Mark WeisbrotSacramento Bee (CA), August 9, 2012Bradenton Herald (FL), August 9, 2012Bellingham Herald (WA), August 9, 2012Hanover Evening Sun (PA), August 9, 2012Janesville Gazette (WI), August 9, 2012McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, August 9, 201

Mark WeisbrotThe Guardian Unlimited, 30 de julio de 2012En Inglés

Over the last few days, several blogs have commented on the chart below from a recent CEPR report (pdf) that Janelle Jones and I did on “Good Jobs.” (See, for example, Kevin Drum, Brad Plumer at WonkBlog, Andrew Sullivan, and ThinkProgress.) The graph sh

NYT columnist Eduardo Porter seriously misrepresents the issues in the trade debate in his column today. First of all, he misrepresents recent trade deals by referring them as "free trade" agreements.

While advocates of these trade pacts like to call them "free trade" agreements in the same way that President Reagan wanted to call the MX missile the "Peacekeeper", that doesn't make the assertion accurate. A major part of all the trade deals the United States has negotiated over the last two decades has been provisions that require stronger patent and copyright protection in our trading partners. 

Patent and copyright protection is a form of protectionism; it is not free trade. In fact, patent and copyright protection are extremely inefficient forms of protectionism that lead to far higher prices and much greater economic distortions that the types of trade protection that typically concern policymakers.

While tariffs or quotas rarely raise the price of a protected product by more 20 or 30 percent, patent and copyright protection raise the price of the protected items by many thousand percent. In the case of prescription drugs, patent protection raises the price of drugs that would sell for $5-$10 a prescription in a free market to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per prescription. The total gap between patent protected drug prices that we pay and their free market price is in the neighborhood of $270 billion a year.  

As economic theory predicts, this sort of interference in the market leads to rent-seeking behavior by drug companies that make the economic distortions even larger. In fact, the NYT has run numerous articles on efforts by drug companies to market drugs for inappropriate uses or to conceal evidence their drugs are ineffective or even harmful. (Here's the NYT's latest installment in its series on abuses caused by patent monopolies in prescription drugs. And yes, there are other ways to finance prescription drug research.) These are exactly the sort of abuses that economic theory predicts would result from this sort of government granted monopoly.

The killing of four adults, and – according to some reports – disappearance of four children in a violent forced eviction on July 23rd has gone all but unnoticed by the major English language media, but some details have emerged through Haitian and some i

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera English, August 7, 2012

Dean Baker
The New York Times (Room for Debate), August 7, 2012

Mark WeisbrotMcClatchy-Tribune Information Services, 26 de julio, 2012

Dean Baker
Truthout, August 6, 2012

Yes, on this great day when we hear the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent, NYT columnist Bill Keller is still pressing on the need to curb Social Security and Medicare spending and calling on his fellow baby boomers to rise to the occasion. He has even brought in Jim Kessler, the senior vice-president for policy at Third Way, to help him make the case.

I'm sure that Keller and Kessler would consider my mention of the 8.3 percent unemployment rate to be rude, after all what does that have to do with the need to cut Social Security and Medicare? There is a simple answer to that. The 8.3 percent unemployment rate should be seen as comparable to a school fire where the children are still inside the building. Tens of millions of people are seeing their lives ruined.

This is not a short-term story. Many of the families that will break up under the stress of high unemployment or the loss of their home will not get back together when the unemployment rate falls back to a more normal level. Similarly, the kids who have their school lives disrupted because their parents lose their homes or must move in search of jobs and/or family break up will not have the damage repaired later. This is why 8.3 percent unemployment should be problems #1, #2, and #3.

And yes, we do know how to fix this. Spending money puts people to work. Contrary to a bizarre cult in policy circles, it does not matter whether money comes from the private sector or public sector --dollars will get people to work. And the people who get those dollars will spend them and put other people to work. If Keller and Kessler want to be responsible baby boomers they will do everything in their power to try to get us back to full employment quickly so that so many children do not have to grow up in families that are troubled by unemployment. The next generation will thank them for their efforts, I assure them.