Back when milk prices were high, CNN found people who drank enormous amounts of milk to tell us how bad things were for people. When gas prices soared the New York Times found people who used enormous amounts of gas.
In keeping with this practice, the Washington Post found someone whose wages had more than doubled but somehow “the gains have not kept up with rising costs, and that has become a major issue for voters like him.”
According to the article the person went from working part-time at $15 an hour to working full-time at $20 an hour. If we assume that part-time work is 20 hours a week, their previous pay would have given them $15,000 a year. Their current pay at a full-time job would come to $40,000 a year. If in fact the increase in this person’s expenses offset their pay increase they must face extraordinary expenses like a medical disaster.
The Post is trying to present this person as being typical. They are either badly confused about their expenses, or they are not typical. It would have been useful if the article had taken a few sentences to clarify this point.
The post Why Does the Washington Post Choose to Highlight a Clearly Atypical Person to Tell Us the Economy Has Gotten Worse? appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.