Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (David Brooks of the New York Times Edition)

I don't know why some New York Times editor didn't call David Brooks after reading the third paragraph of his column this morning and tell him that this was too stupid to print:

A Reality-Based Econom: If you’ve paid attention to the presidential campaign, you’ve heard the neopopulist story line. C.E.O.’s are seeing their incomes skyrocket while the middle class gets squeezed. The tides of globalization work against average Americans while most of the benefits go to the top 1 percent.

This story is not entirely wrong, but it is incredibly simple-minded. To believe it, you have to suppress a whole string of complicating facts.

The first complicating fact is that after a lag, average wages are rising sharply. Real average wages rose by 2 percent in 2006, the second fastest rise in 30 years...

Helloooo? Anybody in there? If you want to talk about the middle class, you talk about medians rather than averages because averages include--and give high weight to--what is going on at the top of the income distribution.

In fact, Dan Gross--who supposedly is going to surface at Newsweek any moment now--had an anticipatory rebuttal to the likes of David Brooks a few months ago:

Daniel Gross: December 24, 2006 - December 30, 2006 Archives: If Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gets a $54 million bonus, and 53,999,999 other workers get nothing, then on average, 54 million people have received a $1 bonus. In reality, however, only one person has more money in his pocket. Crudely speaking, that's what has been happening in the U.S. economy. The Journal's editorial page would like us to think otherwise. Some key snippets:

Over the past year, the real average wage for non-supervisory employees has risen 2.8%. That equates to about a $1,200 increase in purchasing power for the typical household this year. Last year, real median household income was also up 1.1% after inflation. This rise in take-home pay helps to explain how Americans have had the disposable income this Christmas shopping season to pay $600 for Play Station 3 computer games and $150 for the Kid-Tough Digital Camera for three-year-olds.

Got that? Average real wages rose 2.8 percent over the past year, while real median household income, which more accurately captures the experience of typical Americans, rose 1.1 percent...

The post-Judy Miller New York Times doesn't have the credibility to survive putting things like David Brooks on the American economy on its editorial page.

Comments

[Leila A.]

Re: Brooks - the anthology I've been directed to use for Freshman Comp this fall includes a David Brooks essay. The gist of it is: people like to be with their own kind. I am assigning it in tandem with this opinion piece in the Berkeley Daily Planet, on the subject of the garbage lockout in Oakland: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=07-13-07&storyID=27511

The gist of *that* piece is that Americans don't like to talk about racism, but if you look at whose garbage is getting picked up during the lockout, the picture is pretty clear. (Hint - rich white neighborhoods don't have garbage piling up).

Re: The Times - remember my rule of thumb - If the Times says it, then the idea is almost stale. They always trail behind the crest of common, received wisdom. How this applies to Brooks, I don't know. I may have to develop a different theory for the op-ed page, that of the tired old white guys who can't be fired. Remember Abe Rosenthal?

On a happier note, I see the Times published an op-ed stating that the Founding Fathers would have thought W acts like a king, not a president. This is dog-whistle for "impeach the bastard."

[tinbox]

The key to success at the Times is to write what Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr wants to hear. He needs to sell papers nationally, so it has to be something he thinks will sell in Nashville. He will stick with Brooks forever because he thinks Brooks understands American culture. That Brooks is reliably wrong doesn't really matter to Mr Sulzberger.
The WSJ is pretty successful nationally, so I don't think op-ed page credibility is a useful parameter on that score.

[Charles]

OT: Brad, Bill Gross has definitely joined the Order of the Shrill. See his August Outlook (www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2007/IO+August+2007.htm)

[kharris]

Charles,

You mean the part about constipated owls?

[robertdfeinman]

I think this is the relevant set of stats:
"In 2004, the ratio of average CEO pay to the average pay of a production (i.e., non-management) worker was 431-to-1, up from 301-to-1 in 2003, according to "Executive Excess," an annual report released Tuesday by the liberal research groups United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies.
...
In 1990, for instance, CEOs made about 107 times more than the average worker, while in 1982, the average CEO made only 42 times more."

