I usually confine my comments to economic reporting, but I can’t let my blog sit idle when the Washington Post commits major journalistic malpractice on a story of national importance. The Post ran a major front page story with the headline, “Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself’ document says.” As the article indicates, the basis for the story is a document which includes the statement by another prisoner, presumably someone still in police custody. The Post tells readers:
“The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.”
There are two big problems with this sentence. The Post does not know that the person who provided the document actually feared for the inmate’s safety. The Post knows that the person who provided the document said that they feared for the inmate’s safety. News reporters know that people sometimes do not tell the truth. This is why they report what people say, they do not tell readers that what people say is necessarily true, unless they have an independent basis for this assessment.
The other problem with this sentence is that it does not tell us why the person who provided the document is not identified. Did he/she also fear for their safety? A simple explanation would go a long way here.
It is possible that the document accurately reflects what another prisoner heard and his comments in a sworn statement, but it is also possible that this is largely fabricated. The story is obviously very helpful to the Baltimore police and since it likely originated in a context where the Baltimore police completely controlled the situation (presumably there were no independent observers when the prisoner was giving his statement) and this unidentified person controlled what was given the Post, it must be viewed with considerable skepticism.
Making this statement the basis of a front page story and not indicating to readers the need for skepticism, given the source, is incredibly irresponsible.
I usually confine my comments to economic reporting, but I can’t let my blog sit idle when the Washington Post commits major journalistic malpractice on a story of national importance. The Post ran a major front page story with the headline, “Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself’ document says.” As the article indicates, the basis for the story is a document which includes the statement by another prisoner, presumably someone still in police custody. The Post tells readers:
“The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.”
There are two big problems with this sentence. The Post does not know that the person who provided the document actually feared for the inmate’s safety. The Post knows that the person who provided the document said that they feared for the inmate’s safety. News reporters know that people sometimes do not tell the truth. This is why they report what people say, they do not tell readers that what people say is necessarily true, unless they have an independent basis for this assessment.
The other problem with this sentence is that it does not tell us why the person who provided the document is not identified. Did he/she also fear for their safety? A simple explanation would go a long way here.
It is possible that the document accurately reflects what another prisoner heard and his comments in a sworn statement, but it is also possible that this is largely fabricated. The story is obviously very helpful to the Baltimore police and since it likely originated in a context where the Baltimore police completely controlled the situation (presumably there were no independent observers when the prisoner was giving his statement) and this unidentified person controlled what was given the Post, it must be viewed with considerable skepticism.
Making this statement the basis of a front page story and not indicating to readers the need for skepticism, given the source, is incredibly irresponsible.
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I hate to be picking on Matt O’Brien again, but come on, this is setting the bar pretty goddamn low. He began a piece reporting on a consulting gig that Bernanke will have the bond fund Pimco by telling readers:
“If anyone deserves two seven-figure sinecures, it’s Ben Bernanke.”
I won’t go over the full indictment of Ben Bernanke and will give him credit for a reasonably good job trying to boost the economy post-crash in the wake of the outraged opposition of the right-wing, but let’s get real. The housing bubble and ensuing crash were not natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
The bubble was the result of bad policy. It is the Fed’s responsibility to prevent harmful bubbles whose crash will disrupt the economy. While Bernanke only took over as Fed chair in January of 2006, after the bubble had already grown to very dangerous levels, he was sitting at Greenspan’s side at the Fed through most of the process. (He did head over for a brief stint as head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.) Through this whole period was completely dismissive of those who raised concerns about the bubble and junk loans that were fueling it.
This incredible negligence has had a devastating cost for tens of millions of people in the United States and around the world. And for this he deserves two-seven figure sinecures? This sounds like a case of the soft bigotry of incredibly low expectations.
I hate to be picking on Matt O’Brien again, but come on, this is setting the bar pretty goddamn low. He began a piece reporting on a consulting gig that Bernanke will have the bond fund Pimco by telling readers:
“If anyone deserves two seven-figure sinecures, it’s Ben Bernanke.”
I won’t go over the full indictment of Ben Bernanke and will give him credit for a reasonably good job trying to boost the economy post-crash in the wake of the outraged opposition of the right-wing, but let’s get real. The housing bubble and ensuing crash were not natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
The bubble was the result of bad policy. It is the Fed’s responsibility to prevent harmful bubbles whose crash will disrupt the economy. While Bernanke only took over as Fed chair in January of 2006, after the bubble had already grown to very dangerous levels, he was sitting at Greenspan’s side at the Fed through most of the process. (He did head over for a brief stint as head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.) Through this whole period was completely dismissive of those who raised concerns about the bubble and junk loans that were fueling it.
