Wages & Prices

In a television piece by Jaime Garcia, only commentary in favor of the newly approved state mandated wage hikes were given airtime.  Predictably, union leaders, Democrat party lawmakers, leaders of progressive non-profits and the law’s advocates were showcased in the segment. Apparently, Garcia could not find one person in opposition to the law.

The Associated Press, the nation's de facto business news gatekeeper for those who don't follow the economy or the markets closely, is telling America that the U.S. job market is fine, and ignoring the dismal results seen in weekly pay during the past several months. Christopher Rugaber's Friday evening coverage of the government's jobs report earlier in the day described the reported 215,000 in…

New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes got a prominent Sunday front-page spot for a rather humdrum story on economic recovery in a blue-collar Indiana town and why President Obama wasn’t getting the credit he deserved for it. Racism, perhaps? The puzzled headline: “Political Discontent Festers in Indiana Town Despite Jobs Surge.” Online it was more explicit: “Obama Gets Scant Credit in Indiana…

The Associated Press sent its cameramen and reporters out to get the reaction of small business owners to California's just-passed six-year plan to raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Anyone expecting the AP to find representative responses clearly doesn't understand how the far-left propaganda machine disguised as an objective news service operates. All three business owners…

In covering Thursday morning's report from the Department of Labor on initial unemployment claims, one of a relatively few economic reports showing strength these days, Associated Press reporter Scott Boak spread his enthusiasm over the result to the entire economy. It wasn't justified. It's as if the poor guy has missed most of the pertinent other economic news during the past week, most of…

A Los Angeles Times story by Liam Dillon and Patrick McGreevy hailed the "historic" increase in the state-mandated minimum wage to $15 an hour. Apparently giddy with excitement, the pair also unwisely told readers that many public-sector employees who earn far more will be receiving big raises as a result of the legislation with having to bother negotiating with the government entities involved…

Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, comments monthly on the ADP private-sector employment report his firm compiles. He is "often quoted in national and global publications and interviewed by major news media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNBC, NPR, Meet the Press, CNN, and various other national networks and news programs." Zandi has also been the economy's head cheerleader during much of…

It's so predictable. Whenever a government or leader follows the left's playbook and the results "uexpectedly" don't turn out to be anywhere near what was desired, it isn't the policies' or the leader's fault. No-no-no. During the Mayor David Dinkins era in New York City, it was because Gotham had become ungovernable by any human being – until Rudy Giuliani took over. During the Carter Era, the…

This sentence actually appeared at the web site of the San Jose Mercury News Monday afternoon regarding California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown: "In his 2016 budget plan, the notoriously frugal governor warned that a $15 minimum wage would cost the state about $4 billion a year and risk plunging it back into the red." Yesterday, Governor Brown "sudden(ly) embraced" the $15 minimum wage. At…

For the past month, the conventional wisdom about the U.S. economy has been that consumer spending and "(not really) robust" job growth will continue to prop up the economy, even as weaknesses in manufacturing, trade and other areas continue to present problems. President Obama bragged in early March that the economy is "pretty darned good now." Today, the first of those two pillars got pulled.…

The government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in February. Lower prices should be good news, right? Wrong, at least according to Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. Crutsinger's Wednesday dispatch also managed to ignore the fact that even the supposedly low inflation seen during the past 12 months has eaten up most of workers' very…

Today's report from the government on February's retail sales was awful. Last month's sales fell by 0.1 percent, which was bad enough. Beyond that, January's originally reported 0.2 percent increase was revised down to a 0.4 percent decrease. Additionally, as I noted at my home blog this morning, January's seasonally adjusted revision should have been much worse, based on how terrible that month'…

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. apparently got on the good side of the Associated Press a year ago when it announced that would be raising entry-level wages. Since that announcement, AP, in particular wire service reporter Anne D'Innocenzio, has been excusing the company's relatively poor financial performance while complimenting it for a virtually imaginary "perk up" in sales. Falling profits…

From reading most establishment press news, especially their economy-related reports, you'd think that those who are complaining about the current U.S. economy are outliers — especially the millions of Americans who are angry about it. Though they sometimes acknowledge that forward progress  since the recession hasn't been robust, the media's meme-makers have mostly told us that "overall job…