There are two possible reasons why Brooks consistently distorts reality a) he lives in a world of his own making, b) he lies.

Those in category (b) belong to the type of person discussed by philosopher Harry Frankfort in his book "On Bullshit". This type of person makes things up in order to score points. They have no regard for the facts. Indeed they can say things that contradict each other in the same breath. Bill O'Reilly is a good example.

What does Brooks get out of being an apologist for the super wealthy? They throw him a few crumbs and he gets the ego trip of being a "pundit". It doesn't take much to bribe a poor man.

[Doctor Jay]

I've met a lot of Ivy Leaguers in my academic and professional career. They were all very smart and I liked nearly all of them a lot.

But the New York Times seems to have them all in a death grip. I say, forget it. I've never lived within 500 miles of New York. I don't give a rat's ass about what's going on in New York. I do care about what's going on in the country and around the world, but the NYT of Judy Miller is no longer a reliable source for that.

Isn't it time to move on?

[Joseph]

Brad, can you address why growing income inequality is such a big issue?

[ichabod ferguson]

The snippet from the WSJ specifies "non-supervisory employees". Though there's presumably still a long positive tail including, perhaps, sports pros and movie stars to pull up the average, I assume the tail doesn't include CEOs, whom one would imagine are considered supervisory.

[c.l. ball]

What's up with the BLC NCS data. For 2005, they only have median earnings for "selected occupations." For 2006, the have it for presumably all. I know the occupation standards for 2006 data, but does this mean that we don't have comparable data for those years?

The nominal increase from 2004 to 2005 was 3.3%.

[mike]

Nobody has drilled him for his deficit observation: "The deficit is down to about 1.5 percent of G.D.P., below the historical average." That's if you include WWII years in the average, which nobody capable would do. From 1946 onward as history, the deficit -- total, on-budget, and off-budget -- does exceed the historical average. I'm too lazy to pull out recession years, but that would bring the appropriate comparison down even more.

[Paul J. Reber]

Dan Gross has a column in Newsweek this week. I remember being mildly pleasantly suprised to see his name on the byline when I read it, but can't quite remember what it was about.

I think as a concept "inequality" is a tough rallying cry to sell, though. Is a 1% increase good or bad in the abstract? What about the fact that you can buy an iPhone for $700 now and you never could before. Does that make the $700 more valueable than it was? We seem to end up in murky philosophical waters quickly.

Better to focus on eradicating poverty, providing health care and high-quality education to all, I think. Those are real problems. The fact that the richest (many of whom are not CEOs, in fact, as we learned yesterday) make so much only suggests a method for doing this -- tax them to provide the resources for doing what needs to be done.

[anne]

Leila A:

"Brooks - the anthology I've been directed to use for Freshman Comp this fall includes a David Brooks essay. The gist of it is: people like to be with their own kind."

Though separation has been a theme of Brooks for years, the reason for this latest essay was a celebration of the Supreme Court re-segregation ruling, a ruling that was denounced by the New York Times, cheered by conservatives and turned away from by all to many of the rest. I know of no economist who even mentioned the profoundly important ruling in regret.

The Supreme Court majority decided that separate was no longer inherently unequal even as neughborhoods and schools are becoming increasingly segregated.

Brooks is celebrating the separation affirmation of this radical Supreme Court majority.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/06/opinion/06brooks.html

July 6, 2007

The End of Integration
By DAVID BROOKS

Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration. This dream has illuminated American life for the past several decades — the belief that the world is getting smaller and that different peoples are coming together over time.

Over the course of the 20th century, the civil rights movement promised to heal the nation's oldest wound. Racism and discrimination would diminish. Blacks and whites could live together, go to school together and gradually integrate their lives.

The end of the cold war promised to heal the rift between democracy and dictatorship. More nations would be welcomed into the community of free peoples.

