Ken Shepherd of the Business and Media Institute catches the Times' David Leonhardt [1]doing a little instant revisionism to his Times' lead storyfrom Monday, cowritten with Steven Greenhouse, that looked at new wage figures through a liberal prism [2]of struggling workers and income inequality.
On Monday, Greenhouse and Leonhardt argued "wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's."
As Shepherd says, "What a difference three days make."
For Thursday's paper, economics reporter Leonhardt looks at revised GDP figures and concedes "new evidence of a surge in wage-and-salary income in the first half of this year," with pay up "at an annual pace around 7 percent after adjusting for inflation."
Of course, while the bad-news spin on wages led Monday's paper, Thursday's good news led...the paper's business section.