For anyone who doesn't read him, I want to put in a plug for economist Dean Baker's invaluable blog Beat the Press and weekly UK Guardian column.
Dr. Baker is the co-founder and co-Director of the liberal think tank, Center for Economic and Policy Research, where his bio lists his areas of expertise as: housing, consumer prices, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare, trade, employment. Along with Krugman and Stiglitz, he is frequently on tv and radio representing the liberal point-of-view.
Beat the Press is unique in that it is devoted to critiquing the mainstream reporting of economic matters (including NPR and the major newspapers). When he explains how an issue was reported and then how it should have been reported, frequently the light bulb goes on for me. I'm pretty ignorant in economics, and often unable to recognize distortions and errors in the articles I read in the paper.
Check out his response yesterday to David Brooks' attack on Social Security on Monday
(The Government Spends $100 on the Rich for Every Dollar It Spends on the Poor).
There is a new favorite in the "stupid things that intellectuals say" category. As David Brooks tells readers in the NYT this morning: "the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children."
Of course this is true. That is because we run a retirement program through the federal government. We require workers to contribute to Social Security (they go to jail otherwise). They then get Social Security benefits back when they retire. Similarly, we also require them to pay taxes to support their health care in retirement which is provided through Medicare. (This program is not fully financed through the designated tax.)
Since we require that workers pay substantial taxes through their entire working careers to the government to help support their retirement, it really should not be surprising that they get a substantial sum back from the government in retirement. However, if David Brooks and other so-called educated people want to ignore these taxes, then we should also talk about the money the government pays out to the super-rich, like investment banker and big-time Social Security foe Peter Peterson, as opposed to poor children.
I read economic opinion from a number of sources, and not all of them are liberal - to a certain extent I try to keep an open mind. But, as we have seen over the Reagan-Bush year, economics is not a science but rather is heavily tangled up with political philosophy. Economics is one area in which I think it necessary to consider the world view of the author, even when he seems to be presenting factual information. Conservative and libertarian economic theorists provided the cover for the redistribution of wealth upwards over the past three decades. So I do put much more trust in progressive economists than those who support privatization, offshoring and income inequality.
Read Baker regularly. You'll be glad you did.