The trauma of Sept. 11 promised to heal the rifts between red and blue America. Then there were the integrating forces of globalization and technology. The growing movement of people would pave the way for multicultural societies. The movement of goods would increase interdependence. The revolution in communications technology would increase global conversation.

All these promises hung in the air, but then crumbled, even in the past few weeks.

The progress in civil rights has not produced racial integration. Amid all the hubbub about last week's Supreme Court decision, we were reminded that five decades after Brown, blacks and whites do not live side by side, even when they share the same income levels. They do not go to the same schools. And when they do go to the same schools, they do not lead shared lives. As several people noted last week, many educators are giving up on the dream of integration so they can focus on quality....

But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.

For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/opinion/29fri1.html?ex=1340769600&en=86f06a756d90d397&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 29, 2007

Resegregation Now

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation's schools to integrate. Today, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation's driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn't always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.

Today, the court's radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated....

In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race "to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society" is "within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities."

Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for "federalism," or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville programs. So did their supposed opposition to "judicial activism." This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.

The nation is getting more diverse, but by many measures public schools are becoming more segregated. More than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. This resegregation is likely to get appreciably worse as a result of the court's ruling.

There should be no mistaking just how radical this decision is. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was his "firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision." He also noted the "cruel irony" of the court relying on Brown v. Board of Education while robbing that landmark ruling of much of its force and spirit....

[save_the_rustbelt]

Dean Baker (Beat the Press) goes hyper-warp drive-super shrill on Brooks.

Come to the midwest and I will show you the increases in equality, not just because the top is growing, but because the bottom is losing - seriously.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Dean Baker (Beat the Press) goes hyper-warp drive-super shrill on Brooks.

Come to the midwest and I will show you the increases in equality, not just because the top is growing, but because the bottom is losing - seriously.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Dean Baker (Beat the Press) goes hyper-warp drive-super shrill on Brooks.

Come to the midwest and I will show you the increases in equality, not just because the top is growing, but because the bottom is losing - seriously.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Dean Baker (Beat the Press) goes hyper-warp drive-super shrill on Brooks.

Come to the midwest and I will show you the increases in equality, not just because the top is growing, but because the bottom is losing - seriously.

[Bruce Webb]

"Brad, can you address why growing income inequality is such a big issue?"

Well my name starts Br- , so maybe I can stick in my take.

Simply put Supply Side and related Chicago style economic policy were sold to a democratic majority with a rhetoric heavy on Equity: 'Rising Tide', 'Trickle Down', more market freedom, less regulation and more particularly less taxation was supposed to end up with more pie for everyone. The implicit bargain was that in forgoing the immediate social utility we would get by having the government tax and spend money raised at the top marginal rates, by unleashing the growth potential of that money we would all gain more net utility in the long run. That is everyone ends up with more absolute pie.

Well the Baker isn't holding up his end of the bargain very well. His slice is getting bigger and bigger while the rest of us get crumbs. Which in a majoritarian system suggests that we take our slice in the form of restoring some progressivity to the tax code. That this may or may not have some fractional impact on GDP going forward is immaterial if we are not getting to share that growth in ways that don't exceed the immediate utility of tax and spend.

This would be true even if there were positive proof that tax cuts actually promoted growth. As it is an examination of the Productivity series since 2002 makes for some grim reading:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=PRS85006092

2002: 4.1%, 3.7%, 2.9%, 2.1%, 1.6% 2006. Certainly all kinds of factors go into this, but the off heard argument that Bush tax cuts are creating strong growth kind of pales when exposed to the data. To update that old Wendy's commercial: "Where's the Pie?"

[anne]

"Brad, can you address why growing income inequality is such a big issue?"

Suppose we begin with 8 million children with no health care insurance, and an insane battle by the President to add $44 billion to the military budget before Iraq is counted, and $5 billion over the coming 5 years which is not even enough to keep the number of children with no health care insurance from growing.

[anne]

The New York Times, by the way, is easily the broadest coverage, most in depth, most diverse, finest written newspaper in America and, from the several language I read, in the world. On any given day, I can find complaints. So complain, and read more and learn.

