The media message must change | Notice

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (an outspoken Democrat who served in Republican administrations) once said, “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts. This quote came to mind when aligning objective economic data with many economic surveys.

An obvious source of economic angst has been the loss of purchasing power due to the surge in post-pandemic global inflation in recent years, which has now fallen back to more normal levels. However, last week the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (www.cbo.gov) released a report showing that household incomes have grown faster than prices since 2019. This finding was true for all income groups .

Additionally, the unemployment rate has been below 4% for 27 months (the longest period since 1952) and more than 15 million jobs have been created since Biden took office. The only economic recovery since World War II that exceeds the current one occurred in 1949, making the recovery under the Biden administration the strongest in 72 years. The country’s three main stock indexes hit record highs this week after the latest data showed a slowdown in inflation.

And yet a recent poll found that 3/4 of voters thought the economy was “fair” or “poor.” Why is there this disconnect? It’s understandable that the average voter is frustrated. High grocery prices reflect many unfavorable global developments. But there are more serious internal distortions that attract little attention. Corporate greed has increased during the pandemic. A monopoly of ten companies in this country controls most of the food production and distribution. Walmart made $155 billion in profits last year, but they are laying off workers or forcing them to work fewer hours and pay low wages.

The gap between reality and people’s beliefs shows how important the way the media reports events is. And the source(s) we use for information is important. We all have busy lives and sometimes don’t have the luxury of digging “in the weeds” for data. But in this day and age, we must do it, in order to be informed voters who will not be lured into voting against our own interests.