The Times had one of the most convoluted articles yet on demographics. Apparently, China's slowing population growth may lead to a shortage of cheap labor, no kidding the headline is "As China Ages, a Shortage of Cheap labor Looms."

The New York Times apparently doesn't think so. In an article assessing the Mexican presidential campaign in its final days, there is no mention of the economic performance of the current administration. Since one of the two leading candidates is from the same party as the incumbent president, and pledges to continue the same policies if elected, the recent economic record would appear to be relevant.

The Times ran an informative article on the Bush administration's new rules requiring states to impose more stringent work requirements on welfare recipients. However, the piece fell short in telling readers the cost of welfare. It reports that welfare is blockgranted at $16 billion annually between 2007 and 2010. It would have been helpful to tell readers that the cost of the program will fall from 0.6 percent of total spending in 2007 to 0.5 percent of spending by 2010.

The May data for new home sales came in somewhat higher than expected. It is important to keep in mind that the home sales data record contracts, not completed sales. In the boom period a year ago, broken contracts were rare. Now that prices are weakening in many of the formerly hot markets, broken contracts are becoming common.

To my knowledge, no one keeps data on the percentage of contracts that are broken, but there have been reports from some builders in California and Florida of cancellation rates in the range of 20-30 percent. If the nationwide rate of cancellation is even 5 percentage points higher than last year, it would conceal a sharp falloff in actual sales.

Since there have been some interesting comments on two separate posts from last week, I thought I would pull them together. To get up to speed, NPR ran a piece last week which decried (slight exaggeration) the low pay of doctors. I also commented on the failure of reporting on a minimum wage hike to note the extensive research showing that modest increases in the minimum wage (like the ones being debated) have no significant effect on employment.

The responses have raised issues about the appropriate wages for doctors and people who work at the type of jobs that get the minimum wage. The point that I wanted to make is that these two are linked. The wages of people working at low paying jobs are a cost to doctors, and doctors' pay is a cost to those earning low wages.

Suppose that the senators who support a quick withdrawal from Iraq got in the habit of saying that the United States should get out of Iraq because losing 100 U.S. soldiers a day is an unacceptable price for the occupation. Would the media simple report this claim without comment? Or, would they point out that these senators apparently don't realize that the fatality rate is approximately 2 per day?

My guess is that every story that noted the claim that 100 soldiers a day are being killed would correct this assertion based on an authoritative source on the causality count. The media would probably also run numerous stories that reported on the fact that the proponents of a hasty withdrawal have no idea what they are talking about. This would be good journalism.

You won't see this headline in the newspapers. You should ask why. Newspapers have repeatedly reported on the hundreds of billions of dollars that the rich countries give to the agricultural industry. (See the Financial Times for the latest example.) While the wording of the headlines, and often the articles themselves, would lead readers to believe that this money is being paid directly from rich country governments to farmers, the vast majority of this money takes the form of higher prices that result from trade barriers of various types.