Misleading NYT/Globe Articles Portray Income Growth as Income Decline

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Dispatch from the Department of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, MSM Division . . .

Today's New York Times contains an article about sleight of hand. Elsewhere in the paper, the Times engages in some statistical prestidigitation of its own.

You're the New York Times and its minor-league subsidiary, the Boston Globe. You obtain government data showing that Americans' incomes have risen every year since 2002. So how do you spin it in your headline? If you're the Times: Average Incomes Fell for Most in 2000-5. The Globe had its own gloomy take: More Americans making ends meet with less money.

What-t-t? How did the papers manage this statistical shell game? How did they transform income growth into income decline? Read the opening sentence of the Globe article:

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data show.

You couldn't blame a reader for understanding that sentence to mean that incomes have declined every year since 2000. Reading down into the Times article, however, we learn that in fact "incomes have been on the rise since 2002."

So what's going on? Stick with me here. The answer is that incomes spiked in 2000 at the height of the internet bubble. When the bubble burst [and 9-11 happened], incomes went down for a couple years. But in 2002, incomes resumed their growth and have risen every year since. But average income in 2005, adjusted for inflation, was still slightly below that of 2000: $55,238 in 2005 versus $55,714 in 2000. Note "adjusted for inflation." In other words, the unadjusted income of Americans in 2005 was actually about $60,000, or about $5,000 higher than in 2000. The Times-Globe never told us what the unadjusted 2005 income was: that would have made their case look weaker.

There's one other telling number in the Globe article. In the second paragraph, the Globe writes: "Total adjusted gross income in 2005 was $7.43 billion." That jumped out at me: clearly it's impossible that the combined incomes of all Americans totalled a minute seven billion and change. I went over to the Times, and sure enough, found that the number was $7.43 trillion. Just a simple typo, some might say. But what does it say about the Globe's basic ignorance of the economy that this error, in which income is understated by a factor of 1,000, could have slipped by the editors?

In any case, these twin articles are a good illustration not just of how statistics can be manipulated, but how the MSM will do so to the detriment of a Republican administration. Imagine that a Dem were in the White House today. I'm guessing the headline would have, accurately, read along the lines: "Income Growth Continues Annual Climb." What are the odds the headline would have had the same negative twist of this morning's articles? One in a billion. Whoops: make that one in a trillion.