January 16, 2012
The Washington Post has consistently used both its news and opinion pages to try to convince readers that the main threat to their well-being and that of their children came from older people getting fat Social Security checks and generous Medicare benefits. This position has become harder to maintain, both because the economic collapse has made these benefits more important than ever to middle and lower income families and also because the fact that rich are making off with the bulk of the benefits of economic growth is becoming increasingly apparent. Still, the Post labors on.
Today, the paper featured a column by political consultant Bill Knapp arguing that we should all be happy because the economy has created jobs over the last 40 years and also because people at most points along the income distribution have seen some gains in income.
This is known as “the 12-year-olds are taller than 6-year-olds” argument in reference to the claim that poor nutrition might be stunting growth. The Bill Knapps of the world would get out their yardstick and measure a representative sample of 12-year-olds and do the same for 6-year-olds. After careful analysis of the data they would find that the 12-year-olds are taller. They would then write up their findings and get a column in the Washington Post telling readers that bad nutrition is not affecting growth.
Let’s skip the idiocy. Economies grow, they add jobs, and people get on average richer. This happens everywhere barring war, natural catastrophe, or incredible economic mismanagement. The issue is the rate at which they grow and that people see improvements in their living standards. And for most people in the United States, the improvements in living standards over the last three decades have been very modest. The reason is that most of the gains have gone to the richest one percent.
Remarkably, Knapp can’t even get his numbers right on how rich the one percent are. He tells us that:
” When you adjust for family size, the top 1 percent made, on average, $335,779 a year.”
Actually, that is a cutoff for entering the 1 percent, not the average for the group. (Math is hard.) The average income for families in the top 1 percent is over $1.3 million.
After flunking the arithmetic portion of the column, Knapp then turns to the Nigerian cell phone user argument. Knapp thinks that the average Nigerian in 2012 enjoys a higher standard of living than did the average American in 1990, because Nigerians in 2012 have a higher rate of cell phone usage.
Okay, he didn’t make this argument directly about Nigeria and the United States, but he did make this sort of argument about the “telling facts about our economic growth and future,” which amounted to a rundown on the numbers for the use of cell phones, computers, and broadband. Knapp didn’t even try to put these numbers in comparative terms, for example seeing how we measure up against Europe and Japan (not especially well).
So there you have it. Don’t worry about how much money Robert Rubin and Angelo Mozilo made off the housing bubble and the difficulty that you are having finding a job, paying for your health care or your kids’ education. Just be thankful that you have an iPhone.
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