This incredible negligence has had a devastating cost for tens of millions of people in the United States and around the world. And for this he deserves two-seven figure sinecures? This sounds like a case of the soft bigotry of incredibly low expectations.
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E.J. Dionne and Harold Meyerson both had interesting columns in the Post this morning, but they suffer from the same major error. Both note the loss of manufacturing jobs and downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers due to effects of trade. But both speak of this as being the result of a natural process of globalization.
This is wrong. The downward pressure on wages was the deliberate outcome of government policies designed to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. This was a conscious choice. Our trade deals could have been designed to put our doctors and lawyers in direct competition with much lower paid professionals in the developing world.
Trade deals could have focused on developing clear standards that would allow students in Mexico, India, and China to train to U.S. levels and then practice as professionals in the United States on the same terms as someone born in New York or Kansas. This would have provided enormous savings to consumers in the form of lower health care costs, legal fees, and professional services more generally. The argument for free trade in professional services is exactly the same as the argument for free trade in manufactured goods.
The big difference is that doctors and lawyers have much more power than autoworkers and textile workers, therefore the politicians won’t consider subjecting them to international competition. However that is no reason for columnists not to talk about this fact.
More generally, the heavy hand of government is all over the upward redistribution of the last three and a half decades. We have a Federal Reserve Board that has repeatedly raised interest rates to keep workers from getting jobs and bargaining power. A tax system that directly and explicitly subsidizes many people getting high six or even seven-figure salaries at universities, hospitals, and private charities and foundations. We have government subsidies for too big to fail banks.
Anyhow, inequality, like the path of globalization, is not something that happened. It was and is the result of conscious policy. We won’t be able to deal with it effectively until we acknowledge this simple fact.
E.J. Dionne and Harold Meyerson both had interesting columns in the Post this morning, but they suffer from the same major error. Both note the loss of manufacturing jobs and downward pressure on the wages of non-college educated workers due to effects of trade. But both speak of this as being the result of a natural process of globalization.
This is wrong. The downward pressure on wages was the deliberate outcome of government policies designed to put U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. This was a conscious choice. Our trade deals could have been designed to put our doctors and lawyers in direct competition with much lower paid professionals in the developing world.
Trade deals could have focused on developing clear standards that would allow students in Mexico, India, and China to train to U.S. levels and then practice as professionals in the United States on the same terms as someone born in New York or Kansas. This would have provided enormous savings to consumers in the form of lower health care costs, legal fees, and professional services more generally. The argument for free trade in professional services is exactly the same as the argument for free trade in manufactured goods.
The big difference is that doctors and lawyers have much more power than autoworkers and textile workers, therefore the politicians won’t consider subjecting them to international competition. However that is no reason for columnists not to talk about this fact.
More generally, the heavy hand of government is all over the upward redistribution of the last three and a half decades. We have a Federal Reserve Board that has repeatedly raised interest rates to keep workers from getting jobs and bargaining power. A tax system that directly and explicitly subsidizes many people getting high six or even seven-figure salaries at universities, hospitals, and private charities and foundations. We have government subsidies for too big to fail banks.
Anyhow, inequality, like the path of globalization, is not something that happened. It was and is the result of conscious policy. We won’t be able to deal with it effectively until we acknowledge this simple fact.
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That is an important correction to the David Ignatius’ Washington Post column touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a way to revive Japan’s economy. Unlike President Bush, who published a draft text of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement before requesting fast-track authority, President Obama has chosen to keep the draft text of the TPP secret. This is not an allegation of TPP critics, it is a fact in the world.
Another point worth mentioning in this context is that when President Obama argued that he was pushing the TPP to help U.S. drug companies, he was effectively saying that he was hurting U.S. workers. There are two reasons this is likely to be the case. Several provisions of the deal will likely raise drug prices in the United States, for example by extending the period of data exclusivity for biosimiliar drugs (12 years in the leaked draft chapter, versus 7 years now). A decision by a future Congress to have Medicare negotiate drug prices may also be a violation of rules that effectively limit countries’ ability to put in place new price controls.
The other issue is that the more money that foreigners pay Pfizer, Merck and other U.S. drug companies for their patents, the less money they will have to buy airplanes and other items produced in the United States. Unless a worker in the United States owns stock in a drug company, they would be better of if foreigners paid less for drugs rather than more. (The drug companies do employ workers, but the marginal increase in employment from higher company profits is likely to be very small.)
