From: pas@kepler.unh.edu (Paul A Sand)
Subject: Re: Why do Americans get so little vacation time?
Organization: University of New Hampshire
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 16:44:55 GMT

jc: Jon Corelis
ps: Paul Sand

ps: I know that when one makes at least one set of reasonable answers to
    the above questions, [Gordon Fitch's assertion that the `real median
    wage has been falling steadily in the United States for the last 20
    years or so'] is simply false: real median yearly pretax household
    income is bigger than in 1972, according to the latest numbers from
    the Census Bureau. (You can look this up in a half-decent library,
    and I have.)

jc: So have I, and according to Table 721 of the 1991 Statistical
    Abstract of the United States, `Money Income of Households,' the
    median annual U.S. household income in constant 1989 dollars rose
    between 1970 and 1989 from 27,913 to 28,908 -- a whopping 3.5
    percent increase in just two decades! Whoopee!

That is also, of course, not the same as `falling steadily' for the
last 20 years.  But more importantly, Jon provides a fine example of
how easy it is to yank numbers out of a mass of statistics to
`demonstrate' something.

I didn't look up Jon's numbers, so--who knows?--they may be accurate.
But here's `Real Median Family Income [1]' over the period in
question:

	1970 29625    1980 31675
	1971 29590    1981 30811
	1972 31045    1982 30394
	1973 31659    1983 30719
	1974 30826    1984 31547
	1975 30270    1985 31962
	1976 31225    1986 33328
	1977 31410    1987 33805
	1978 32405    1988 33742
	1979 32821    1989 34213

This shows a 15% increase from 1970-1989. If one is more--um--careful
about picking endpoints, as Jon has been in his own way, one can be
even more Pollyannish: a 12% increase in only seven years (1982-1989)!
(One could also observe that, since average family size has been
decreasing over the last 20 years, this increase actually goes further
than the numbers themselves suggest, as the money has to be spread over
fewer people.)

Just a demo to show how easily one can change statistics by modifying
definitions slightly. Moral: there's no substitute for looking these
things up yourself; don't trust ideologues to do it for you. (Except,
of course, that you *can* trust me, dear friends...)

jc: Turning to Table 698, we find that our country's Gross National
    Product during the same period rose in constant dollars by two
    hundred and fifteen per cent. [...]

Unfortunately for Jon, this stank to high heaven, so I *did* look this
one up. He's just dead wrong.  In 1982 constant dollars, table 698
shows:

	1970 GNP: 2416.2 Billion
	1989 GNP: 4117.7 Billion

... which my calculator insists is a 70% increase, not 215%.

jc: That huge increase in productivity must have translated into profit
    for someone. Wonder where it all went? Wait a second, let me check
    my pay stub -- nope, don't see any of there.

Ho ho. Perhaps Jon, desperately looking for the 215% `huge increase'
missed the 70% one? Maybe, maybe not.

In any case, it's probably worthwhile to point out that a more
appropriate (or perhaps I should say `honest') number for comparison,
when one is looking at individual results, would be per-capita GNP.
(The increase there would be smaller still; it's Table 703, Jon.)

jc: At this point if I wanted to be a rabble rouser I could start
    looking up what's happened to the net worth of the richest five per
    cent of American families over the same period, but, let's face it
    -- investigations like that are only going to play hell with
    people's politics and might even make it hard for them to continue
    being docile and self-sacrificing little producers. We've got an
    American electorate now who's been trained to perform the amazing
    acrobatic feat of kissing the asses of the men who are picking its
    pocket, so let's keep it that way. (Yawn ...) I wonder what's on
    teevee ...

Nice speech, although the display of raw envy is a bit too obvious.
Would have been more effective if Jon's evidence wasn't so bogus.
--
[1] From US Dept. of Commerce, Current Population Reports, Series
P-60, No. 172. CPI-U-X1 used to compute constant dollars.
-- 
-- Paul A. Sand           | God has to have a bang path.
-- Univ. of New Hampshire | A *big bang* path.
-- pas@kepler.unh.edu     | 	(Craig Dowell, in rec.arts.books)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc