Two Years Later, ABC News No More Economically Developed

Some students (we're all students of life, I'd hope) are tougher cases than others.  It's been more than two years since my last post and David Muir and team at ABC News continue bravely reporting on the prosperity created by shrinking the size of our economic world (and helping get this message to those least equipped to question it).  They even had the breathtaking vapidity to travel to Mexico and promote "Made in America"--no mention of why Mexicans should root for "Made in America" rather than, I don't know, "Made in Mexico."  In tonight's edition, one can even hear a faint paean to inefficiency when Mr. Muir concludes his piece (about Winnebagos made in Iowa) with:

"...And a number we love: for every one of those Winnebagos, it takes on average 165 of those dedicated workers to get it on the road..."

My question about this is: what is it about that number that David Muir and his colleagues so adore?  Presumably, it's not that it's small.  Would it be a bad thing, then, if through innovation that number were trimmed to 150?  125?  100?  What if the very same Winnebago could be made in the same amount of time, at no greater (and probably lower) cost, by just 50 dedicated Hawkeye State workers--perhaps 50 Jack Rebneys?  Would that be a net positive for the company?  Iowa?  The country?  Humanity?  Would Diane chime in about what "great news" such ingenuity is?

Forgive me if I find an appreciation of the benefits of doing more with less to be inconsistent with the tenor of the reporting coming out of ABC America World News.  Would that it were "great news" issuing from the dedicated workers at "Made in America."  I hope it doesn't take 165 of them to stitch that segment together.

And the gas pedal is the main engine of the automobile

"Consumer spending, the main engine of the U.S. economy..."

ABC World News, 7/31/2009

Accidental Economic Editorializing

Some opinions are so ingrained in a subculture that that subculture is not even aware that they are not facts, but opinions. There are few if any more certain indicators of being out of touch with the intellectual climate than to not be aware that some visible and accomplished members of the population not only do not share this assumption of facthood, but are actually demonstrating superior situational awareness in contradicting it than are proponents of said opinions in espousing it.

That is the best I can do right now to summarize my thoughts a few hours after watching an astonishing episode of ABC's World News Tonight (12/16/08). The lead report, of course, begins with coverage of the Federal Reserve's historic interest rate action. The opinion-as-fact comes when the report segues to consumer credit:

"But, the economy won't improve until interest rates fall for consumers as well."

But, this is an opinion, not an established fact. Evidence here, here, here and heck, even here.

Con.sens.us

The vocabulary of the bailout is interesting and sad. I'd like to have a list of the words used to describe the supposed consequences of "doing nothing" (for only government action counts). Just tonight on ABC News I heard "abyss," "collapse," "catastrophe," and "we don't even want to think about it." (There's an intellectual approach.) Their reporters go on to say that a) we don't know whether the bailout will work and, strangely, b) there is a consensus that not passing a plan would be "far worse." Than what? Burning $700,000,000,000 in future taxes for nothing? I'm also curious to know how a consensus can exist when 160 or so economists, including three nobel-prize-winning ones signed a letter urging caution--at least with regard to Paulson's original proposal. Excerpt:

If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.

Some even question whether it's true that credit is frozen. (Listen to the news and you'll hear that claim repeated unquestioningly and frequently.)

VOCABULARY UPDATE: "...we do not want to live in a world that will exist without this rescue plan." -Art Hogan , Chief Investment Officer, Jefferies & Co., interviewed on ABC World News With Charles Gibson, 9/29/08