Jim, I think there is another point worth mentioning. Nobody wants runaway inflation, but a moderate rate of inflation works as a wealth transfer from creditors (rich people, China, etc) to debtors (ordinary people with mortgages, the USA, etc). The Fed has been targeting a long term inflation target of 2%. We have been below that for several years, exacerbating our wealth inequality problem. Borrowing to improve our National infrastructure, and paying it back with cheaper dollars, is not necessarily a bad thing.
Thanks Jim for this article. I've been pointing this out to friends I know for the last few weeks: the idea that "lowest unemployment rolls since Nixon was President" is marginalized in the news, whereas "highest price spike in 40 years" gets headlines every day. Even though gasoline prices make up the lion's share of the inflation. And of course this gets blamed on Biden ("let's go Brandon"). Even though the price increases are global and not limited to US territory. I agree with the prior comment that this is a sad result of today's media where the emphasis is on highlighting anything negative
I remember when my family was living in Tokyo, and you would probably have been in Italy. We used to get versions of the CBS Evening News that were carried on one of the Japanese TV stations. We had a family joke about how often "rising prices at the pump!" would lead the US news broadcast. This is when gas prices in the US had "soared" to about 1/4th the level people in Japan were paying.
Some day someone will do a book about the role that gas-station per-gallon prices have played in American life. Not simply the enormous role of the petroleum-and-automobile economy in the past century, but also the political and cultural effect of seeing the price go up or down on the big billboards. (And you and I remember when the posted prices at Terrible Herbst, cheapest in SoCal, were in the 29-cent range.)
The agita over $3 per gallon gasoline is very American. I've lived in Israel for the past 20 year where, as in Europe, gas prices are at least twice what the US experiences. I think the difference is taxes, but supplies from the middle east rather than domestic sources may also be a factor. Right now, I am living close to public transport in the US, driving less than 500 miles per month, but making up for it with a piston airplane.
I also (barely) remember the 29 cent gas of the '50s and '60s, cheapest in New Jersey close to the refineries.
There is a very simple reason, of course, for the greater emphasis on inflation than on unemployment: bad news sells; good news doesn't. And in this 21st century economic dystopia of profit-over-all-other-considerations, the news that sells wins every time.
I have to admit to being spoiled: I grew up in the age of Walter Cronkite & the Huntley-Brinkley Report, when TV news was guided by the simple presentation of events of the day ("And that's the way it was, ...") with the occasional, very well defined editorial content tossed in. Newspapers have always been biased to some extent, but the overriding mantra of all media at the time was the integrity of the content. Of course a strong argument can be made against the implicit bias of that era toward the official government lines, but even within this parameter objectivity and factual accuracy were paramount considerations. Profit was important, of course, but financial considerations seldom superseded journalistic integrity.
All that went out the window in the '80's with the rise of Limbaugh and his "stupid liberals" dog & pony show - and expanded in the '90's, when Fox took that concept to the next level and built a very profitable "infotainment" model around outrage. Since then Americans have been fed a nonstop diet of outrage and the profits of media organizations have skyrocketed. I've said many times that "righteous indignation" is a drug, and we are a nation of addicts.
Sadly, this is why we can't have nice things - like sensible immigration policies, universal health care, prison reform, free college, livable wages & reasonable real estate pricing, and of course a balanced representation of the lowest unemployment rates in a half century.
Thomas M — Thanks, and I do understand (and mainly agree) with this account of the evolution / devolution of the press. As you know, this was a big theme of my book 'Breaking the News,' which came out more than 25 years ago.
The trends in the news business since then include improvements of many sorts — it's never been easier to find expert opinion and diverse voices from all around the world. (I think that in the book I mentioned how hard it was to find info about, say, Malaysia, where I had once lived. Now you can find news from anywhere.) But it's become harder and harder, for reasons you describe and others, to have any agreed-on, *proportionate* sense of the trends, good and bad, at work in the world. (And, for another time, all of the critiques of what the "agreed-on" news of the Cronkite era left out or under-played.)
The lack of proportion in covering this latest economic-news is really maddening, very much as you point out.
