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 Monday, August 19, 2019 CEOs Say They Will Stop Maximizing Shareholder Value. Would Be Better If They Stopped Maximizing CEO Compensation The Washington Post had a major front page article announcing in the headline "Group of top CEOs says maximizing shareholder profits no longer can be the primary goal of corporations." The piece refers to a statement by the Business Roundtable, a group comprising many of the country's largest... Read more |
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Views Monday, August 12, 2019 Why Would the Democrats Want to be 'Tough' on Trade, as Opposed to Smart on Trade? The New York Times has created an absurd dilemma for Democrats; "how to be tougher on trade than Trump." This framing of the trade issue is utterly bizarre and bears no resemblance to reality. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 02, 2019 Why Aren’t the Democrats Talking About Ending Patent-Financed Drug Research? Many of the leading Democratic candidates, especially Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have been putting forward bold progressive plans in a wide variety of areas. Sanders and Warren have both supported a quick transition to a universal Medicare program, with no premiums, co-pays, or... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 29, 2019 To Readers, $X Billion Just Means ‘a Whole Lot of Money’ Polls consistently show that the public hugely overestimates the share of the budget that goes to items like SNAP (food stamps), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and foreign aid. People will typically give answers in the range of 20 to 30 percent of the budget for these categories of... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 19, 2019 Trillion Dollar Wall Street Bailouts, Bernie Sanders, and the Washington Post Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact Checker gave Bernie Sanders two Pinocchios yesterday for saying that the Wall Street banks got a trillion dollar bailout. Kessler raises several points of contention. First, whether the Wall Street banks actually got that much money. Second, whether it can... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 18, 2019 On Paying for a Green New Deal with Modern Monetary Theory Much of the Democratic Party, including almost the entire pack of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, has embraced the concept of a Green New Deal (GND). This is an ambitious plan for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time creating good-paying jobs, improving... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 15, 2019 Worry About the Old, Not the Rich, HuffPost Tells Readers There continues to be a large market for pieces saying the big conflict in the US is generational rather than class. The HuffPost ( 3/11/19 ) made its latest contribution this week. The piece is more than a bit confused, but its headline explicitly gives the intention: “America’s Defining Divide Is... Read more |
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Views Saturday, February 23, 2019 Why Do the Media Provide Cover for Austerity Cranks, Like the Folks Running the EU? It’s not uncommon to read new stories that quite explicitly identify economic mismanagement. For example, news reports on the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe routinely (and correctly) attribute the cause to the poor economic management by its leaders. We will see similar attributions of mismanagement to... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 23, 2019 No One Said Rich People Were Very Sharp: Davos Tries to Combat Populism Let's see, cattle ranchers are against vegetarianism, coal companies are against restricting CO2 emissions, and the Davos crew is trying to combat populism, according to The Washington Post . It is kind of amazing that the rich people at Davos would not understand how absurd this is. Yeah, we get... Read more |
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Views Saturday, January 19, 2019 Washington Post Forgets to Mention, Scott Walker Misled Fifth Graders About Taxes The Washington Post had an article about how Republicans and right-wingers have become obsessed with trying to attack Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newly elected representative from New York. At one point it refers to former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's attack on Ocasio-Cortez's position... Read more |