I can't figure out whom I like less -- Stossel or David Horowitz.
mbs
. . . -- In order to refute the only on-camera source who is given significant time to disagree with his thesis--progressive talkshow host Jim Hightower--Stossel claims that "the Federal Reserve's wage data that's often cited doesn't count things like commissions salespeople make, retirement contributions, medical insurance. When you include them, average American compensation's risen 20 percent."
This statement contains multiple inaccuracies. First, the Federal Reserve does not collect wage data. The "often cited" wage data Stossel apparently has in mind--showing that wages for ordinary workers have fallen--come from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data Stossel cites purporting to show that compensation has "risen 20 percent"--he does not say since when--most likely come from the Commerce Department's National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA).
The NIPA data measure the total amount of compensation--including payroll taxes, health, pension, and other non-wage benefits--earned in the economy as a whole. While that figure can be divided by the total number of workers to obtain a statistical average, this cannot be used as a gauge of ordinary worker's compensation, since the average is inflated by very high salaries and benefits for a small number of top-paid workers. . . .