The single change that would most greatly improve economic reporting would be a requirement that all numbers be placed in a context that made them meaningful to readers. We know that many of the numbers that appear in reports on the budget or the economy are not currently meaningful. For example, seeing that a transportation bill will cost $196 billion over the next six years is absolutely meaningless to everyone but a few budget wonks. If a zero were added or subtracted to this number it would probably mean almost exactly the same thing to most readers. An article could substitute "really big number" for "$196 billion" and still provide as much information. The simple alternatives are to express the sum as a share of total spending or on a per person basis, both of which would provide metrics that are immediately understandable to most readers. Editorials in the NYT and Post today give us excellent examples of why the current method of expressing these numbers is such bad reporting. The NYT editorial praised congressional Democrats for standing up to President Bush on the war in Iraq: "house Democrats distinguished themselves this week when they stood up to the White House’s latest military funding steamroller: approving only $50 million of the additional $196 million the president requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." That's right folks, the editorial said "millions." They meant "billions." Oh well, we all knew that. Of course, it is hugely important that the sum in question is $196 billion and not $196 million. This is approximately 6 percent of projected spending in 2008, about $660 for every person in the country. That is real money -- about 28 times the disputed SCHIP appropriation. If the NYT had expressed the sum in some context that made it understandable to readers, an error of this sort never would have made its way into print. Its editorial could then have informed readers rather than confuse them. The Post editorial raises the opposite issue, the whole point is confusion. As regular BTP readers know, the Post is engaged in a no holds barred war against Social Security. (I will not comment on the allegations of waterboarding on 15th Street.) The Post warns readers that the Democratic presidential candidates don't have a plan that will fully close the projected $4.75 trillion Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years. This is intended to sound really scary to readers. After all, as my debating partners on the Social Security privatization circuit always used to say, "that's 'trillion' with a 't.'" Since most people don't have a good idea of what $4.75 trillion over the next 75 years means, it might have been useful to express the sum as a share of projected income over this period. By this measure, the SS trustees projected shortfall would be approximately 0.7 percent of projected income. The shortfall projected by the non-partisan Congressional Budget office is approximately 0.6 percent of projected income over this period. By comparison, annual spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now comes to 1.3 percent of national income, approximately twice the size of the projected SS shortfall. In this case, context would directly undermine the goal of the Post editorial. The intent is to scare people, not to provide information. However, if it was standard practice to place big numbers in a context in which they could be understood, the Post would not be able to get away with this cheap trick.
--Dean Baker
