Dean Baker
The American Prospect, January 14, 2019

Dean Baker
The Hankyoreh, January 13, 2019

Years since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti: 9

Estimated number of aftershocks that measured 4.5 or greater: 59

Number of people who died in the earthquake, according to Haitian government: 316,000

Number of people displaced: 1,300,000

Number of people who remained in internally displaced persons camps, as of September 2017: 37,867

Estimated population of Canaan, a barren hillside north of the capital, pre-earthquake: 0

Estimated population of Canaan now: 300,000

Minimum number of new homes necessary to meet demand: 500,000

Estimated damage and economic losses from earthquake, in percent of Haiti’s GDP: 120 percent

Total amount of aid disbursed by donors, since 2010: $7,538,885,632

Amount of aid given to the government in the form of budget support: $280,844,071

Total amount of approved World Bank projects in Haiti since the earthquake: $1.167 billion

Total aid awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID): $2.3 billion

Of that amount, percent of which was given to organizations or companies located inside the Beltway (Maryland, DC, Virginia): 55.5 percent

Percent of which was awarded directly to Haitian organizations or companies: 2.3 percent

Total amount of contracts awarded to the DC-based company Chemonics International: $298.55 million

Total amount of contracts awarded directly to all Haitian firms: $52.95 million

Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the flagship post-quake project: $350 million

Number of miles from the earthquake epicenter to Caracol: 190

Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: October 22, 2012

Number of jobs the State Department promised the new industrial park would create: 65,000

Total number of jobs at the industrial park, as of 2017: 10,214

Percent by which garment sector employment has increased countrywide since 2010: 93 percent

Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400

Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: December 19, 2018

Daily minimum wage in the garment sector: 420 gourdes (less than $6)

Daily minimum wage requested by unions: 1000 gourdes

Percent of garment factories noncompliant with social security and other benefit payments in 2018: 75 percent

Total remittances sent to Haiti in 2018, according to the World Bank: $2.5 billion

Haiti’s rank among countries with the highest remittances as a share of GDP: 5

Minimum number of Haitians who emigrated to Chile in 2017: 105,000

Number of Haitians living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS): 59,000

Date on which then-candidate Trump proclaimed that he would be Haiti’s “greatest champion”: September 16, 2016

Date on which the US announced it was ending TPS for Haitians: November 20, 2017

Date on which it was reported that President Trump referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country: January 11, 2018

Date on which a trial in New York commenced contesting the US decision to end TPS: January 7, 2019

Ratio of per capita public health funding in Haiti compared to Cuba: 1:60

Percent by which child mortality decreased, between 1990 and 2015: 50 percent

Factor by which Haiti’s child mortality rate remains greater than the Latin America and Caribbean average: 5

Percent of health facilities that charge user fees: 93 percent

Percent of the national budget that went to health in 2004: 16.6

In 2016: 4.4

Percent of national budget that went to the Senate and Chamber of Deputies last year: 5.8 percent

There have been several pieces in recent weeks about the drop in birth rates in recent years. Birth rates declined in the recession and they have not recovered even as the economy has improved.

As these pieces point out, economics plays a big role in the drop in birth rates. Young adults often are having difficulty finding and keeping jobs that provide a decent wage. This was certainly true in the downturn, but it is still often the case even now with the unemployment rate at 50-year lows.

In addition, the United States badly lags other rich countries in providing support to new parents. We are the only wealthy country that does not guarantee workers some amount of paid parental leave or sick days. While many companies offer these benefits, millions of new parents, especially those in lower paying jobs, cannot count on any paid leave. (It is important to note that many states and cities have required paid family leave and/or sick days in the last two decades, making up for the lack of action by the federal government.)

Child care is also a huge problem for young parents. Quality care is often difficult to find and very expensive. This leaves many young parents, especially mothers, struggling to provide care for their children even as they hold down a job.

These are real and important policy concerns. People should be able to have children without undue hardship. We also want to make sure that children have decent life prospects. Having parents that are not overstressed and access to good quality child care are important for getting children on a good path in school and their subsequent careers and lives.

