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Number of people killed in the earthquake in 2010: over 217,300

Minimum number of Haitians killed by the U.N.–caused cholera epidemic: 8,774

Number of years it took after the introduction of cholera for the international community to hold a donor conference to raise funds for the cholera response: 4

Amount pledged for cholera eradication: $50 million

Amount needed: $2.2 billion

Number of years it would take to fully fund the cholera-eradication plan at current disbursement rate: 40

Number of Haitians who died from cholera through the first 8 months of 2014: 55

Number who have died since, coinciding with the start of the rainy season: 188

Number of new cholera cases in 2014, through August: 9,700

Projected number of cholera cases for all of 2014, after the United Nations reduced their estimate in September 2014: 15,000

Minimum number of new cholera cases since that announcement: 14,000 (through December 8)

Number of U.N. lawyers who were present during oral arguments in a federal court in New York to argue in favor of the U.N.’s immunity: 0

Number of members of the U.S. Congress who wrote to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last month urging the U.N. to respond justly to cholera claims: 77

Humanitarian funding appeal for 2014, by the United Nations: $157 million

Percent of appeal covered, as of December 30, 2014: 54 percent

Dean Baker
Huffington Post, January 7, 2015

Yes, Japan looks like it is becoming less crowded and the folks at the Post are terrified. A Wonkblog piece warned readers that, "Japan's birth rate problem is way worse than anyone imagined."

The basic story is it seems that Japan has consistently over-projected its birthrate. As a result, its population is now declining and the rate of decline may be even faster than is now projected.

The question is why is this a problem? First, just to take an issue off the table, it is important that Japan, like the United States, create a situation where families and especially women, feel they can have children and still have a fulfilling career. But the question here is whether it is a problem for society if people choose to have fewer children and we have a declining population.

The piece tells readers:

"Japan’s declining population has a powerful impact on its economic situation, and not for the better. An aging population leaves the country with fewer workers and more dependents. And conventional wisdom says aging leads to slower economic growth and more deflationary forces, both of which make it more difficult for Japan to chip away at the substantial debt burden from its economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s."

Actually, since Japan is a densely populated country with expensive real estate, a declining population could be associated with substantial improvements in living standards as the property values and rents would drop due to less demand. It's not clear why fewer workers and more dependents should be a big problem. This has been the reality for the last 60 years, a period in which countries have generally enjoyed rising living standards. The key of course is productivity growth which means that we need fewer workers to produce the same amount of output. (Remember the robots who are supposed to take all of our jobs? That is productivity growth.)

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera America, January 7, 2015

The horror, the horror! Europe has a declining ratio of workers to retirees, just as has been the case for the last fifty years.

That is the message Arthur Brooks gave us in his NYT column this morning, although he left out the part about the last fifty years.

"Start with age. According to the United States Census Bureau’s International Database, nearly one in five Western Europeans was 65 years old or older in 2014. This is hard enough to endure, given the countries’ early retirement ages and pay-as-you-go pension systems. But by 2030, this will have risen to one in four. If history is any guide, aging electorates will direct larger and larger portions of gross domestic product to retirement benefits — and invest less in opportunity for future generations."

Brooks' source shows the share of the over 65 age group in the population rising from 18.8 percent in 2015 to 23.7 percent in 2030. If that sounds really scary consider that it has risen from 15.7 percent in 2000 to the current 18.8 percent over the last 15 years. In other words, this is a trend that has been taking place for a long time: people are living longer. This is usually viewed as good news.

Even as the ratio of older people to working age population has risen in Europe and elsewhere, people have seen rising living standards due to productivity growth. This is why we can all have enough to eat even though only less than 2.0 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture. (Remember the robots who are taking our jobs? That is a story of rising productivity. It's a story where we have too many people who want to work.)

Dean Baker
Truthout, January 5, 2015

The Keystone pipeline could have a serious impact on our children’s future, since it will facilitate the removal of high carbon oil from western Canada. This comment must be qualified, since if oil prices stay near $50 a barrel, then it is likely that most of this Canadian oil will stay in the ground whether or not the pipeline is built. However, the environmental issues should be front and center in the decision as to whether or not to build the pipeline.

Dean Baker
Truthout, December 29, 2014

Mark WeisbrotÚltimas Noticias, 04 de enero 2015Fortune, 29 de diciembre 2015En inglés

The Washington Post once again displayed its contempt for economics when it published Michael Harris' book review of The Internet Is Not the Answer, a new book by Andrew Keen. Many of the central points in the review are seriously misleading or just outright wrong.

The best example of the latter is the claim in reference to the turning over of the backbone of the Internet from the government to the private sector in the 1990s:

"It was, in the words of venture capitalist John Doerr, 'the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.'"

Handing over the Internet to the private sector was not a creation of wealth, it was a transfer of wealth. The wealth already existed -- it was the backbone of the Internet. It simply went from being held by the public to being held by private individuals. This is comparable to creating wealth with patent monopolies. At the point where a patent is issued, the wealth already exists. However the patent allows it to be privately appropriated rather than shared by the public at large.

Harris compounds the confusion when he approvingly cites Keen's assessment of Amazon:

"But Keen argues that 'the reverse is actually true. Amazon, in spite of its undoubted convenience, reliability, and great value, is actually having a disturbingly negative impact on the broader economy.' He points to what he describes as Amazon’s brutally efficient business methodology, which has squeezed jobs out of every sector of retail, according to a 2013 Institute for Local Self-Reliance report that Keen cites. The report says brick-and-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every $10 million in sales, while Amazon employs only 14. Perhaps the question Keen is getting at is this: Are we consumers, or are we citizens? It’s a frustratingly complex inquiry."

There are two different issues here. The first is the extent to which Amazon has led to productivity growth. In general this is a good thing for the economy. Companies like General Motors and U.S. Steel have adopted labor saving technologies over the last century. This has reduced prices for consumers and allowed workers to enjoy higher standards of living. There is no obvious reason we should want people to have to waste time working in retail stores if we can adopt technologies that save us the trouble. Insofar as Amazon has helped to increase productivity, this is a good thing.

January 2015, Nicole Woo, Cherrie Bucknor, and John Schmitt