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 Saturday, December 01, 2018 Our Elites Refuse to Accept Responsibility for Leaving Behind the Left Behind There have been several analyses of the 2018 election results showing that the Republican regions are disproportionately areas that lag in income and growth. In response, we are seeing a minor industry develop on what we can do to help the left behinds. The assumption in this analysis is that being... Read more |
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Views Monday, September 03, 2018 Unions in the 21st Century: A Potent Weapon Against Inequality The topic of economic inequality can appear complex, with many nuanced causes and outcomes. But while the two of us actively engage in that debate, we also strongly believe that there is one overarching factor that must not be, but often is, overlooked: worker bargaining power. On Labor Day, this... Read more |
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Views Friday, August 03, 2018 The Trump Administration's Giant F**k You to Working People: Playing Games with Capital Gains Tax Rates Okay, I'm going to plead guilty to playing lawyer without a license. The NYT reports that the Trump administration is proposing to unilaterally (as in no congressional action) change the way that capital gains are calculated for tax purposes. The plan is to allow people to index capital gains for... Read more |
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Views Monday, July 23, 2018 The Washington Post Thinks It Is a New Idea to Tell People to Worry About Mobility and Not Inequality Just when you thought economic commentary in the Washington Post couldn't get any more insipid, Roger Lowenstein proves otherwise. In a business section " perspective " he tells readers: "But what if inequality is the wrong metric. Herewith a modest proposition: economic inequality is not the best... Read more |
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Views Friday, June 08, 2018 Killing the Myth of the Gig Economy Many pundit types were thrown for a loop by the Labor Department's release of its Contingent Worker Survey yesterday. The survey, the first one since 2005, showed no increase in the percentage of workers employed as independent contractors, such as those who work for Uber and Lyft. While that didn'... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 05, 2018 No You Assholes, Obama Did Not Do It Too Let's get this straight, Donald Trump did something unbelievably stupid when he tweeted about the jobs report last Friday morning, 69 minutes before it was public. The president gets an advance copy of the report the night before, so he and his staff know what the country will be looking at the... Read more |
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Views Sunday, April 01, 2018 Roger Lowenstein, F**k Your Stock Portfolio I realize it would be too much to ask that people who write on economics for major news outlets have any clue about how the economy works. I say that seriously; I have been commenting on economic reporting for more than two decades. Being a writer on economics is not like being a custodian or bus... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 15, 2018 In Defense of Larry Kudlow (Sort of) A lot of folks are running around making a big point of the fact that Larry Kudlow, Trump's new head of the National Economic Council, has gotten a lot of things about the economy wrong, and in particular missed the coming of the Great Recession. For example, here's Dana Milbank's column in the... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, February 28, 2018 Doesn't Anyone Care If the Trump Tax Cuts Are Working? The Commerce Department released data on capital goods orders for January yesterday. As I noted , this is a hugely important early measure of the success of the Trump tax cuts. The ostensible rationale for the big cut in the corporate tax rate that was at the center of the tax cut is that it will... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 02, 2017 Republican Tax Plan Goes for Temporary Cuts and Permanent Lies The Washington Post reported that Republicans in Congress are now considering making their tax cuts temporary, so as to reduce their cost over the 10-year budget horizon. The paper neglected to mention that this change would completely undermine the basis for the claim that the tax cut will lead to... Read more |