JB: "Apparently, Stephen Moore, a long-term conservative economics fixture in DC politics..."
Language matters. I have constant criticisms for the language the NY Times uses to describe Trump and Republicans, because the paper draws from a bottomless well of euphemisms that help to normalize the dangerously radical behavior of both.
Stephen Moore has been around for decades and for all those years he has been lying shamelessly about "economics." Just because he has been a major apologist for dishonesty does not earn him the title of "conservative." As in the case of Trump, the GOP, and the six SCOTUS majority justices calling Moore "conservative" is typical, but it is typical of gross misidentification. There is nothing truly "conservative" about any of them, and every Democrat, liberal, or progressive who uses that word to describe them is doing a disservice to the truth. These are all far right-wing extremists. There is nothing "conservative" about them and they should never be referred to as "conservative." This country can have a healthy democracy with conservatives in the government and acting as commentators and experts. However, none of those people I've included in this comment can legitimately be considered to be "conservative."
I know it is probably hopeless to expect old-timers like JB to stop using that inaccurate, unhelpful, and even destructive word, but neither will I stop trying to point out how foolish that is. (Note: I'm older than JB.) I respect both Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein, but their using the word "conservative" to describe fascists, authoritarian thugs, and pathological liars such as Moore is similar to the mistake they made in 2024 to constantly talk about how great the economy was. It was only good in traditional statistical terms. It was not seen as good at all by millions of disaffected voters, who, because of that, voted for Donald Trump. No single word should every be used to describe something as complex as our economy and in which people have radically different ideas about whether it is positive or negative for them as individuals or for some groups.
Rather than call Moore "a long-term conservative economics fixture in DC politics," refer to him as what he is: A long-term pathological liar and apologist for failed right-wing economic ideas. If that seems too harsh, then I would suggest that indicates someone who is not up to fighting Trump effectively. It is not merely an opinion that Moore is as I have described him. It is hard, objective truth.
I, too, am older than most, having been born before the end of WW II. At this point, I think most of us already have internalized the fact that today’s “conservatives” are no longer Conservative in the historical sense. They are fascists and protofascists. There’s no sense in beating a dead horse to death.
I always use “right wing” instead of “conservative” to describe these people. For a guy like Stephen Moore I would add terms such as “hack” or “propagandist”. I wouldn’t call him dishonest or liar because I’m not sure if that is accurate Having listened and read Moore’s crackpot, fact-free claims over the years I suspect he may just be a fool who has been brainwashed to be a true believer in the right’s fairy tale economic “theories”.
Theodora, the list of disparaging and negative adjectives that can fairly be applied to Moore is virtually endless. Everything he does is colored by dishonesty and stupidity. It is never possible to know with certainty whether someone like Moore can be explained 100% by stupidity, 100% dishonesty, or a toxic combination of the two.
I once heard him when he appeared on the Diane Rehm show on NPR. He was opposite two knowledgeable women and the subject was SNAP. Amazingly, Moore claimed that that very week he had been in line in a grocery store and there was someone in front of him buying lobster tails with SNAP. I'm an old man now and I once taught in a southern New Mexico school system where something like 2/3 to 3/4 of the families received food stamps. In that area, if you were in line in a grocery store with six other people, the chances were good that at least four of them were paying with food stamps. Yet, in all my years of going to grocery stores I never once witnessed people buying extreme luxury items of food with their food benefits. I'm not trying to claim it can't or doesn't happen, but the idea that the very week Moore was appearing on the radio to discuss how much he hated SNAP he just happened to be in line when someone was buying lobster tails -- the ultimate cliche food for opponents of SNAP -- was just too much to believe. It was a totally unbelievable story, based on the endless dishonest cliches that Republicans use to try to discredit SNAP. The two women were brilliant and ripped Moore apart. making him look like a complete fool, which he is. Their performance was what is so often missing when the Left confronts the Right -- total commitment to honestly discrediting the lies and distortions of the Right without the least bit of deference to being "polite" about it. The women simply laid it out honestly and without any attempt to be "radio nice" to Moore. He is a liar and a charlatan and deserves to be treated as such.
