Dean Baker

The Washington Post was a strong supporter of NAFTA at the time the deal was approved. It continues to be a strong defender of the pact nearly two decades later. It has repeatedly shown itself willing to make up facts or just ignore them to push its pro-NAFTA line.

Okay, I know that picking on George Will might seem like cheap fun, but as an oped columnist for the Washington Post we are supposed to take him seriously.

Readers will not doubt be asking if Japan can be saved from the Washington Post after reading Fred Hiatt’s column titled (in the print edition) “Can Japan Save Itself?” The column slams readers with large masses of inaccuracy that pass for conventional wisdom in Washington.

I am happy to take on the job of teaching David Brooks about the budget so that he does not consistently embarrass himself in his NYT columns. Today he is trying to give us a balanced assessment of President Obama’s case for his budget. Here’s what he gets wrong.

The fact that Greg Mankiw works for Governor Romney is very clear when he tells readers:

“Whether competition among governments is good or bad comes down to the philosophical questions of what you want government to do and how much you fear government power. If the government’s job is merely to provide services, like roads, schools and courts, competition among governmental producers may be as good a discipline as competition among private producers. But if government’s job is also to remedy many of life’s inequities, you may want a stronger centralized government, unchecked by competition. These are two fundamentally different visions. The next election, and to some degree every election, is about which one voters find more compelling.”

Steve Rattner put his ignorance on public display again in a column in the NYT. He told readers that counting the savings projected in Medicare as a result of the cost controls in President Obama’s health care reform as lowering the budget deficit amounts to double-counting. There is a simple word for Rattner’s claim: wrong.

Today’s column by Robert Samuelson tries to tell us that Franklin Roosevelt would be appalled by the current state of the Social Security program. Of course, he produces not a single iota of evidence to support this position, although it is very clear that Samuelson doesn’t like Social Security.

In a NYT Economic blogpost Jason DeParle ponders the fact that government surveys are not showing much increase in poverty, even though we know there are many people experiencing long periods of unemployment and many forms of government assistance have been cut back. One possible explanation is that people in poverty and extreme poverty are less likely to be covered by the survey.

Many pundits have been telling us that the reason that workers are not getting jobs is that employers cannot find workers with the skills needed for the positions available. I have regularly ridiculed this position, since if it were true we would see sharply rising wages in some sectors as employers competed for the limited group of workers who have the necessary skills. Of course we don’t see any major sector of the labor market with rapidly rising wages.

However, I must now reconsider this view. David Brooks presented compelling evidence that employers cannot find workers with the necessary skills.

National Public Radio told listeners that, “Like the U.S., Europe Wrestles With Health Care.” If the wrestling in Europe is anything like the U.S., then we must be talking about professional wrestling. (“Hit him over the head with a chair!”)