Jim, I think there is another point worth mentioning. Nobody wants runaway inflation, but a moderate rate of inflation works as a wealth transfer from creditors (rich people, China, etc) to debtors (ordinary people with mortgages, the USA, etc). The Fed has been targeting a long term inflation target of 2%. We have been below that for several years, exacerbating our wealth inequality problem. Borrowing to improve our National infrastructure, and paying it back with cheaper dollars, is not necessarily a bad thing.
Joe, excellent point, thank you.
(For onlookers: the author of this reply knows the world of finance. He is among other things the founder of a number of very successful banks.)
Thanks Jim for this article. I've been pointing this out to friends I know for the last few weeks: the idea that "lowest unemployment rolls since Nixon was President" is marginalized in the news, whereas "highest price spike in 40 years" gets headlines every day. Even though gasoline prices make up the lion's share of the inflation. And of course this gets blamed on Biden ("let's go Brandon"). Even though the price increases are global and not limited to US territory. I agree with the prior comment that this is a sad result of today's media where the emphasis is on highlighting anything negative
Tom, thanks.
I remember when my family was living in Tokyo, and you would probably have been in Italy. We used to get versions of the CBS Evening News that were carried on one of the Japanese TV stations. We had a family joke about how often "rising prices at the pump!" would lead the US news broadcast. This is when gas prices in the US had "soared" to about 1/4th the level people in Japan were paying.
Some day someone will do a book about the role that gas-station per-gallon prices have played in American life. Not simply the enormous role of the petroleum-and-automobile economy in the past century, but also the political and cultural effect of seeing the price go up or down on the big billboards. (And you and I remember when the posted prices at Terrible Herbst, cheapest in SoCal, were in the 29-cent range.)
The agita over $3 per gallon gasoline is very American. I've lived in Israel for the past 20 year where, as in Europe, gas prices are at least twice what the US experiences. I think the difference is taxes, but supplies from the middle east rather than domestic sources may also be a factor. Right now, I am living close to public transport in the US, driving less than 500 miles per month, but making up for it with a piston airplane.
I also (barely) remember the 29 cent gas of the '50s and '60s, cheapest in New Jersey close to the refineries.
There is a very simple reason, of course, for the greater emphasis on inflation than on unemployment: bad news sells; good news doesn't. And in this 21st century economic dystopia of profit-over-all-other-considerations, the news that sells wins every time.
I have to admit to being spoiled: I grew up in the age of Walter Cronkite & the Huntley-Brinkley Report, when TV news was guided by the simple presentation of events of the day ("And that's the way it was, ...") with the occasional, very well defined editorial content tossed in. Newspapers have always been biased to some extent, but the overriding mantra of all media at the time was the integrity of the content. Of course a strong argument can be made against the implicit bias of that era toward the official government lines, but even within this parameter objectivity and factual accuracy were paramount considerations. Profit was important, of course, but financial considerations seldom superseded journalistic integrity.
All that went out the window in the '80's with the rise of Limbaugh and his "stupid liberals" dog & pony show - and expanded in the '90's, when Fox took that concept to the next level and built a very profitable "infotainment" model around outrage. Since then Americans have been fed a nonstop diet of outrage and the profits of media organizations have skyrocketed. I've said many times that "righteous indignation" is a drug, and we are a nation of addicts.
Sadly, this is why we can't have nice things - like sensible immigration policies, universal health care, prison reform, free college, livable wages & reasonable real estate pricing, and of course a balanced representation of the lowest unemployment rates in a half century.
Thomas M — Thanks, and I do understand (and mainly agree) with this account of the evolution / devolution of the press. As you know, this was a big theme of my book 'Breaking the News,' which came out more than 25 years ago.
The trends in the news business since then include improvements of many sorts — it's never been easier to find expert opinion and diverse voices from all around the world. (I think that in the book I mentioned how hard it was to find info about, say, Malaysia, where I had once lived. Now you can find news from anywhere.) But it's become harder and harder, for reasons you describe and others, to have any agreed-on, *proportionate* sense of the trends, good and bad, at work in the world. (And, for another time, all of the critiques of what the "agreed-on" news of the Cronkite era left out or under-played.)
The lack of proportion in covering this latest economic-news is really maddening, very much as you point out.