Dean Baker
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, The United States Since 1980, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot), and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, July 28, 2020 The Insanity of Prescription Drug Prices in America Prescription drugs have long provided two bad examples of American exceptionalism. They cost three-to-four times more than anywhere else, and we’re one of only two countries in the world that allows prescription drug advertising to consumers. Far better to be like everybody else. Americans deserve... Read more |
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Views Saturday, June 20, 2020 Patents and the Pandemic, Again I know I have been pounding on this a lot, but it is important and there is a lot of money at stake. All we need (okay, maybe not all) is some clear thinking. The Washington Post had a good piece this week talking about how a company set up by a hedge fund, with no background or expertise in... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 17, 2020 It’s the End of the World Economy as We Know It, Just Like the Great Recession Neil Irwin tells us there will be fundamental changes in the world economy as a result of the pandemic. While he repeats many things that are conventional wisdom, as is often the case, the conventional wisdom is not very wise. First, the pandemic is supposed to teach us the dangers of having... Read more |
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Views Sunday, March 29, 2020 The Relative Generosity of the Economic Rescue Package: Boeing and Public Broadcasting The media have been engaged big time in the numbers without context game, throwing out really big numbers faster than anyone can catch them. (For the biggest, the overall size of the stimulus, given the time frame, we are looking at a stimulus that is about five times as large as the Obama stimulus... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 19, 2020 Trump Stimulus Plan: Still Getting Everything Wrong Donald Trump has consistently been failing the country in dealing with the coronavirus. Due to Trump’s failed public health response, even Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin acknowledges that we are facing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. This is in addition to the prospect of... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 19, 2020 Any Corporate Bailouts Should Wipe Out Shareholders First It looks like we are seeing an effort to do a replay of 2008 where we were told that we had to give all the money to the banks or the world would end. Today the story is that we have to bail out the airline, cruise, hotel, and restaurant industries or tens of millions of workers will lose their... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 10, 2020 Coronavirus Is a Reason to Worry About the Economy—the Stock Market Plunge Is Not Many people have become very concerned about the economy because of the stock market’s plunge in the last two weeks. While the spread of the coronavirus gives us very good reason to worry about the state of the economy, the plunge in the stock market does not. In fact, those folks who are very... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 21, 2020 If Worker Pay Had Kept Pace With Productivity Gains Since 1968, Today's Minimum Wage Would Be $24 an Hour If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since 1968, it would be close to $12 an hour today, more than 65 percent higher than the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. While this would make a huge difference in the lives of many people earning close to the national minimum wage, it is... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 08, 2019 A Bold Plan to Strengthen and Improve Social Security Is What America Needs The Social Security 2100 Act proposed by Connecticut Representative John Larson is getting closer to being passed by the House of Representatives. It now has more than 200 co-sponsors. If it were to be approved and become law, it would both improve the program’s benefit structure and its financial... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 01, 2019 Mark Zuckerberg Is a Rich Jerk Last week, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan had a piece headlined “Why Doesn’t Mark Zuckerberg Get It?” The piece then goes on to document how Facebook has become a medium for spreading lies and nonsense all over the world, that many ill-informed users have come to believe. This is what Egan... Read more |