Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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The NYT has lost any connection to reality in its deficit/debt discussions. In an article discussing the victory of the left parties in Denmark it told readers:
“For Denmark, a nation of 5.5 million people, the election turned on the issue that has also divided many other Western nations struggling with low growth, large government deficits and historic levels of national debt: what mix of government spending and tax policies to adopt in order to restore economic health and avoid slipping further toward a crisis like Greece’s.”
According to the IMF, Denmark’s debt to GDP ratio is projected to be just over 4 percent at the end of 2011. By comparison, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio is 150 percent. Greece’s annual interest burden is considerably larger than Denmark’s debt.
Claiming that Denmark need worry about being like Greece is like saying that Bill Gates needs to worry about ending up homeless. Both are theoretically possible, but almost unimaginable given their current situations.
The article also includes an unusual discussion of growth rates telling readers:
“Denmark is Scandinavia’s worst-performing economy, with a growth rate less than half of Norway’s and less than one-third of Sweden’s.”
Since the growth rates in question are all low, it makes far more sense to express the gap in percentage point terms rather than as ratios. A country with 1.0 percent growth has twice the growth rate of a country with 0.5 percent, but for most purposes there is little difference between these growth rates in the lives of the populations affected.