[anne]

As long as Iraq is implied, the New York Times opposed the war in Iraq, pointed us to the report to the Security Council of the director of the IAEA after Colin Powell's presentation, a report directly contradicting Powell, printed Joseph Wilson's letter contradicting Powell and the President, called for leaving Iraq at once and on and on and on.

Even Josh Marshall and Matthew Yglesias, by the way, were for war and occupation. Paul Krugman of the New York Times was sure opposed.

[howard]

for some strange reason, newspapers subscribe to the belief that op-ed pieces, being "opinion," can't be fact-checked. This is, of course, consistent with the notion that the people who have been most spectacularly wrong about iraq (hello there, bill kristol!) are still given multiple platforms from which to spout their current drivel.

It's a shockingly poor way to run a public discourse, and thank goodness that blogs are slowly and steadily eroding the credibility and role of the mainstream pundit.

as for income inequality, let's see: it's a problem on a constitutional level, since we the people didn't create this country in order to provide a mechanism for a small handful to benefit from the entirety of gdp growth; it's a problem on a social level for a democracy to have such clearly increasing class definitions and barriers; it's a problem on an economic basis in that for an enormous number of households, debt is supporting consumption and that can only go on so long; it's a problem on a legal level in that many of the greatest extremes of annual income are resulting from various forms of insider knowledge (particularly on the private equity and hedge fund side); and it's a political problem because extreme nativism is a predictable (albeit not guaranteed) response to a perception that "globalization" and "elites" and "immigrants" are taking money out of "our" pocket.

now, broadly speaking, this problem has been 30 years in the making, but here in the '00s, we've seen a rapidly increasing concentration of income in the upper one-tenth of one percent of households by income simultaneous with stagnant real median household income, so the problem is being cast into bolder relief.

[CMike]

Daniel Gross quotes the WSJ:

Over the past year, the real average wage for non-supervisory employees has risen 2.8%. That equates to about a $1,200 increase in purchasing power for the typical household this year. Last year, real median household income was also up 1.1% after inflation.
*****************

Gross points to the data point that "Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gets a $54 million bonus"

I'm a bit lost. Wouldn't the universe of "non-supervisory employess" exclude CEOs? How is it that within the "non-supervisory" employee group there is such a rise in inequality that the average goes up 2.8% but the median only 1.1%?

I ask because I thought the general trend was rising inequality because of gains by the top one percent of earners not because of inequality among "non-supervisory employees."(Anne...?)

[anne]

Paul Krugman sets down his sources for each column and replies to selected comments at:

http://krugman.page.nytimes.com .

The criticism of Krugman however is as unrelenting as was the case for beloved Molly Ivins, including the twerpy rubbishy criticism Brad DeLong pointed us to from Felix Salmon.

[anne]

Mike is clever:

"Over the past year, the real average wage for non-supervisory employees has risen 2.8%. That equates to about a $1,200 increase in purchasing power for the typical household this year. Last year, real median household income was also up 1.1% after inflation."

Distinguish between "real average wage for non-supervisory employees" and "real median household income" for all households.

Notice the difference. As Saez and Piketty or David Cay Johnston or Paul Krugman or Brad DeLong have pointed out, it is the explosion of income and wealth at the very top that is especially accentuating inequality.

[anne]

The way to mask rising inequality is not to include data for the top of the top, or blend the top of the top along with, say, the top 10%. Also, we are going through possibly the boradest and deepest international bull stock market ever and the results of favorable tax structure for the wealthiest and the bull market will soon show a decided wealth and income inequality increase for 2006.

[anne]

A sense of where we are can be gained by noticing that in 2004, the top 1% of American households owned 57.5% of corporate shares.

Remember that not only are capital gains taxed at no more than 15%, but there is no tax unless and until the gains are realized which may essentially be never. Also, not only is the bulk of income of private equity fund managers taxed at 15% but the tax can be deferred for years by re-investment of fees and gains. Where much of the really really big money is now is in private equity management.