In terms of the effort to revive Japan’s economy, it is worth noting that OECD reports that Japan’s employment to population ratio among people between the ages of 16-64 has risen by 3.1 percentage points since 2012. The ratio in the United States has only increased by 1.4 percentage points over the same period.
That is an important correction to the David Ignatius’ Washington Post column touting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a way to revive Japan’s economy. Unlike President Bush, who published a draft text of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement before requesting fast-track authority, President Obama has chosen to keep the draft text of the TPP secret. This is not an allegation of TPP critics, it is a fact in the world.
Another point worth mentioning in this context is that when President Obama argued that he was pushing the TPP to help U.S. drug companies, he was effectively saying that he was hurting U.S. workers. There are two reasons this is likely to be the case. Several provisions of the deal will likely raise drug prices in the United States, for example by extending the period of data exclusivity for biosimiliar drugs (12 years in the leaked draft chapter, versus 7 years now). A decision by a future Congress to have Medicare negotiate drug prices may also be a violation of rules that effectively limit countries’ ability to put in place new price controls.
The other issue is that the more money that foreigners pay Pfizer, Merck and other U.S. drug companies for their patents, the less money they will have to buy airplanes and other items produced in the United States. Unless a worker in the United States owns stock in a drug company, they would be better of if foreigners paid less for drugs rather than more. (The drug companies do employ workers, but the marginal increase in employment from higher company profits is likely to be very small.)
In terms of the effort to revive Japan’s economy, it is worth noting that OECD reports that Japan’s employment to population ratio among people between the ages of 16-64 has risen by 3.1 percentage points since 2012. The ratio in the United States has only increased by 1.4 percentage points over the same period.
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Yes folks, hold on to your hats, Thomas Friedman supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Friedman fans will recall his famous comment:
“I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'”
Actually, Friedman does provide useful insight into the issue when he cites President Obama referring to the TPP as a “effort to expand trade on our terms.” The key question is who is “our.” In these remarks President Obama made a point of mentioning the effort to increase the prices U.S. drug companies get for their drugs. That’s great news for people who own lots of stock in Merck or Pfizer, but not good news for anyone else. In addition to paying more for drugs, workers in the United States are likely to see their exports crowded out by higher royalty payments to Merck and Pfizer. This form of protectionism is likely to be a drag on growth and jobs.
In addition, the Obama administration decided not to include rules on currency values. This could have helped to address the problem of an over-valued dollar. This is the main cause of the U.S. trade deficit which remains an enormous drag on growth and obstacle to full employment. If the “our” referred to workers in the United States, currency rules likely would have been at the top of the list of items to be included.
And the investor-state dispute settlement tribunals, which will allow corporations to sue governments in the U.S. and elsewhere, is also a big triumph for corporate interests. These extra-judicial tribunals could penalize any level of government for consumer, safety, labor, or environmental regulations that are deemed harmful to foreign investors.
So Friedman may be right about “our terms,” but his “our” is likely not the “our” that includes most people in this country or the world.
Yes folks, hold on to your hats, Thomas Friedman supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Friedman fans will recall his famous comment:
“I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.'”
Actually, Friedman does provide useful insight into the issue when he cites President Obama referring to the TPP as a “effort to expand trade on our terms.” The key question is who is “our.” In these remarks President Obama made a point of mentioning the effort to increase the prices U.S. drug companies get for their drugs. That’s great news for people who own lots of stock in Merck or Pfizer, but not good news for anyone else. In addition to paying more for drugs, workers in the United States are likely to see their exports crowded out by higher royalty payments to Merck and Pfizer. This form of protectionism is likely to be a drag on growth and jobs.
In addition, the Obama administration decided not to include rules on currency values. This could have helped to address the problem of an over-valued dollar. This is the main cause of the U.S. trade deficit which remains an enormous drag on growth and obstacle to full employment. If the “our” referred to workers in the United States, currency rules likely would have been at the top of the list of items to be included.
And the investor-state dispute settlement tribunals, which will allow corporations to sue governments in the U.S. and elsewhere, is also a big triumph for corporate interests. These extra-judicial tribunals could penalize any level of government for consumer, safety, labor, or environmental regulations that are deemed harmful to foreign investors.
So Friedman may be right about “our terms,” but his “our” is likely not the “our” that includes most people in this country or the world.
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The economist Barbara Bergmann died last week. There is a memorial service on Tuesday which I will not be able to attend because of another commitment, but I did want to say a few words.
