Dean Baker takes on the Washington Post

Dean Baker, an economist trained at the University of Michigan, and co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (a D.C. based think tank) is a frequent critique of bad economics reporting that one commonly finds in  the so-called mainstream media.

Today Baker has a take down of an overly rosy Washington Post article on the rise of Mexico's middle class. Mexico's middle class is expanding largely thanks to steady (re)industrialization (the Mexican peso has been held at an artificially low level the last decade) but it is a relative laggard in Latin America. An extremely heterodox Argentina has been growing much more rapidly. Today Argentines are roughly 25% richer than Mexicans, while twenty years ago Mexico had the higher per capita income.