[venky]

Remember Paul Krugman's old joke that Bill Gates walks into a bar and the average wealth of the bar patrons rises to several hundred millions...

[josh bivens]

CMike is correct that the WSJ measure (the 2.8% growth in real wages for non-supervisory workers) does indeed exclude the really rich folks, so, the issue here really isn't inequality.

production and non-supervisory wages generally track median wages pretty well.

instead, the WSJ cherry-picked some end-of-06 numbers that looked particularly good.

year over year growth in real production wages shot up as inflation went negative for a couple of months in late 06, with the the hourly wage growth number peaking at 2.6%.

that said, this real wage growth has now settled down to around 1% per year, and, these wages have yet to regain their levels from 02, so, the general points, that things are not necessarily fabulous and the WSJ cannot be counted on, remain when looked at in any reasonable context.

[andres]

I'm late to the debate, but I needed to point out the methodological/pedagogical element in Brad's complaint:

"Helloooo? Anybody in there? If you want to talk about the middle class, you talk about medians rather than averages because averages include--and give high weight to--what is going on at the top of the income distribution."

The problem is in our educational system, where most people who go on to become journalists either never take a statistics course or else take a one-semester course that is weighted almost entirely towards parametric statistics and tests, of which the average (and t-tests based on the average) are the most prevalent. By contrast, the median as a statistic is defined but is never mentioned again, and non-parametric tests that are immune to the distorting effects of outliers are often completely bypassed.

(I had to _teach myself_ non-parametric tests for my dissertation in spite of having had one semester of statistics and three semesters of econometrics. Even for economists, statistical training is sadly lopsided).

The result, of course, is that you get many journalists besides Brooks committing the sort of booboos we see here. It wasn't just him, it was his editor who was ill-served by lack of good statistical knowledge.

[CMike]

Josh Bivens, thanks for explaining that.

[Charles]

KHarris, re Bill Gross: No, I thought the terminology "constipated owl" was entirely fitting given the context.

[Hal]

Brooks has a dubious pedigree. From the WSJ op-ed page and the Weekly Standard to the NYTimes. Certainly a dyed in the wool Neocon, whether a Zionist too I can't say but suspect yes. He also evidently thought a good Presidential ticket would be McCain-Lieberman. You get the "flavor" of the man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(journalist)

[Nathan Myers]

That the economy changed a little bit isn't news. That administration officials are trying very deliberately to mislead reporters and citizens about how the economy has changed is big news. Failing to report on the latter isn't just bias, it's rank incompetence.

This applies to most cases of "he-said/she-said": what public officials choose to lie about tells us much more than what they actually say.

[dlcox1958]

So seizing upon what you say in the lead post, Brad, why don't we take this seriously? Brooks is freighted with past inaccuracies (there is the easily found debunking of the claim in one of his books that in the Philly exurbs you could not find a meal for over $20, yet the Philly magazine easily found them at Red Lobster, Applebies, etc. in the same exurbs, just as an example) and the takedown by Bob Woodward on Sunday's Meet the Press.

Wouldn't a concerted campaign to remind the NYT of Judith Miller and Jayson Blair and the danger of this credibility challenged columnist be a worthwhile endeavor?

A note on style--does anyone remember Brooks ever dropping so many explicit references in a column? Do you suppose the Woodward exchange had him looking over his shoulder?

[anne]

"...whether a Zionist too I can't say but suspect yes...."

"...whether an anti-Semitic comment I can't say but suspect yes...."

"...whether a completely thoughtless comment I can't say but suspect yes...."

[calscientist]

say what, Anne? I miss the point here.

[anne]

"Certainly a dyed in the wool Neocon, whether a Zionist too I can't say but suspect yes."

This was the quote from a comment above. I was trying to make the point that calling a person "a Zionist" as an insult is insulting or prejudicial. I should have been clearer in showing that I do not care for any such insult.

Thank you for asking me to clarify, Cal Scientist