Liberal media bias

Brad DeLong quotes Paul Krugman.

I'd like to say that there's a real dialogue taking place about the state of the U.S. economy, but the discussion leaves a lot to be desired. In general, the conversation sounds like this:

Bush supporter: "Why doesn't President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias."

Informed economist: "But it's not a great economy for most Americans. Many families are actually losing ground, and only a very few affluent people are doing really well."

Bush supporter: "Why doesn't President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias."

The data strongly suggests that US median wages have declined since 2001, but I'm not sure why that's happened. Is it entirely because of the Bush tax-cuts? Or are there other factors? It's certainly a cause for concern that income is getting increasingly concentrated at the upper-end of the income distribution i.e. most of the benefits have flowed to folks in the top 5%.

India Links:

Mahesh gives a damm. Linked from Uma.

Uma dissects this article about Mumbai and India from Time magazine much better than I could ever do.

Why are most articles about India filled with the standard cliches and "land of contrasts" BS? Not that we're not full of contrast, but try to analyze what that MEANS instead.

Here's a sample:

To recap: Samant isn't married, he makes booze and he chucked in a dream job in the U.S to come home. Old Mother India would have a cow.

Oh, the cow reference!! How terribly erudite, non?


Dog Day evenings at the Oval.
I miss my dog-day evenings at the Oval!

The best discussion on OBC reservations.

Uma calls it "a harmless enough piece", but I call it vile and despicable. And condescending.

Here's a particularly nasty bit:

It was the fear of real Indians (empahsis mine) that had made one mall in central Mumbai introduce a system of requiring visitors to show their credit cards to prove their purchasing power. But as such discriminating moves invited public scorn, malls were forced to lower all defences and take the trampling tours of India’s poor...


So journalistic excellence (TOI ishtyle) is to make fun of your fellow countrymen/women whose yearly income can't buy most of the products in a typical mall and come up with the descriptor "real Indians" to describe them. Swell.

And what's wrong with poking fun at high prices?

Tom Friedman meet Thomas Freetrademan.

What's my point? I don't actually have one--but opening my columns with strings of clichéd cultural juxtapositions really cuts down my workload. You see, since the Cold War ended, we've gone from superpowers to spreadsheets, Pershings to Pentiums, the Berlin Wall to suburban sprawl, olive trees to Lexuses. Are you ready? Because the whole world is changing. Unless you are one of the eight-tenths of humanity who at this moment are either hungry, illiterate, or field-stripping an AK-47, in which case I'll get back to you in some future column.

Not that I have anything against TF, but this is mighty funny.