Barbara was an extraordinary person. She got her PhD in economics in the early 1960s; a time when virtually no women entered the profession. She made extensive contributions to the field, most of them in the area of gender economics.
I first encountered Barbara back in the 1980s when I was a grad student at the University of Michigan. She gave a talk in which she explained testimony she had given in a case on gender discrimination in annuities. Prior to this case, insurance companies usually made lower annual payouts to women than men, based on the fact that women had longer life expectancies. The case in which Barbara gave her testimony overturned this practice after the Supreme Court ruled it was illegal discrimination.
Barbara explained the nature of her argument by pointing out that there was huge overlap in the distribution of longevity between men and women. Women had longer life-spans on average mostly because a relatively small number of women lived very long lives. She argued that it didn’t make sense to give lower annuities to all women because of these long-lived women.
During the question period, many of the faculty were upset by the nature of this argument. After all, women did on average live longer than men, why shouldn’t insurers adjust for this fact in their annual payouts?
Barbara responded by making the case more extreme. She suggested a scenario in which the distribution of lifespans was identical for men and women, except for one person (I believe Barbara referred to her as a “pest”) who refused to die. We then check the DNA of this person and it turns out that she is a women. Would it then make sense to reduce the annuities for all women based on this fact?
After the lecture, a number of the grad students were arguing over this issue. Most seemed to share the view of our faculty, that the differences in annuities was justified by women’s longer life expectancies. Then someone suggested that African Americans should get larger annuities than whites, since they have shorter life expectancies. Several of the advocates of lower payments for women immediately jumped on this as race discrimination. (Yes, everyone was white.)
This episode taught me a lot about economists, if not economics. Barbara will be missed.
The economist Barbara Bergmann died last week. There is a memorial service on Tuesday which I will not be able to attend because of another commitment, but I did want to say a few words.
Barbara was an extraordinary person. She got her PhD in economics in the early 1960s; a time when virtually no women entered the profession. She made extensive contributions to the field, most of them in the area of gender economics.
I first encountered Barbara back in the 1980s when I was a grad student at the University of Michigan. She gave a talk in which she explained testimony she had given in a case on gender discrimination in annuities. Prior to this case, insurance companies usually made lower annual payouts to women than men, based on the fact that women had longer life expectancies. The case in which Barbara gave her testimony overturned this practice after the Supreme Court ruled it was illegal discrimination.
Barbara explained the nature of her argument by pointing out that there was huge overlap in the distribution of longevity between men and women. Women had longer life-spans on average mostly because a relatively small number of women lived very long lives. She argued that it didn’t make sense to give lower annuities to all women because of these long-lived women.
During the question period, many of the faculty were upset by the nature of this argument. After all, women did on average live longer than men, why shouldn’t insurers adjust for this fact in their annual payouts?
Barbara responded by making the case more extreme. She suggested a scenario in which the distribution of lifespans was identical for men and women, except for one person (I believe Barbara referred to her as a “pest”) who refused to die. We then check the DNA of this person and it turns out that she is a women. Would it then make sense to reduce the annuities for all women based on this fact?
After the lecture, a number of the grad students were arguing over this issue. Most seemed to share the view of our faculty, that the differences in annuities was justified by women’s longer life expectancies. Then someone suggested that African Americans should get larger annuities than whites, since they have shorter life expectancies. Several of the advocates of lower payments for women immediately jumped on this as race discrimination. (Yes, everyone was white.)
This episode taught me a lot about economists, if not economics. Barbara will be missed.
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That is the only possible conclusion that an informed reader can reach. After all, we all know that Representative Ryan is a huge champion of fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, and sound money. We also remember how he denounced Ben Bernanke and the Fed for their policy of quantitative easing. He issued strong warnings about the debasement of the currency and hyperinflation.
There is no way that this celebrated fiscal hawk and sound money proponent could praise a country for running large deficits and printing money like there is no tomorrow. But there it is on the Washington Post’s oped page, someone claiming to be Paul Ryan is praising Japan for having a large stimulus and the fact that they “cranked up the printing presses” in reference to the policy of quantitative easing by Japan’s central bank.
For those keeping score, Japan’s ratio of net debt to GDP is more than 50 percent higher than in the United States. The ratio of gross debt to GDP is more than twice as high. The I.M.F. projects that Japan’s deficit for 2015 will be 6.2 percent of GDP, which would be more than $1.1 trillion in the United States.
To say this applause for Japan’s economic policy is inconsistent with Ryan’s past pronouncements on economic policy would be the understatement of the century. If we had a serious press corps in the United States, reporters would be pressing Ryan over this colossal flip flop. Of course Ryan wrote this column in the hope of advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we know that the media have a policy that inanities in the advancement of trade pacts are not subject to scrutiny.
That is the only possible conclusion that an informed reader can reach. After all, we all know that Representative Ryan is a huge champion of fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, and sound money. We also remember how he denounced Ben Bernanke and the Fed for their policy of quantitative easing. He issued strong warnings about the debasement of the currency and hyperinflation.
There is no way that this celebrated fiscal hawk and sound money proponent could praise a country for running large deficits and printing money like there is no tomorrow. But there it is on the Washington Post’s oped page, someone claiming to be Paul Ryan is praising Japan for having a large stimulus and the fact that they “cranked up the printing presses” in reference to the policy of quantitative easing by Japan’s central bank.
For those keeping score, Japan’s ratio of net debt to GDP is more than 50 percent higher than in the United States. The ratio of gross debt to GDP is more than twice as high. The I.M.F. projects that Japan’s deficit for 2015 will be 6.2 percent of GDP, which would be more than $1.1 trillion in the United States.
To say this applause for Japan’s economic policy is inconsistent with Ryan’s past pronouncements on economic policy would be the understatement of the century. If we had a serious press corps in the United States, reporters would be pressing Ryan over this colossal flip flop. Of course Ryan wrote this column in the hope of advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we know that the media have a policy that inanities in the advancement of trade pacts are not subject to scrutiny.
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Yeah, that was a joke. However that would be the case if the paper was consistent. Its lead editorial today complained about the people arguing that currency rules should be included in a trade deal. It told readers:
“And, yes, the International Monetary Fund has developed criteria for currency manipulation — including prolonged current account surpluses and excessive foreign exchange reserve accumulation — that could, in theory, be incorporated into the agreement.
“The problem is that the definitions of these terms are subject to endless lawyerly disputation, and they could well be interpreted to rule out legitimate economic measures, including some — such as the Federal Reserve’s recent quantitative easing — that the United States itself might pursue. As Kemal Dervis of the Brookings Institution has argued, pretty much any aspect of macroeconomic policy could be construed to affect a country’s trade balance and, by extension, its exchange rate. It is therefore far better to keep such sensitive matters out of trade deals and leave them to existing, separate, diplomatic processes.”
Guess what? Almost any policy that we might put forward to improve the economy to help the economy can be seen as an unfair export subsidy. This list would include items such as vocational training to give workers more skills, improved infrastructure to facilitate the transportation of goods to ports, low interest loans (i.e. the export-import bank), implicit government backing for too big to fail banks (i.e. TARP), and publicly funded research like the $30 billion a year that finances the National Institutes of Health and provides many of the breakthroughs eventually harnessed by our drug companies.
Similarly, a wide range of consumer and environmental policies can be seen as restrictions on imports. And labor policies that applied to foreign investors can be seen as unfair takings under the TPP or TTIP. As the Post editorial says, “the definitions of these terms are subject to endless lawyerly disputation.”
If the Post’s editorial board were being consistent it would reject trade pacts in general as too complicated. But as we know, when it comes to trade policy, the Post cares little for consistency — or the facts.
Remember, this is the paper that claimed Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled between 1987 and 2007 in a lead editorial condemning the Democratic presidential candidates for pledging to renegotiate NAFTA. According to our good friends at the I.M.F, the actual increase was just over 83 percent.
One more point, the Post was upset at the fast-track critics for complaining about the trade deal’s secrecy. There is a very simple point here. President Obama could release a draft text of the deal indicating where issues are still being negotiated. The Post’s editors are probably too young to remember, but President George W. Bush did this back in 2003 before asking Congress to vote for fast-track authority on the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement.
Yeah, that was a joke. However that would be the case if the paper was consistent. Its lead editorial today complained about the people arguing that currency rules should be included in a trade deal. It told readers:
“And, yes, the International Monetary Fund has developed criteria for currency manipulation — including prolonged current account surpluses and excessive foreign exchange reserve accumulation — that could, in theory, be incorporated into the agreement.
“The problem is that the definitions of these terms are subject to endless lawyerly disputation, and they could well be interpreted to rule out legitimate economic measures, including some — such as the Federal Reserve’s recent quantitative easing — that the United States itself might pursue. As Kemal Dervis of the Brookings Institution has argued, pretty much any aspect of macroeconomic policy could be construed to affect a country’s trade balance and, by extension, its exchange rate. It is therefore far better to keep such sensitive matters out of trade deals and leave them to existing, separate, diplomatic processes.”
