The Times Loves the Wealthy

The recent, pre-election Sunday Seattle Times ran a front-page cover story on the woes of rich, tech-stock millionaires. Replete with disgusting stories about the guilt of the excessively wealthy (for example, rich people sitting in a support group and blubbering about their total net worth), it paid lip service to the vast majority of people in the Puget Sound who've seen their incomes barely keep pace with inflation or decline. The page one story continued on page A11, A12, and A13 and included pictures of the newly rich pretending to be middle class. But in a box on the bottom of page A12 is the headline: The rich got richer in the 1990s, but what about everybody else?" On the left side of this box is a graph titled "Skilled workers get better raises." However, the text includes: "Most workers barely kept pace with inflation and lower-paid workers actually lost purchasing power." In fact, according to the graph, people who earned the median wage or less have taken a pay cut during the Clinton/Gore years. The majority of those who make above the 50th percentile barely kept pace with inflation (which means they've seen no marked increase in purchasing power). It's not until you reach the 90th percentile--people whose income is higher than 90% of the rest of the workforce--that you see any wage gains against inflation at all.

For "balance," the Times placed a graph right next to this ominous wage graph. Titled "So the gap grew between rich and poor? Maybe not..." this graph is highly misleading, especially when compared to the former one. The text reads: "This analysis of household income in Puget Sound, extracted from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, tells a slightly different story. It suggests that Puget Sound's two-decade economic expansion has benefited all income groups, not just the wealthy." Apparently, the person who wrote this didn't look at the graph. For one thing, it covers a different time period: 1980 to 1999, which includes the Reagan/Bush years. Secondly, it shows the household income of most workers eroding throughout the 1990s and only increasing within the last two to three years. The Times' conclusion: "In 1980, households at the 90th percentile...earned about $8 for every $1 earned by the 10th percentile. Twenty years later the ratio is still $8 to $1. Whether you consider that fair or not, it doesn't appear to have changed significantly in 20 years." Leaving aside valid questions about whether the Census Bureau can accurately count the very poor and the very wealthy, it takes only a quick glance at the graph to see that leaving out everyone between the 10th percentile and the 60th percentile discounts all those middle class folks who are losing ground. Just look at the damn graph.

Two other graphs are included on the bottom of page A13, accompanied by equally idiotic analysis. One, titled "...lower incomes grew, too" is criminally misleading. It shows the increase in wages for people in various percentiles as a percentage of their income. Supposedly, those in the lowest percentile saw their household incomes grow the most. Well, yes, but think about that. If you make minimum wage, a tiny pay raise--say, thirty cents an hour--is going to show up as a much larger percentage of your income than, say, a $30,000 annual bonus is for a millionaire. Think about it (the Times editorial staff sure didn't). Just to confuse you further, they add a handy graph called "Two ways to measure money," which focuses only on median income workers and reminds us that "household income" has made a big jump. "Household income" can include investments, the sale of a home, new loans, cash borrowed on credit cards, gifts, and wages. The text reads: "the household income figures are based on a statistical sample, the potential margin of error is about $2,000, and they represent people's memories of their own incomes for the previous year." How reliable! I feel richer already...oops, what's this? Uh oh, it's my credit card statement...