A Friendly Challenge: Are We Reading These Articles Carefully Enough?

Bloomberg published an opinion piece called “The American Middle Class Is Shrinking, and That’s Ok"
here
and it is a perfect example of how misleading information spreads when people stop examining the details. The author claims that more than 30% of Americans earn over $150,000, but the data she uses refers to families, not individuals. A two-earner household making $75,000 each becomes “one American earning $150,000.” That is not upward mobility. That is two people working full-time to produce a number that looks impressive on paper.

The article then uses inflation-adjusted income to argue that today’s families are better off. But inflation adjustments do not reflect what a middle-class life actually costs. In 1967 the median household income, when converted to today’s dollars, was roughly $65,000 to $70,000, and the median home cost the equivalent of about $210,000 to $230,000. A house cost about three years of income, and one income typically supported the entire household. Today the median household earns $75,000, usually with two full-time earners, and the median home costs more than $420,000. Houses now cost six to ten years of income. Cars follow the same pattern. A late-sixties new car cost the equivalent of around $25,000 today and was paid off in two or three years. Now the average car costs about $48,000 and takes six or seven years to pay off. Add the fact that health insurance was inexpensive, tuition was a few hundred dollars per semester, and credit card dependency was rare, and the difference in the financial load becomes obvious.

And here’s where the human element matters. A certain type of traditional conservative, especially one anxious about both populist economics, is going to embrace this article instantly. It reassures him that the economy is fundamentally sound, that tariffs and industrial policy are unnecessary, and that all the talk about affordability and wage stagnation is exaggerated. It tells him that the system he believes in is working exactly as intended. It calms the anxiety he has about any challenge to the status quo, and because it feels good, he shares it. Not because the data is strong, but because the headline confirms the worldview he already holds.

That is how misleading information spreads today. It does not require malice; it only requires a narrative that comforts the right audience. A major publication prints a story that fits neatly into an existing political frame. Someone who wants that frame to be true reposts it without questioning the details. The next reader accepts it simply because it came from a recognizable source. And the institutions we are told to trust, including government arbiters of truth, do not necessarily guard us from these distortions because they, too, operate within their own incentives and biases.

This is why we have to be our own filter. We cannot let headlines do the thinking for us. When you look at the real numbers... the price of housing, the cost of cars, the burden of healthcare and education, and the shift from one income supporting a family to two incomes just holding the line...the truth is unmistakable. The middle class did not move up. It got squeezed. And no feel-good headline printed in a financial publication changes that reality.

Please, do better. As Ben Frankin says, we have a republic if we can keep it. We won't keep it if we can't think straight.