Motivated jesuitical arguments

Hmmm. From Contrary to what the media reports, middle class Americans are surging by Stephen Moore.

Moore is addressing a recent report from CBS.

By nearly every measure today, we are living in a magnificent time for the American economy. There is a booming stock market fueling trillions of dollars of wealth gains, record low unemployment, 3 percent to 5 percent wage gains, and seven million unfilled jobs. So the recent headline for a CBS report seemed to strain all credulity when it declared, “Two years after Trump tax cuts, middle class Americans are falling behind.” Huh?

He then goes on to use data to refute the CBS claim.

He is right but this is kind of surprising.

Perhaps four weeks ago I heard a similar set of claims on NPR. Whoever they were interviewing was making a similar claim to CBS - these aren't good times at all.

As a deficit hawk, I agree that there is a case to be made that some of the current economic prosperity is illusory in that we are running up the deficit again. I think there is a case to be made that the tax cuts of last year were ill-considered.
But that is not the same as denying that these are economic good times.

In the NPR interview the claims were just plain fallacious and used similar tricks as, apparently, there are in the CBS report.

So how in the world did CBS mangle the universally good news to come up with an opposite conclusion? It turns out that there is a classic head fake in the report. The middle class is “falling behind” only relative to the gains of the wealthiest 1 percent. Even though the middle class has had a bigger income boost under Trump than anytime in 20 years, the middle class is allegedly now suffering a decline since the rich saw even faster gains. This appears to be an intentional distortion of economic reality.

Even more misleading is that CBS based its figures on a Congressional Budget Office estimate of what will happen with incomes over the next two years. The Congressional Budget Office also projected three years ago that gross domestic product might be some $600 billion below what it actually is today. This is not exactly an agency with a stellar record at predicting things. Even the CBS figures contradict the headline because the story claims incomes are up at least $4,000 per household for the middle class, adjusted for inflation under Trump. That compares with a $1,000 per household gain in incomes under Obama over eight years.

The striking thing is why are there these hair-splitting, reality-denying, jesuitical arguments from mainstream media organizations which seek to deny a positive reality that everyone else is experiencing?

It is easy to claim that it is simply TDS or ideological bubbles. Possibly. But you have to work hard to make such tangled and disreputable arguments. Why? And why do they keep popping up across the MSM?

And why try and deny reality when there are such more easily defendable grounds for arguing against some of these policies (deficits being a prime case)? It doesn't make much sense.