I have only heard such an effective take down of someone once before. I was traveling in northern New Mexico and the only things I could get on the radio was either Rush Limbaugh or some ultra-right wing Christianity. Somehow, an extremely knowledgeable person (must have) lied his way through Limbaugh's screening process. When Limbaugh started raving about environmentalists and environmental regulation, the caller delivered an amazing "smack down" of the big-mouthed idiot. He was left speechless and had to cut the caller off in mid-sentence to stop his humiliation, but not before his audience had heard Limbaugh thoroughly dismantled and his arguments torn to shreds.
JB: "His BLS chart seemed to add the initial revision to the final revision which makes no sense, but I can’t believe he would do that so maybe there’s a better explanation."
Oh, Mr. Bernstein, you are too old and too intelligent to be that naive about Stephen Moore. There is nothing dishonest or stupid that Moore won't do in order to "make his case."
Lies, damned lies and ststistics! Do you, JB, really think the 'average' HH income is $83k? Really? It's not. Mathematically, it might be TECHNICALLY average but it isn't average as in normal, common, median. First, the stats don't count all the homeless, the retired and the institutionalized. A real average would be lower. Secondly, stats-average includes the supper-rich .1% who own HALF the nation's wealth. Take them out and the average drops.
It's not the average it's the median. If you make a simple list of all the incomes it is literally the one in the middle of the list. The average is usually different and it would be much lower like you point out.
'....make an average of ALL the incomes', Jim? Or average ALL the wages/salaries that report to the IRS? THAT is where the stats come from. Even at that, the homeless, addicted, the illegals, the incarcerated....got no wages OR income that is tabulated, spindled or mutilated by the bean counters in DC. Some poor is just 'dirt poor'.
But the main point is that the .1% distort ALL the numbers. BTW, Trump grifts, cheats, steals and takes bribes, gifts, emoluments and pays no taxes. That man alone skews the stats. AND HE IS THE CULT LEADER!
It also wouldn't count children, most sex workers or drug dealers. But that's OK. The measure here is median income, which assumes people are declaring their earnings. It's a fair measure to understand what a person could likely expect in the workforce.
Hey, Donny! Do You Really Want to Tell People They're Better Off Than They Think They Are?
Actually, Biden did a lot of that, and it did not work out well for us. He kept pointing at employment numbers while people were howling from the thumbscrew of inflation.
For many years after the Great Recession of 07-09 - the Fed sprinkled fairy dust on the markets to keep employment and economic growth positive. Inflation was held down ( primarily, I think ) by world wide markets- with millions more people available to work in the labor force.
Now , the chickens have come home to roost and we are facing another Stagflation- this time with
almost 40 percent of our population in the US with no net worth. Corporations have much more monopoly power given the unprecedented merger mania our justice system allowed . AND
we are 70 percent a service economy with manufacturing down to 10 percent- way different from
the previous Stagflation. So - I wish I could predict how it will turn out.
About all I can say that our Mango
Coated Disaster in Chief along with the most incompetent cabinet ever assembled does not provide confidence that needed steps will be taken to avert a crisis ( in fact a crisis they certainly helped to usher in) .
I agree wholeheartedly and a comment I posted here criticizes JB's use of language. In the context of this essay, I objected to his use of the word "conservative" to describe Stephen Moore. However, I also pointed out, as have you, that the Biden administration repeatedly told the American people who were about to vote for Trump that the economy was really strong. It was, by traditional statistical measures, but those ignored the reality that millions of Americans disagreed emphatically. They felt the economy was not working for them at all. Being both honest and realistic is critical in communication, despite the unparalleled success Trump has enjoyed by lying constantly as in delved into pure fantasies. He, unlike Biden, acknowledged that the economy was not delivering for many people. Sadly, of course, he had no intention of doing anything other than offering empty rhetoric, but that was enough for an electoral than suffers from a lack of intelligence and being badly ill-informed.
Stephen Moore is not a competent economist and is illiterate regarding data. He has always created fictional numbers for Trump. We need to monitor private sector economic numbers to know what's going on.
A Washington Post story yesterday had this about the charts
"Moore’s presentation largely didn’t look at the current economy — most of the charts compared Trump’s first term with Biden’s term, he said in the Oval Office."
If that is accurate, then the charts are close to irrelevant to the current situation. But no one is talking about that. They are treating the charts as present-day data. So are they or aren't they about now?
