Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.
Baker is author of many books, including Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Polipoint Press, 2009); The United States Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006).
A Competitive Dollar: The Missing Link in President Obama's Manufacturing Agenda
In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama announced a renewed commitment to manufacturing in the United States. While the commitment to rebuilding the country's manufacturing base is welcome -- manufacturing has historically been a source of good-paying jobs for workers without college degrees -- he unfortunately ...
The Surefire Way to End Online Piracy: End Copyright
The popular rebellion against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was an impressive display of democracy in action. The opponents of the bill were able to use the web and various social media venues to educate the public about the specifics of the bill. The resulting flood of e-mails, phone ...
Alan Greenspan's ship of fools
In keeping with its policy of releasing transcripts with a five-year lag, the Federal Reserve Board recently released the transcripts from its 2006 Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings. There is much there to cause pain and amusement. In the latter category, there is probably nothing that can beat Treasury Secretary ...
Time Is on Our Side: The Survival of Social Security
As we approach budget time we can look forward to another burst of hand wringing by the Washington elites, who will once again tell us about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare. News stories and opinion columns will be filled with solemn pronouncements about how these programs must ...
Will Romney Lie His Way to the White House?
Mitt Romney seems ready to wield his version of birthirism as a major weapon in the fall campaign against President Obama. In his standard stump speech, he tells audiences that President Obama wants, "to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society." According to Romney, this means a European-style welfare ...
Keystone Jobs Versus Competitive-Dollar Jobs
The new great hope for job creation in Washington is the Keystone pipeline, a plan to create a pipeline that would transport oil from Alberta, Canada, as far as New Orleans. According to the Republican leadership and other proponents of the pipeline, it is expected to create 20,000 jobs in ...
Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties
The country is still celebrating the inability of the supercommittee to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it is important to move on from this victory to retake control of the political debate from the One Percent. As it stands, the One Percent are insisting that the country genuflect over ...
Will the euro be destroyed by ideologues?
We could be living through the last days of the euro. That is not a happy thought. While there were many negative aspects to the rules governing the European Central Bank (ECB) and the eurozone economies, no one can want to see the economic chaos that will almost certainly follow ...
The Myth of the Wealthy Elderly
The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare have been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There ...
The One Percent Turns Class War Into Generational War
Major news outlets like the Washington Post and National Public Radio constantly bombard us with news pieces on the budget deficit. Invariably these stories focus on the cost of "entitlements," which most of us know as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The story pounded home in these pieces -- often ...
Supercommittee of the One Percent Won't Even Think of Taxing Wall Street
If anyone still questioned who owns Washington, the Congressional supercommittee charged with reducing projected deficits by $1.2 trillion seems determined to end any doubts. According to press accounts, both the Republicans and Democrats on the committee support a plan to reduce average Social Security benefits by 3 percent. While whacking ...
A Generation of CEOs Who Don’t Know How to Raise Wages
Those who follow the rants from our business leaders and their allies in politics and the media have been struck by a disquieting cry in recent months. We have been repeatedly told that, even though we have more than 25 million people unemployed or underemployed, businesses are unable to find ...
Taxing nothing: Making empty homes pay
Virtually all forecasters are now projecting the unemployment rate to remain high for years into the future. This is the result of the political deadlock in Washington, where the Republican leadership has made it clear that it will oppose any further measures to create jobs. If nothing happens in Washington, ...
On the tragic passing of Steve Jobs, while still a relatively young man, it is interesting to juxtapose him to Alan Greenspan, one of the other iconic figures of our time. One made us rich, with a vast array of new products and new possibilities. The other made us poor ...
The New York Times reported last week that former President Bill Clinton is working on a new book on economic policy to be released in time for next year's election. This is unfortunate, since Clinton stands alongside Alan Greenspan as one of the last people who should be giving the ...
Why Don't the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street?
The intensity with which the country's leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining. While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and The Washington Post never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow ...
Does President Obama Want to Impose a Crushing Burden on Our Children?
Sorry deficit fanatics, this one has nothing to do with the cost of the stimulus or the deficits run-up during the Obama years. We're talking real money here. We're talking about plans to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67. To deficit hawks everywhere this is a great way ...
