CBS News runs the following headline today:
Americans need an extra $11,400 today just to afford the basics
This is hardly news. Every month Republicans release a report telling us how much inflation is costing the average family—without, of course, bothering to tell us how much the average family's income has gone up.
And sneaky devils that they are, they start their analysis in January 2021. That way, in case you decide to look at average wages on your own, you'll start right in the middle of the pandemic wage decline without showing the previous pandemic wage increase:
Long story short, if you start in January 2020 to get a fair comparison, inflation has cost you a little over $12,000. At the same time, average household income has gone up a little over $13,000.
Why would CBS News even bother running this? It's just a rewrite of some routine Republican propaganda and the headline is wildly misleading. To make it even worse, they wait six paragraphs to tell you that wages are up—and they do it in boring percentages instead of dramatic thousands of dollars. They might as well just put themselves on the RNC payroll and be done with it.
Household income during the peak of the pandemic also reflects increased government income support. One would expect a decline after such supports end.
I honestly think “made them click” is the driving ethos here. Not sure they care all that much if it’s Republican propaganda. Some do obviously. Sometimes it’s overlapping motivations that amplify probably: click$ + politics.
The R’s pick this narrative because it’s compelling, people like to whine. There are definitely liberal-coded whines too, that “make you click.”
Like the Facebook disinfo back in the last election. I think sone of the forces driving it are apolitical. They just know that stories of instances of racism (liberal) and pizza parlour sex rings apparently tickles our click bone.
I’m saying (but not well) that sometimes we get the arrow of causation wrong.
Difference being that racism is a real thing. Pizza parlor sex rings are right wing depraved fantasies.
Totally agree. The R’s would be funny if they weren’t real life.
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by greed."
Not questioning the basis of Kevin's post but the effects of taxation have as usual been left out.
The increase in household income will be taxed at the top marginal rate (less money in the increase/pay raise) and the effects of inflation may be magnified by any existing and increased consumption taxes (more money lost to the cost side of the equation).
Not sure how to account for this between the various state tax regimes, but to not account for it in at least a few sample state seems disingenuous, or am I missing something?
"The increase in household income will be taxed at the top marginal rate"
How do you come up with that? Not every increase in income puts someone in the next tax bracket.
Mass media reporting on economic matters has been Republican propaganda since Reagan. Households & regular people are their products; the corporations are their customers.
I have a strong feeling that nearly all of the media is in the repulsives pocket or they are all sipping from the same vat of koolaide.
Like most Americans, most journalists are fundamentally innumerate. This is why Kevin has to sit here day in and day out bruising his forehead with all the head-desking telling people to adjust for inflation, e.g. Second, the MSM is simply hard-wired to take Republican talking points at face-value because it usually reads as a kind of snarky hot-take on something that will get clicks and insulate them from accusations that they're in the bag for liberals.
Somehow being accused of being in the bag for Republicans doesn't seem to bother them, though.
OT, headline at Rolling Stone just now:
Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies
And these are literally RNC talking points. Not even laundered through AEI or Heritage.