TV's NOW - PBS: Families suffering greatest risks in economy, the New Deal

[Democrats_win]

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/familyincome.html

-snip
Americans from the working poor to the traditionally affluent are living closer to the economic edge. One indicator is the growing swings in family income from year to year that have put some families on a roller coaster and left them vulnerable to financial disaster. NOW explores what is causing this new economic insecurity and asks what it says about the level of financial risk assumed by average Americans? In "Risky Business," NOW profiles two families dealing with the downside of this new economic reality. In the report, David Brancaccio with LOS ANGELES TIMES national economics correspondent Peter Gosselin analyzes a thirty-year pattern of cuts to benefits and worker protections that has shifted financial risks from government and business onto average Americans.

The statistics underlying Gosselin's LOS ANGELES TIMES series "The New Deal" were drawn from a unique ongoing economic tracking project, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) at the University of Michigan which has followed the incomes of 5,000 plus nationally representative families and their offspring for almost forty years. Analysis of the statistics by the LOS ANGELES TIMES shows that families are increasingly vulnerable to the effects that crisis or change — losing a job, divorce, illness, death and birth — has on their income. The percentage of families that face these challenges hasn't varied much in the past thirty years, but the dips in the roller coaster ride are steeper and the recoveries that much more difficult. Click on the image below to see how families are faring when faced with setbacks

[omega minimo]

1. What did you think of the presentation of the info?

Definite spin action goin on. Some big pieces of the puzzle missing. Is it enough to present the data and then puff the story in an almost apologist direction, that ultimately puts the problem in the laps of Americans-- and leaves it there?

[ClarkUSA]

2. What do you mean by "spin action"?

Please clarify.

[omega minimo]

3. Milquetoast. Wishy washy. NOW with Brancaccio has become weak.

How did they make it through the entire discussion without mentioning the disparity b/w workers wages and CEO's salaries? Much of the discussion focused on effect ("you're screwed, America!) and not CAUSE/responsbility of the "companies" that were mentioned in passing. It treated the current tenuous situation almost as an inevitability.

What did you think of the presentation and the questions DB chose to ask or NOT ask?

[omega minimo]

4. Is it enough to present the data and then puff the story in an almost

Is it enough to present the data and then puff the story in an almost apologist direction, that ultimately puts the problem in the laps of Americans-- and leaves it there?






:kick:

[whistle]

5. As soon as the neo-cons get all of the monkeys in their cages....

...they will begin to shake the palms and pick-up all of the coconuts. Just a couple of more accelerated measured increase in the Federal Reserve interest rate ought to do it!