It is often wondered by the pages of NYtimes and the WSJ why the US public is in such a annoyed state. These papers of record both claim that mood of the public is counter-factual to the state of the economy. These papers look at the facts such as home ownership at all time highs, that people own more items in their houses, that GDP growth has after a short recession in 2001 has continued growing from the 80's. They both have grand theories from their ideological blinders.
What they don't look (or don't want to look) at is the following;
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports Average Weekly Earnings in 1982 dollars.
April 1976....$306.90
April 2006....$277.38
The story that I would tell on why the public is annoyed is that the 80% of them are up to the hilt in debt in order to pay for items that they believe that they deserve while they have less money today then they did 30 years ago.
These people know that they have insufficient savings, they know that they will be working far past retirement and they are not stupid, just not well informed. Economics and its workings are not easy. Inflation adjusted earnings are not something that you pick up on first pass, what these people see is that they are making more total money today then they were 30 years ago, but in order to get by both people in a household have to work.
Now there are smart people who, while working for the NYT and WSJ, ought to know these sorts of things, but these smart people who should be informing the 80% of these facts just are not doing their jobs.
Case in point, today's WSJ editorial,
from http://online.wsj.com/...
"The major worry of most workers today is, of course, that their take-home pay isn't keeping pace with the cost of college tuition, health care or filling up the gas tank. However, even here there is some good news. Wages rose 4.6% in this year's second quarter, the fastest quarterly pace since 1997."
This is as factual correct as if bill gates came over to my apartment and I say, "We are all now rich as we have an average wealth of over a billion." (Pace Krugman) As the top 20% has seen almost all of the gain in wages lets exclude them in the average. What we find that wages for the 80% fell 1% this year.
again, please oh please can we have a better media.....