs so they don't become fascists. We all should be glad that folks like Cohen support a stronger welfare state, but let's consider his story. The basic argument is that poor countries have only been able to develop because their workers were able to displace the workers in rich countries. This lead to unemployment and lower wages in rich countries. Let's imagine that mainstream economics wasn't a make-it-up-as-you-go-along discipline. The standard story in economics is that capital is supposed to flow from rich countries to poor countries. The idea is that capital is plentiful in rich countries and therefore gets a low rate of return. It is scarce in poor countries and therefore gets a high rate of return.

Reporters Who Haven't Noticed That Paul Ryan Has Called for Eliminating Most of Federal Government Go Nuts Over Bernie Sanders' Lack of Specifics

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 05, 2016

05 Abril 2016

The Washington press corps has gone into one of its great feeding frenzies over Bernie Sanders' interview with New York Daily News. Sanders avoided specific answers to many of the questions posed, which the D.C. gang are convinced shows a lack of the knowledge necessary to be president. Among the frenzied were the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, The Atlantic's David Graham, and Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen, and CNN's Dylan Byers telling about it all. Having read the transcript of the interview I would say that I certainly would have liked to see more specificity in Sanders' answers, but I'm an economist. And some of the complaints are just silly. When asked how he would break up the big banks Sanders said he would leave that up to the banks. That's exactly the right answer. The government doesn't know the most efficient way to break up JP Morgan, JP Morgan does. If the point is to downsize the banks, the way to do it is to give them a size cap and let them figure out the best way to reconfigure themselves to get under it. The same applies to Sanders not knowing the specific statute for prosecuting banks for their actions in the housing bubble. Knowingly passing off fraudulent mortgages in a mortgage backed security is fraud. Could the Justice Department prove this case against high level bank executives? Who knows, but they obviously didn't try. And the fact that Sanders didn't know the specific statute, who cares? How many people know the specific statute for someone who puts a bullet in someone's head? That's murder, and if a candidate for office doesn't know the exact title and specific's of her state murder statute, it hardly seems like a big issue.

Is Competition the Cause of the Productivity Slowdown?

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 04, 2016

04 Abril 2016

Contrary to the robots taking our jobs story, Robert Samuelson gets the basic story right. Productivity growth has fallen through the floor, rather than going through the roof as the robot story would have us believe. Productivity growth has averaged just over 1.0 percent annually since the start of the recession in December of 2007. It has been less than 0.4 percent a year in the last two years.

Samuelson speculates that this slow growth might be due to the old economy competing with the new economy. His example is Walmart setting up an Internet based system to compete with Amazon. He argues that much of this will end up being wasted, as only one of the sellers will end up winning.

While Samuelson is right that this competition can lead to waste, but that is always true. Companies always are competing to gain or keep market share. Some end up losing, meaning that their investment was a waste from the standpoint of the economy as a whole. (The competition is nonetheless important in a dynamic sense in that it forces the winners to be more efficient.)

For Samuelson’s story to be correct, we would have to be seeing much more of this competition today than in prior periods. That doesn’t in any obvious way appear to be true. For example, investment is not especially high as a share of GDP.

My alternative explanation is that a weak labor market and low wages explain much of the slowdown in productivity. The argument is straightforward. When Walmart can hire people at very low wages, they are happy to pay people to stand around and do almost nothing. That is why many retailers now have greeters or sales people standing in aisles who contribute little to productivity.

If wages were higher, Walmart would not employ these people. This would make little difference in its sales, but would reduce the number of people they have working, thereby increasing productivity. If this phenomenon is common, it could be a factor in the productivity slowdown since the start of the Great Recession.

Contrary to the robots taking our jobs story, Robert Samuelson gets the basic story right. Productivity growth has fallen through the floor, rather than going through the roof as the robot story would have us believe. Productivity growth has averaged just over 1.0 percent annually since the start of the recession in December of 2007. It has been less than 0.4 percent a year in the last two years.

Samuelson speculates that this slow growth might be due to the old economy competing with the new economy. His example is Walmart setting up an Internet based system to compete with Amazon. He argues that much of this will end up being wasted, as only one of the sellers will end up winning.

While Samuelson is right that this competition can lead to waste, but that is always true. Companies always are competing to gain or keep market share. Some end up losing, meaning that their investment was a waste from the standpoint of the economy as a whole. (The competition is nonetheless important in a dynamic sense in that it forces the winners to be more efficient.)

