Posted by
Andrews on Friday, December 28, 2007 5:35:43 PM
I was reading an article in a great left wing fish wrapper, the
Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel, and was struck by the economic illiteracy of the author. Here is one of the relevant quotes:
The paper's "reality," as written by David Jackson and Fredreka
Schouten, was this: "Edwards is wrong about job creation. There were
94,000 new jobs created in November, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Since August 2003, 8.35 million jobs have been created."
Is USA Today unaware that the USA's population increases every year? In July 2003
the population was 290.8 million; the population now is estimated to be
303.6 million. So that's 8.35 million new jobs for 12.8 million more
people. As a rule of thumb, the economy has to add 150,000 new jobs each month to keep pace with population growth. And the economy has lost about 3 million manufacturing jobs since 1998--most of them since 2000. But not, apparently, in USA Today's reality.
Now, let us think about this: Yes, the US did add 12.8 million people. But many of those people are NEWBORNS! Newborns DO NOT WORK. Yes, let us say that again, for those on the left: Infants don't hold down jobs!
Why is that important? Well, because the population added is irrelevant, as many are newborns who do not work. What matters is how many people joined the WORKFORCE in that period, not the people who joined the population.
Let us take an extreme example:
Suppose we had 100,000,000 babies born in 2008, but not one person joined the workforce. If we had 1,000,000 jobs created then we had a drop in unemployment of 1 million.
On the other hand, if no one was born in 2008, but 100,000,000 people joined the workforce, and created only 1,000,000 jobs, unemployment jumped by 99 million.
See how that works? The birth rate is irrelevant. It is the number of people entering the workforce that matters.
Now, why would they use birth rate and completely ignore the number of people entering the workforce? Could it be because it makes the numbers look worse for the economy (and thus for Bush)?
No, no one could be that dishonest, could they? And be so dishonest as to do that while complaining that another paper was being UNTRUTHFUL? Could leftist journalists at a third rate rag be that full of themselves?
And who could be so economically illiterate to buy this line of garbage?
UPDATED 12/28/2007I usually refrain from taking cheap shots, but the dishonesty of this article annoyed me, so I feel no obligation to take the high road with these wannabe rabble-rousers. So, please check out the page and note the title bar.
Apparently they cut and pasted the article into some template and did not bother to fix the title.
Thus the article "USA Today Squeezes Edwards Out Of Race" appears under the title "War is Over -- Say the Pundits". (Not only is the punctuation wrong, but it has nothing to do with the article.)
When you are working at this low level of professionalism, you should be very careful of the criticisms you level at much better run papers. USA Today is hardly the pinnacle of journalism, but at least they get their titles right. And they don't make bush league mistakes such as confusing birth rate with the number of people entering the job market.
Please, Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel staff, spare us another issue and consider a new career. I hear car detailing services do quite well. (Having lived in Baltimore, I think formstone refurbishing is destined to be a booming market in the next few years, may want to consider that as well.)