DEAN BAKER, dean.baker1@verizon.net, @
Baker is co-founder and senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He notes that people in the bottom half are better off than they were before the pandemic. This was noted in a recent piece in the New York Times: “Technically, most households are financially better off now than before the crisis by several measures, an anomaly after a recession.” This is due in part to increased government relief to ordinary people.
Baker recently wrote the piece “The Media’s War Against Biden Over Inflation,” which states: “INFLATION IN THE U.S. ECONOMY IS CLEARLY A PROBLEM. There, I said it in all caps so that everyone can see I recognize it as a problem. The question is how big a problem. After all, we have lots of problems, millions of children in poverty, a huge homeless population, parents without access to affordable childcare, among others.
“But none of these other problems have gotten anywhere near the same amount of attention from the media in recent months as inflation. These pieces have often been quite openly dishonest. The nonstop hype of “inflation, inflation, inflation” unsurprisingly leads many people to believe inflation is a really big problem, even if their own finances are pretty good, because they hear all those wise reporters at CNN, NPR, the NYT and elsewhere telling them it’s a really big problem.” Baker debunks myths regarding media-hyped stories on milk and gas prices.