For Samuelson’s story to be correct, we would have to be seeing much more of this competition today than in prior periods. That doesn’t in any obvious way appear to be true. For example, investment is not especially high as a share of GDP.

My alternative explanation is that a weak labor market and low wages explain much of the slowdown in productivity. The argument is straightforward. When Walmart can hire people at very low wages, they are happy to pay people to stand around and do almost nothing. That is why many retailers now have greeters or sales people standing in aisles who contribute little to productivity.

If wages were higher, Walmart would not employ these people. This would make little difference in its sales, but would reduce the number of people they have working, thereby increasing productivity. If this phenomenon is common, it could be a factor in the productivity slowdown since the start of the Great Recession.

Retiring Baby Boomers Are Not the Main Reason for the Drop in Labor Force Participation

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 02, 2016

02 Abril 2016

The Washington Post repeated one of the major myths about the recovery in an article in the March employment report when it told readers:

“In the long shadow of the recession, the share of the population in the work force sunk to 62.4 percent in September, the lowest level in nearly 40 years. The government calculates that number by counting the people who have a job or are actively looking for one. That means students, retirees and stay-at-home parents are generally not considered part of the labor force.

“Indeed, the shrinking of America’s workforce is largely due to broader demographic shifts. The labor force peaked at 67.3 percent of the popuation in 2000 and has been drifting downward ever since. The biggest driver has been the retirement of Baby Boomers, who are turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 each day. Young people are also staying in school longer and less likely to work during their studies.”

Actually, the main reason the labor force participation rate (LFPR) has fallen has been a drop in the LFPR among prime age workers (ages 25–54). This peaked in 2000 at 82.8 percent in early 2000. In September of 2015 it bottomed out at 79.2 percent, 3.6 percentage points below its 2000 peak. The drop in LFPR in the recession and weak recovery has been primarily a story of workers in their prime working years leaving the labor force, not baby boomers retiring or young people staying in school longer.

The piece also cites reports by Wells Fargo and the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank indicating that those with more education are doing much better in finding work in the recovery. This is not clear from the data. In the last year the employment rate of people with college degrees has not changed, while it fell by 0.6 percentage points for those with some college.

By contrast, the employment rate for people with just high school degrees fell by just 0.1 percentage point. It rose by 1.7 percentage points for workers without high school degrees. This gap is even more striking since the retiring baby boomers are less-educated on average than younger workers, so their retirement should be having a disproportionate effect in reducing the employment rate of less-educated workers.

Note: Link corrected.

The Washington Post repeated one of the major myths about the recovery in an article in the March employment report when it told readers:

“In the long shadow of the recession, the share of the population in the work force sunk to 62.4 percent in September, the lowest level in nearly 40 years. The government calculates that number by counting the people who have a job or are actively looking for one. That means students, retirees and stay-at-home parents are generally not considered part of the labor force.

“Indeed, the shrinking of America’s workforce is largely due to broader demographic shifts. The labor force peaked at 67.3 percent of the popuation in 2000 and has been drifting downward ever since. The biggest driver has been the retirement of Baby Boomers, who are turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 each day. Young people are also staying in school longer and less likely to work during their studies.”

Actually, the main reason the labor force participation rate (LFPR) has fallen has been a drop in the LFPR among prime age workers (ages 25–54). This peaked in 2000 at 82.8 percent in early 2000. In September of 2015 it bottomed out at 79.2 percent, 3.6 percentage points below its 2000 peak. The drop in LFPR in the recession and weak recovery has been primarily a story of workers in their prime working years leaving the labor force, not baby boomers retiring or young people staying in school longer.

The piece also cites reports by Wells Fargo and the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank indicating that those with more education are doing much better in finding work in the recovery. This is not clear from the data. In the last year the employment rate of people with college degrees has not changed, while it fell by 0.6 percentage points for those with some college.

By contrast, the employment rate for people with just high school degrees fell by just 0.1 percentage point. It rose by 1.7 percentage points for workers without high school degrees. This gap is even more striking since the retiring baby boomers are less-educated on average than younger workers, so their retirement should be having a disproportionate effect in reducing the employment rate of less-educated workers.

Note: Link corrected.

