The LA Times Blows It On Inflation

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The LA Times copy desk needs to cool it on the clickbait headlines:

The Fed says inflation is low but you don’t agree. Here’s why you both might be right

The motivation for the accompanying article is a recent poll showing that 44 percent of Americans don’t trust the government’s economic data. This, in turn, is motivated in part by Donald Trump’s insistence that the Fed is keeping interest rates low to help Hillary Clinton despite the specter of massive inflation.

However, the bulk of the article is about the technical difficulties of calculating inflation, which can produce massive differences like these between the two leading inflation indexes for August:

  • CPI: +1.09 percent
  • PCE: +0.96 percent

Obviously somebody is rigging the data here, amirite?

Despite the obvious lack of any chicanery in the inflation figures, the article quotes nutbag Peter Schiff, who insists the government is cooking the books, and “contrarian” David Stockman, who believes he’s come up with a more accurate inflation measure by rejiggering the government’s calculation to give more weight to prices that are going up the fastest. The article also mentions that inflation might be higher in one city than another, and that sometimes inflation seems higher than it is due a rise in a very visible product like gasoline.

But nowhere in the article does it say flatly that the conspiracy theorists are wrong, and inflation is what it is. It reads more like a he-said-she-said account of whether the government is playing fair. And the headline just reinforces that. This is not good journalism

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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