Guess what? Almost any policy that we might put forward to improve the economy to help the economy can be seen as an unfair export subsidy. This list would include items such as vocational training to give workers more skills, improved infrastructure to facilitate the transportation of goods to ports, low interest loans (i.e. the export-import bank), implicit government backing for too big to fail banks (i.e. TARP), and publicly funded research like the $30 billion a year that finances the National Institutes of Health and provides many of the breakthroughs eventually harnessed by our drug companies.
Similarly, a wide range of consumer and environmental policies can be seen as restrictions on imports. And labor policies that applied to foreign investors can be seen as unfair takings under the TPP or TTIP. As the Post editorial says, “the definitions of these terms are subject to endless lawyerly disputation.”
If the Post’s editorial board were being consistent it would reject trade pacts in general as too complicated. But as we know, when it comes to trade policy, the Post cares little for consistency — or the facts.
Remember, this is the paper that claimed Mexico’s GDP had quadrupled between 1987 and 2007 in a lead editorial condemning the Democratic presidential candidates for pledging to renegotiate NAFTA. According to our good friends at the I.M.F, the actual increase was just over 83 percent.
One more point, the Post was upset at the fast-track critics for complaining about the trade deal’s secrecy. There is a very simple point here. President Obama could release a draft text of the deal indicating where issues are still being negotiated. The Post’s editors are probably too young to remember, but President George W. Bush did this back in 2003 before asking Congress to vote for fast-track authority on the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement.
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That’s what millions are asking after reading the front page piece in the NYT on the state of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom in the context of upcoming elections there. The piece discusses the widespread public support for the system, but notes some of the issues that have been raised concerning the quality of care in recent years.
It would have been useful to tell readers that the U.K. spends 9.1 percent of its GDP on health care. By comparison, the United States spends 17.1 percent of its GDP on health care. The difference in costs between the U.S. and U.K. comes to $5,900 per person per year, or $23,600 for a family of four. This information should have been included in the piece to give readers a better understanding of the relative efficiency of the two systems.
That’s what millions are asking after reading the front page piece in the NYT on the state of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom in the context of upcoming elections there. The piece discusses the widespread public support for the system, but notes some of the issues that have been raised concerning the quality of care in recent years.
It would have been useful to tell readers that the U.K. spends 9.1 percent of its GDP on health care. By comparison, the United States spends 17.1 percent of its GDP on health care. The difference in costs between the U.S. and U.K. comes to $5,900 per person per year, or $23,600 for a family of four. This information should have been included in the piece to give readers a better understanding of the relative efficiency of the two systems.
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The Washington Post has long been known for its willingness to ignore the distinction between news and editorial pages in pushing the case for deficit reduction in the United States. Today it took its drive for austerity overseas. In an article on public attitudes on the eve of national elections in the United Kingdom it discussed the likelihood that military spending would be cut to “pay down a still-burdensome deficit.”
The Post doesn’t explain how it has determined that the deficit [it may mean “debt,” since countries can’t really pay down an annual deficit] is burdensome. The usual signs of a debt being burdensome are not present. The interest rate on 10-year government bonds is just 1.65 percent, much lower than at any point in the four decades before the collapse of the U.K.’s prior housing bubble in 2007. Its overall inflation rate over the last year has been virtually zero.
Given that it has extremely low interest rates and zero inflation, it would seem that neither the deficit or debt in the U.K. is now burdensome. A real newspaper would have referred to a deficit that “politicians claim is burdensome.”
The Washington Post has long been known for its willingness to ignore the distinction between news and editorial pages in pushing the case for deficit reduction in the United States. Today it took its drive for austerity overseas. In an article on public attitudes on the eve of national elections in the United Kingdom it discussed the likelihood that military spending would be cut to “pay down a still-burdensome deficit.”
The Post doesn’t explain how it has determined that the deficit [it may mean “debt,” since countries can’t really pay down an annual deficit] is burdensome. The usual signs of a debt being burdensome are not present. The interest rate on 10-year government bonds is just 1.65 percent, much lower than at any point in the four decades before the collapse of the U.K.’s prior housing bubble in 2007. Its overall inflation rate over the last year has been virtually zero.
Given that it has extremely low interest rates and zero inflation, it would seem that neither the deficit or debt in the U.K. is now burdensome. A real newspaper would have referred to a deficit that “politicians claim is burdensome.”
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