Wage Wars at the Fed

By Dean BakerDean Baker

April 02, 2016

02 Abril 2016

The NYT article on the March jobs report featured several economists describing the current state of the economy in glowing terms. Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, described the current economic situation as being a “near Goldlocks scenario.” He said the jobs and wage gains in March were healthy, but not so strong as to prompt the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates to slow growth. Michelle Meyer, deputy head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, described the economic situation as “a best-case scenario.” Michael Gapen, chief United States economist at Barclays, also was very positive about the economy. This view seemed to be reflected in the first two paragraphs in the article which were also overwhelmingly positive about the current state of the economy. (In fairness, the piece included several comments noting how far the economy has yet to go to recover to pre-recession levels. Also, in addition to the optimism from the bank economists, it included a comment from Claire McKenna, a senior policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project.) While there is little doubt that the economy is doing much better in recent months than it had been earlier in the recovery and that workers are seeing some gains, it is important to ask about the implicit base of comparison in these comments. The average hourly wage increased at a 2.3 percent rate over the last year. Its annualized rate of increase over the last three months compared with the prior three months is also 2.3 percent, which indicates no acceleration. Since inflation over the last year was only 1.0 percent, this translates into a 1.3 percent increase in real wages over this period. While this is a decent rate of increase, it is only roughly equal to the trend rate of productivity growth. In other words, this is the rate of wage growth that workers should be able to assume in a normal year. However, there are two reasons to consider this rate inadequate. First, workers lost an enormous amount of ground in the downturn. The average real hourly wage did not pass its 2008 peak until November of 2014. (Workers had also seen almost no wage growth in the prior business cycle, so they had lots of ground to make up even in 2008.)

• WorkersSector del trabajo

Did Uber Take the NYT for a Ride?

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 31, 2016

31 Marzo 2016

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the paid content and the news stories in the NYT. Farhad Manjoo’s piece on Uber’s new carpooling service could leave any reader confused. Manjoo seems to have taken everything Uber said about this service at face value, just as one would expect in paid content. We can start with the story that sets up the piece. The story is that Abby is going from San Francisco Tenderloin district to the Noe Valley, a trip which the piece tells us would ordinarily take about 25 minutes by car. She decides to use UberPool instead of driving. Before the UberPool trip ends, it picks up four other passengers. According to the article, the total trip takes 55 minutes (not all of it with Abby, who gets out before the last stop) and covers 10 miles. The piece then tells readers: 'In total, Uber collected about $48 for the ride, of which the driver kept $35. The company had collapsed five separate rides into a single trip, saving about six miles of travel and removing several cars from the road.' That might be Uber’s story, but let’s look at this more seriously. The driver has to pay for gas, insurance, and depreciation on the car. The I.R.S. puts these costs at an average of 54 cents a mile. We know the trip covered ten miles, but the driver also has to get to the start point and back from the end point. Let’s conservatively say that adds five miles for a total 15 miles driven. This comes to $8.10, which reduces the hourly pay rate for this ride to $26.90. That’s still not too bad, but remember, this is for the time the driver actually has people in the car. If he has to wait another half hour for his next fare, then the hourly rate falls to $17.90. Keep in mind this is in a city with high living costs where the minimum wage is being raised to $15.00 an hour.

NAFTA and Auto Jobs: Would Importing Doctors from Mexico Increase Demand for Doctors in the U.S.?

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 30, 2016

30 Marzo 2016

Eduardo Porter had an interesting piece in the NYT in which he argued that NAFTA actually saved jobs for auto workers in the United States. The argument is that by allowing U.S. manufacturers to have easier access to low cost labor in Mexico for part of their operation, they were able to keep a larger market share than would otherwise be the case. The same would apply to foreign manufacturers choosing to locate operations in the United States rather than staying in Europe, Japan, or elsewhere. The argument is that better access to low cost labor in Mexico made locating part of their operating in the United States more attractive. Currently we import roughly $100 billion a year in cars and parts from Mexico, this compares to total domestic production of around $500 billion. Porter argues that on net, because NAFTA improved the competitiveness of the U.S. industry, it actually saved jobs. This is not impossible, but it does seem implausible. I headlined the case of doctors to see an analogous story. Suppose that we have large numbers of people going to other countries for major medical procedures to take advantage of the fact that the cost is typically less than half as much and sometimes less than one tenth as much for comparable quality care. (Imagine saving $200,000 on open heart surgery by having the operation in Germany. Most of these surgeries are done on a non-emergency basis, so it is possible.) In this scenario, suppose that we have a somewhat different NAFTA that made it much easier for Mexican doctors to train to U.S. standards and come practice in the United States. Let’s imagine 200,000 Mexican doctors, or roughly one fifth of our total, chose to take advantage of this opportunity.