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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Questionable Economic Reporting on NPR |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
09 Mar 2001
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National Public Radio's economic reporting has always be problematic, reflecting the network's tendency to focus on issues that are meant to be of service to so-called "opinion leaders" rather than reflecting a broader public interest than the needs of banks, investors, and corporations. This morning's economic report, repeated several times, is just the latest example. |
NPR reported on current economic growth and trends that will be a factor in the Fed's upcoming decision on whether to drop interest rates to stimulate an economy that may be slipping into recession. It noted, with a certain sense of alarm, that income growth was up sharply.
With the decades long trend toward greater wage inequities in the US economy, this sort of gross figure is highly misleading. Much of this income growth is concentrated in the top 20% of wage earners, which is why the 80% of Americans who have found their real incomes stagnate or falling in the last two decades never see any of these increases. Yet the Fed often takes this indicator as requiring action to constrain demand by raising interest rates. What is really happening is that working people have to be thrown out of work to keep the Mercedes and Dom Perignon economy healthy for the top 20%.
Even more egregious was NPR's attributing the fall in manufacturing employment to the current "economic slowdown." Think about this one for a minute. If all these people lost their jobs, how can income be growing? This precisely illustrates my point made above. More working people out of work means higher incomes for the investors and upper-management that make these decisions.
And we should look closely at NPR's assertion that these job losses are part of any "economic slowdown." It would be far more accurate to attribute these losses in manufacturing to the effects of such agreements (favorable to internationalized capital) as NAFTA, GATT and the other so-called "free-trade" policies that are promoted by such institutions as the World Bank and World Trade Organization.
The fact is that these jobs that are being lost will never come back. Big investors are taking advantage of and encouraging these long-term trands that NPR seems reluctant to attribute to these policies to encourage the de-industrialization of the US. NPR seems clueless about this, but if they don't believe it, all you need to do is check the longterm trends for manufacturing jobs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website whose link is at the bottom of this article.
NPR did report correctly that job growth in the service sector was still strong, since service jobs were being created. The problem is that most of these jobs pay far less than the manufacturing jobs that are being lost. Flipping burgers will never pay what making cars used to, for instance, for those who are losing a manufacturing job.
Policies to support neo-liberal "free trade" are often sold on the premise that "free-trade is good for everyone." Like the figure on income, it hardly tells the whole story. It is good for a FEW of us. The rest of us will be flipping burgers and working at Walmart if we don't act to oppose these policies which have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. It's about time we asked these folks and the Fed -- Hey whose side are YOU on? If the answer isn't ensuring Living Wage (or better) jobs, vote for somebody else. |
See also:
http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t01.htm
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