NBC: Preserving a vision: Part II; by Thomas Sowell
- From: SMBalloon <smballoon@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 16:21:34 -0400
Preserving a vision: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
May 31, 2006
Conservatives who point out the declining audience for the big
television network newscasts, and declining public trust of the media
in general, often underestimate how much clout the liberal media still
have.
For example, while the economy has had near-record highs in growth
rates and in the stock market, with near-record lows in unemployment
and inflation, polls show that the public thinks the economy is in big
trouble. A steady diet of gloom-and-doom spin in the liberal media has
worked. The death of media influence has been greatly exaggerated.
More is involved than partisan attempts to undermine the Bush
administration. For decades, the liberal media and the intelligentsia
have had to struggle mightily against good economic news. Their whole
vision of the world -- and of themselves -- is at stake.
It's not easy. Even Americans in the bottom 20 percent in income have
higher real incomes than in the past and such staples of middle class
life as microwave ovens and motor vehicles are now common among "the
poor."
What can the liberal-left do? They can keep pointing out how the
bottom 20 percent's share of the national income is declining.
Of course people don't live on percentage shares, they live on real
income. Moreover, it is not the same people permanently stuck in the
bottom 20 percent. Three-quarters of the people in the bottom 20
percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point over the
next two decades.
Nor is there anything mysterious or sinister in the fact that the
percentage share of the national income going to the bottom 20 percent
has declined.
How do most people get income? They work for it. What happens when pay
for work goes up? The gap between those who are working and those who
are not widens. Most of the people in the bottom 20 percent are not
full-time, year-around workers.
There are, in fact, more heads of household who are full-time,
year-around workers in the top 5 percent than in the bottom 20
percent.
Regardless of what the facts are, you can always find exceptions to
those facts. The liberal media inundate us with stories about those
exceptions, who are presented as if they were the norm.
The middle-aged single mother struggling to make ends meet, while
working at a minimum wage job, has become a staple of these
journalistic tales. In reality, data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics show that only about 2 percent of workers who are 25 years
old or older have minimum wage jobs.
But you would never guess this, judging by media hype.
In general, people earning the minimum wage have been a declining
proportion of the population during the past quarter century. In
absolute numbers, they have declined from 7.8 million to just over 2
million, even though the population as a whole has been growing.
Some people want to preserve historic buildings and others want to
preserve forests or art. But the liberal media and intelligentsia are
strenuously trying to preserve the vision of poverty and economic
distress.
Why these desperate attempts to preserve poverty as a vision while it
is eroding as a reality? Because it is "the poor" who give the left
its moral authority and political clout. The very phrase "the poor"
suggests that we are talking about some permanent group of people
rather than transients in low income brackets who will be in higher
income brackets in a few more years.
The poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists,
support among the intelligentsia, and -- perhaps most important --
allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who
"care." But, if they really cared, they would want to know what the
facts are and what the actual consequences of their various nostrums
are.
People who truly cared would want to know what the actual consequences
of minimum wage laws are -- on which there is evidence from around the
world that it creates unemployment. But why risk a heady vision over
mere facts?
(end of column)
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Columbus Show
- Next by Date: Re: nbc- Global Warming is near-unanimous among scientists
- Previous by thread: George Bush-President of the United States
- Next by thread: NBC: Bill O'Reilly: Respected journalist or Sociopath - He Reports, You Decide!
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