For these reasons, leave policy and child care need to be near the top of the policy agenda. However, the fact that people are having fewer kids is not a good rationale for supporting these policies. A stagnant or even declining population is not a public policy problem.

January 11, 2019

January 11, 2019 (Prices Byte)

Mayor de Blasio has proposed an ordinance that would guarantee workers in the city at least two weeks a year of paid vacation. In taking this step, de Blasio is bringing the city in line with every other wealthy country in the world, which have long had paid vacation as a basic right of employment.

It is striking how out of line the United States is with the rest of the world in not providing paid vacation. When I first met my wife, who is from Denmark, she told me about how the unions in the country were having a general strike. They were demanding six weeks of paid vacation a year. They already had five. (The strike was quickly settled with a compromise of five weeks and three days, although they have since raised the number to six weeks.) Denmark is not an outlier, all workers in the European Union can count on at least four weeks a year of vacation and many are near Denmark with five or six weeks.

There are two basic points about paid leave. The first is the obvious one; the goal of the economy is to give people decent lives. This means not only having nice things but also having the time to enjoy life.

The reduction of work time has long been a basic demand of workers. Many of the biggest labor actions in the late 19th and early 20th century were for the eight-hour day. There was a sharp reduction in average work hours from the turn of the century until 1940. While other countries have continued to reduce average work hours (in Europe, the average work year is now about 20 percent shorter than in the United States), there has been little change in the United States over the last 80 years.

Dean Baker
Truthout, January 7, 2019

January 4, 2018

January 4, 2019 (Jobs Byte)

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

Okay, it’s that time of year when we are all supposed to commit ourselves to performing nearly impossible tasks over the next twelve months. I will play the game. Here is the list of areas where I will try to bring economics into economic policy debates in 2019.

1) Patent and copyright monopolies are government policies

This one is pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. It should be pretty obvious that these and other forms of intellectual property are government policies explicitly designed to promote innovation and creative work. We can (and have) make them stronger and longer, or alternatively, make them shorter and weaker, or not have them at all. We can also substitute other mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work, including expanding those that already exist. (Anyone hear of the National Institutes of Health?)  

Incredibly, most policy debates, especially those on inequality, treat these monopolies as though they were just given to us by the gods. It is endlessly repeated that technology has allowed people like Bill Gates to get incredibly rich while leaving less-educated workers behind. But that’s not true. It is our rules on patents and copyrights that have allowed people to get enormously wealthy from technological developments. With a different set of rules, Bill Gates would still be working for a living.

There are a few pieces on the topic here, here, and here (chapter 5).

2) Patent and copyright rents are equivalent to interest payments on government debt

This is a point that directly follows from the recognition that patent and copyright monopolies are government policies. We can think of granting these monopolies as alternatives to direct government spending.

Steven Rattner used his NYT column to present a number of charts to show Donald Trump's failures as president. While some, like the drop in enrollments in the health care exchanges, do in fact show failure, others do not really make his case. 

For example, he has a chart with a headline "paltry raise for the middle class." What his chart actually shows is that middle class wages, adjusted for inflation, fell sharply in the recession, but have been rising roughly 1.0 percent a year since 2014. They recovered their pre-recession levels in 2017 and now are almost a percentage point above the 2008 level. This is not a great story, but the picture under Trump is certainly better than under Obama. (This wasn't entirely Obama's fault, since he inherited an economy in the toilet.)

The chart shows more rapid growth at the bottom of the pay latter and a modest downturn under Trump for those at the top. By recent standards, this is not a bad picture, even if Trump does not especially deserve credit for it. (He came in with an unemployment rate that was low and falling.)

Rattner also presents as a bad sign projections for fewer Fed rate hikes. While one basis for projecting fewer rate hikes is that the economy now looks weaker for 2019 than had been thought earlier in the year (but still stronger than had been projected in 2016), another reason is that inflation is lower than expected. Economists have consistently over-estimated the impact that low unemployment would have on the inflation rate. With inflation coming in lower than projected, there is less reason for the Fed to raise rates.

Contrary to what Rattner is implying, this is a good development. It means that the unemployment rate can continue to fall and workers at the middle and the bottom of the pay ladder can continue to see real wage gains.