A Golden Age For Our Economy. Steve Williamson welcomes back macroeconomist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, to discuss the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Build Back Better bill, and their potential impact on inflation.
Baker largely dismisses the threat of inflation while noting: “This is a golden labor market age for a very large segment of the workforce – for probably the bottom 30 to 40 percent of the workforce…they have their choice of jobs. This has not been the case in half a century. As far as inflation, this is what everybody has heard about – the containers piling up at the ports. We know about that. That will pass, though. What’s going to happen…I’m guessing sometime in 2022, we’ll have worked through the backlog and prices in those areas are going to come down. So, I say this is very much a temporary story.”
In fact, Baker is very optimistic about the future, explaining that unemployment is back down to 4.6 percent. “We didn’t get to that following the Great Recession until 2017.” He says, “I think 2022 will be very good. A lot of inflation is going to go in reverse.”
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