Out of Control

Bad news spreads quickly. It doesn’t even really matter if the news is true or not.

Last week I noted the NYT’s flurry of economic pessimism, and, in this TCS Daily piece (thanks to co-blogger Steve for the tip), David Henderson shows how the bad “news” has spread to the Washington Post in the form of this Harold Meyerson piece.

Henderson makes many interesting points about why the NYT’s coverage and its echoes are misleading. Note, for instance, the role higher taxes play in the story of wages:

as marginal tax rates have increased for most people except the highest-income people, due mainly to rising Medicare and Social Security tax rates over the last 40 years, employers have paid a higher and higher percent of compensation in the form of untaxed benefits.

Over at Café Hayek digs into that BLS study I mentioned and finds more surprising/interesting nuggets.