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Matthew A.:
I write in response to your comment on Scott Winship’s thorough exposé of the many flaws in American Compass’s latest flawed portrayal of the American economy. I here focus on your assertion that official measures of inflation intentionally undercount the dollar’s devaluation in order to save the government money.
While I’m the last person to doubt government-officials’ scurrility, I believe that the Boskin Commission finding remains valid – namely, that the Consumer Price Index overcounts – or, you might say, “inflates” – inflation.
But we needn’t quibble over this matter. A way to avoid the need to adjust for inflation is, first, to calculate the amount of time that an ordinary worker today must toil to purchase various goods and services, and then (2) compare these findings to the amount of time that an ordinary worker in the past had to toil to purchase these same items. We can perform this comparison using only nominal wages and prices.
A quick Google search turned up this list of prices of 16 familiar grocery items along with their nominal prices for both 1990 and 2020. And FRED has, for each of these years, reliable records of the nominal hourly wages of production and nonsupervisory workers. And so we can then divide the nominal price, for example, of a pound of beef in 1990 ($2.81) by the nominal hourly wage in 1990 ($10.22) to determine how long an ordinary worker in 1990 had to toil to earn enough income to buy a pound of beef (16 minutes). After performing the same calculation for 2020, we can then see if a worker today has to work longer or less, compared to a worker in 1990, to earn the requisite purchasing power.
In the case of beef, priced at $4.35lb in 2020, an ordinary worker in 2020, earning $24.67 per hour, had to work only 11 minutes to earn enough income to buy a pound of beef – five minutes less than he or she had to work to earn the same ‘beef’ purchasing power in 1990.
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Will America-First News Outlets Make it to 2023?
Things are looking grim for conservative and populist news sites.
There’s something happening behind the scenes at several popular conservative news outlets. 2021 was bad, but 2022 is proving to be disastrous for news sites that aren’t “playing ball” with the corporate media narrative. It’s being said that advertisers are cracking down, forcing some of the biggest ad networks like Google and Yahoo to pull their inventory from conservative outlets. This has had two major effects. First, it has cooled most conservative outlets from discussing “taboo” topics like Pandemic Panic Theater, voter fraud, or The Great Reset. Second, it has isolated those ad networks that aren’t playing ball.
Certain topics are anathema for most ad networks. Speaking out against vaccines or vaccine mandates is a certain path to being demonetized. Highlighting voter fraud in the 2020 and future elections is another instant advertising death penalty. Throw in truthful stories about climate change hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and the border crisis and it’s easy to understand how difficult it is for America-First news outlets to spread the facts, share conservative opinions, and still pay the bills.
Without naming names, I have been told of several news outlets who have been forced to either consolidate with larger organizations or who have backed down on covering certain topics out of fear of being “canceled” by the ad networks. I get it. This is a business for many of us and it’s not very profitable. Those of us who do this for a living are often barely squeaking by, so loss of additional revenue can often mean being forced to make cuts. That means not being able to cover the topics properly. Its a Catch-22: Tell the truth and lose the money necessary to keep telling the truth, or avoid the truth and make enough money to survive. Those who have chosen survival simply aren’t able to spread the truth properly.
We will never avoid the truth. The Lord will provide if it is His will. Our job is simply to share the facts, spread the Gospel, and educate as many Americans as possible while exposing the forces of evil.
To those who have the means, we ask that you please donate. We have options available now, but there is no telling when those options will cancel us. We have our GivingFuel page. There have been many who have been canceled by PayPal, but for now it’s still an option. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to get the truth to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Thank you, and God Bless!
JD Rucker