Lies, damned lies, "statistics", and the antique media.

The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong
Have you noticed how, at least when a Republican is in the White House, economic news almost always seems to be bad news? When in doubt, it seems, the journalists just make stuff up. This is from a Reuters dispatch last week:


Employers are having difficulty finding the right people to fill jobs despite high unemployment in Europe and the United States, a survey by U.S.-based staffing firm Manpower showed Tuesday.


In fact, unemployment in the U.S. was just 4.7% in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas rates in Western Europe routinely run twice that. Meanwhile, check out this Associated Press dispatch:


After the booming 1990s when incomes and stock prices were soaring, this decade has been less of a thrill ride for most American families.

Average incomes after adjusting for inflation actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday. . . .

The median family income, the point where half the families made more and half made less, rose a tiny 1.6 percent to $43,200 in 2004 compared with 2001.


But if the average income fell while the median income rose, that almost certainly means that incomes were falling at the top while rising at the bottom. If the opposite had happened, of course, the AP would doubtless have told an alarming story of increasing income inequality. (Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up. All italics are mine and are used to separate the wheat from the chaff.)