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Government

Health and Social Programs

Government Spending on the Forbes 400 Compared with Government Spending on Kids

It is a popular sport in policy circles to complain that the government spends so much more on seniors that it spends on kids. The gap between spending on seniors and spending on kids comes from taking average Social Security and Medicare benefits, along with some other programs, and showing that is vastly exceeds what we spend on kids. (The calculation usually leaves out state and local expenditures, which accounts for the bulk of education spending.)

The problem with this calculation is that seniors have paid for Social Security and Medicare benefits through the payroll taxes taken out of their paycheck over their working lifetime. According to calculations from the Urban Institute, the typical retiree pays more into Social Security than she can expect to get back in benefits.

Dean Baker / October 21, 2014

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The Post Tells Us the Economy is SO Complicated

The Post is really angry that people are talking about the rich getting everything at the expense of everyone else. It demands in the headline of an article, "stop with the fiction of a binary economy." 

Actually, nothing in the article really gives us much reason to question the reality of the binary economy that many economists have written about. For example, it tells readers:

"The jobless rate in the center of the United States from North Dakota to Texas is less than 5 percent and has been well below the national rate for five years."

Yes, and this means what? Wages are rising in North Dakota, with a labor force of 470,000 (just over 0.3 percent of the national labor force), but not much in Texas. Furthermore, the country had a 4.0 percent unemployment rate as a year-round average in 2000. This meant that many states were around 3.0 percent.

Then we get this bizarre discussion:

"But the top two income quintiles saw annual gains of a percent to a percent and a half until 2008.

"That isn’t what it was in the 20th century, but we tend to forget that the 20th century also saw much higher inflation. And we forgot that just as income growth has slowed, the costs of many basic goods and services also dropped. In 1950, food represented 32 percent of a family’s budget, according to federal statistics; today, it accounts for less than 15 percent. Energy use has seen similar declines, along with clothing and basic necessities. Health care costs more, but that in part is because we are living longer. Education eats up more costs, but many more people are going to college."

Dean Baker / October 19, 2014

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Arthur Brooks Argues We Should be Soft on Rich Criminals in Sharing Economy

We all know how hard is to get rich these days, so it's understandable that Arthur Brooks wants to give the young men and women making fortunes in the "sharing economy" a hand. (He even dubs it the "helping industry," which apparently is to distinguish it from sectors like health care and education.) Anyhow, the gist of his piece is that companies like Airbnb are actually about helping people -- allowing people with unused rooms to make a bit of extra money, while people from out of town get to find a room at a lower cost than a traditional hotel. He is upset that governments around the country are trying to apply the same regulations to his friends in the helping industry as they do their competition in the hotel industry, taxi industry, or other sectors where the helpers compete.

First, we all understand that the Airbnb billionaires just want to help people (Brooks assures us that getting rich was beside the point), but sometimes the government does get in the way. Let's take a simple example that even conservative types might understand. The Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi is being sold in the United States for $84,000 for a 3-month course of treatment. This high price is due to a government granted patent monopoly. Indian producers can profitably sell generic Sovaldi for $1,000 a treatment.

Suppose I set up a helping industry company that bought up generic Sovaldi in large quantities in India and sold it to patients in the United States for $10,000 a treatment. Brooks would undoubtedly defend Baker's Cheap Drugs Inc., since we are just allowing people to get needed health care at an affordable price. And, we are creating jobs in India for people working in the drug industry. Why would big bad government interfere?

Okay, we all know the story about needing patents to provide an incentive for research (which happens not to be true). But the key point is that there are all sorts of situations in which the government doesn't just let "helpers" go about their business because third parties get hurt in important ways.

Dean Baker / October 18, 2014