Do Liberals Have to Be Losers?
National political discussion of the economics and budgets over the last two decades have been dominated by the debate over President Clinton's tax increase and President Bush's subsequent reversal of this tax hike. If we narrow down the focus to the hike on the richest 2 percent of the population, ...
President Obama's job creation mirage
President Obama has discovered how serious the recession is. That's what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring to revised data from the commerce department showing that the falloff in GDP was larger than originally reported. But ridicule is appropriate. He and we ...
Double-dip recession is unlikely
The latest fad among economic forecasters is to talk about the growing probability of a double-dip recession. They have raised fears that the economy will again go spiralling downward at a point where it has hardly made up any of the ground lost in the last recession. This is indeed ...
Why Is President Obama So Anxious to Cut Social Security?
On his tour of the Midwest last week, President Obama again indicated his interest in cutting Social Security. He repeated a proposal that his administration first put forward in the debt ceiling negotiations: he wants to cut the annual cost of living adjustment by 0.3 percentage points. This cut may ...
John Kerry, the Lazy Senator Who Would Not Learn
Senator John Kerry, along with the two other Democratic senators appointed to the "Super Committee", had a column in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on their approach to the committee's work. This piece is infuriating for its empty platitudes and the refusal to acknowledge economic reality. In just 700 words ...
President Obama's re-election economic policy
A front page story in Sunday's New York Times gave the country the bad news. President Obama is no longer paying attention to economists and economics in designing economic policy. Instead, he will do what his campaign people tell him will get him re-elected, presumably by getting lots of money ...
The Economic Illiterates Step Up the Attack on Social Security and Medicare
Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrade of US debt should be seen as the joke it is. The rating agency, which gave investment grade ratings to hundreds of billions of dollars of subprime mortgage-backed securities, made an accounting error of $2 trillion in doing its assessment of the US financial situation. ...
How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade
Standard and Poor's downgrade of U.S. government debt captured headlines across the country and around the world. It is a newsworthy event, but primarily as another colossal failure by a major credit rating agency. First, it is worth mentioning the important background here. S&P, along with the other credit rating ...
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February 5th, 2013
Tax Games and Redistributing Income Upward
The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is ...
January 30th, 2013
Timothy Geithner Saved Wall Street, Not the Economy
The accolades for Timothy Geithner came on so thick and heavy in the last week that it's necessary for those of us in the reality-based ...
December 19th, 2012
Michigan Republicans Deny Police Officers and Firefighters the Right to Work
That is what the headlines would say if anyone really believed that the anti-union laws passed last week in Michigan actually had anything to do ...
December 3rd, 2012
The Serious People Are on the War Path
Fans of arithmetic everywhere know that the large deficits of the last five years are the result of the economic downturn caused by the collapse ...
October 15th, 2012
The wrecking society: Economics today
There is an old story from the heyday of the Soviet Union. As part of their May Day celebrations they were parading their latest weapon ...
September 2nd, 2012
Poverty: The New Growth Industry in America
Recent trends in poverty rates should have the country furious at its leaders. When we get the data for 2011 next month, we are likely ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
February 18th, 2011
Unions badgering Wisconsin's finances?
You have to give Gov. Walker and his wealthy patrons credit. Here we have a situation where Wall Street fat cats wrecked the economy - ...
July 21st, 2011
The Drive to Cut Social Security: Why Are the Gang of Six Scared of Information?
A central theme of the Gang of Six's deficit reduction crusade is lowering the annual cost of living for Social Security. They propose to change ...
August 21st, 2012
'Courage' in Washington Doesn't Have the Same Meaning
Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to ...
October 18th, 2010
Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens
As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics. On the one hand, there are those who think it is the ...
July 28th, 2011
President Obama Doesn't Understand the Origins of the Deficit
That is what he told the country in his address on Monday night. President Obama described a situation in which the government had been perpetually ...
August 31st, 2011
Do Liberals Have to Be Losers?
National political discussion of the economics and budgets over the last two decades have been dominated by the debate over President Clinton's tax increase and ...
August 29th, 2011
President Obama's job creation mirage
President Obama has discovered how serious the recession is. That's what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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