It’s a simple matter of quality substitution.

I would receive about 70 to 100% more in SS if food and energy was counted.

Plain and simple anyone who believes any of the government figures such as CPI or unemployment is dreaming.

Most if not all are worked over to reduce the real figures.

Try Google on CPI, unemployment or others with the word “problems” and you will hit a gold mine.

When they do figure food just one of the rules is if they are costing out steak and it jumps in price instead of reporting that they change to hamburg because all Americans change to hamburg…..right????????

Just yesterday one of the business channels was reporting that the Fed by reducing the interest rate would reduce mortage and auto rates.

Today they reported that mortage rates has risen.

Figures don’t lie but liars figure…

hal

There are particular narratives that it’s the job of the mainstream press to promulgate, and actual statistics are not part of those narratives because they’re not as amenable to manipulation as other kinds of reported fact. (They’re also not as clearly intermediated—anyone can look up the numbers, but only A Reporter From The Times can find just the right people in europe or middle america to interview.)

Have a look at Table 1.3, in particular, in http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Taxing_Wages_2003.pdf. This unfortunately is a bit out of date and a more up-to date version can be found on the OECD website at http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3343,en_2649_37427_40255097_1_1_1_37427,00.html but not one with the same table. (Those with OECD access might be able to find a more up-to-date version.)

It can be seen that the gross cost of employing someone at the average production workers wage is actually very similar in France, Italy, the US and the UK – around USD 34,000 to 36,000 (PPP adjusted), but while around 29-31% of that goes for taxes in the US and the UK, in France it is 48%, with employer social security contributions being the largest component (and 45% in Italy). Because employer social security contributions are paid directly from business to government they tend to be invisible to workers, or not very transparent at least.

So disposable incomes for similar workers are about one-third higher in the UK than in France in purchasing power even though the cost of employing production workers is about the same in both countries. Now of course for your higher taxes in France you are getting a very good health care system, extremely generous unemployment benefits for the middle class (the most generous in the OECD), much higher public retirement pensions, free schools and universities, great public transport etc etc. However, you do have less money left over for discretionary spending, so when the price of life’s little luxuries or necessities goes up, you tend to notice it more immediately.

Witt: I think you’re right about all this, but I’d add to your #3 the fact that many reporters are innumerate going in, and never do anything to address this. Most of them come from a liberal arts or poli sci educational background, and not a week goes by when I don’t hear one of them say, proudly, “I can’t even balance my checkbook!”

I read in the Daily Yomiuri on Tuesday (?) an imported article about life for ex-pats in Europe and how bad it has become since the dollar started diving against the Euro. Life for those expats is so bad, the article told me, that some expats have taken to buying potted flowers so as to reduce the weekly expense of buying cut flowers. Perhaps you can sympathise, Abb1?

Middle class, university educated and profoundly stupid. Is there any worse combination of traits for a profession?

I think this was mostly caused by high gas and energy prices (before inflation was focused on luxery goods, energy drove up the cost of the basics).

Page 3 Table 4 All Workers Civilian Workers.

Mar 2001 94.2
Mar 2008 99.2.

And I get no increase since Sep 2003.

And I totally missed John’s update at the bottom of the post. (Kind of glad I did.)

It was only John’s direction that allowed me to find the ECI data.

It would probably take me a long while to rummage around Eurostat and see what the situation was for the Eurozone in the same time period.

And then I would be left with the difficulty of comparing the two measures.

Someguy, I think your general point is right. It is hard to do this stuff, and its unsurprising that people find it easier to do voxpops.

I also agree that the most relevant comparisons are with Western Europe. This has become a bit more difficult since the euro.

Wages and salaries without the benefits (table 8) are slightly down since 2001.