It’s August in the Hamptons, roads bumper to bumper, $125 for 1.5 lb lobster, just flash the credit card, personal chefs are booked through Labor Day, an awful lot of folks with an awful lot of $$$. In Manhattan apartment houses pop up, $4K a month for a studio, a bargain… if inflation continues to creep up, the economy slows, the folks with bucks, who do seem to run the world, shrug.
My latest JPMorgan newsletter, positive…
Unless, and that’s a big unless, the market falls off a cliff … and drags the dollar with it .. not a soothsayer … the clockdown clock seems to be ticking. 🤒
In fairness to Moore, the chart does clearly say "Estimates". Anybody can make an estimate, anyway he likes. It could be just an (un)educated guess. The chart doesn't claim that the estimates are based on any actual data. It's a good example for a stats class to demonstrate that estimates do not have to be any good to earn that designation, and why they need to be accompanied by sources of information, methodology, and indications of accuracy or lack thereof.
Can we please stop referring to Moore as an economist. He’s just an idiot playing economist so he can spin for politicians. He truly is an idiot. Speak with him for 5 minutes and you will walk away shaking your head.
What to do about this sorry state of affairs? Republicans would need a total nuclear shock in order to get them to grow a spine, and in the meantime they appear determined to steal our elections with their egregious gerrymandering until we have no electoral accountability left. Move to Canada, or Europe, or Mexico.
Unfortunately, too many people in this country are too stupid to listen to reason. Also unfortunate, we have millennial darling dimwits in the media, like Josh Barro, who pushed the narrative that it was Biden’s stimulus that produced all the inflation, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. When you couple the 49% of the electorate that are, apparently, complete morons with bad journalism, you begin to see how we got to where we are.
It depends on what is the real MAGA priority: racism or the economy? A lot of MAGAs are willing to suffer and "take one for the team" as long as it's OK to be a white supremacist.
JB: "Apparently, Stephen Moore, a long-term conservative economics fixture in DC politics..."
Language matters. I have constant criticisms for the language the NY Times uses to describe Trump and Republicans, because the paper draws from a bottomless well of euphemisms that help to normalize the dangerously radical behavior of both.
Stephen Moore has been around for decades and for all those years he has been lying shamelessly about "economics." Just because he has been a major apologist for dishonesty does not earn him the title of "conservative." As in the case of Trump, the GOP, and the six SCOTUS majority justices calling Moore "conservative" is typical, but it is typical of gross misidentification. There is nothing truly "conservative" about any of them, and every Democrat, liberal, or progressive who uses that word to describe them is doing a disservice to the truth. These are all far right-wing extremists. There is nothing "conservative" about them and they should never be referred to as "conservative." This country can have a healthy democracy with conservatives in the government and acting as commentators and experts. However, none of those people I've included in this comment can legitimately be considered to be "conservative."
I know it is probably hopeless to expect old-timers like JB to stop using that inaccurate, unhelpful, and even destructive word, but neither will I stop trying to point out how foolish that is. (Note: I'm older than JB.) I respect both Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein, but their using the word "conservative" to describe fascists, authoritarian thugs, and pathological liars such as Moore is similar to the mistake they made in 2024 to constantly talk about how great the economy was. It was only good in traditional statistical terms. It was not seen as good at all by millions of disaffected voters, who, because of that, voted for Donald Trump. No single word should every be used to describe something as complex as our economy and in which people have radically different ideas about whether it is positive or negative for them as individuals or for some groups.
Rather than call Moore "a long-term conservative economics fixture in DC politics," refer to him as what he is: A long-term pathological liar and apologist for failed right-wing economic ideas. If that seems too harsh, then I would suggest that indicates someone who is not up to fighting Trump effectively. It is not merely an opinion that Moore is as I have described him. It is hard, objective truth.
I, too, am older than most, having been born before the end of WW II. At this point, I think most of us already have internalized the fact that today’s “conservatives” are no longer Conservative in the historical sense. They are fascists and protofascists. There’s no sense in beating a dead horse to death.
I always use “right wing” instead of “conservative” to describe these people. For a guy like Stephen Moore I would add terms such as “hack” or “propagandist”. I wouldn’t call him dishonest or liar because I’m not sure if that is accurate Having listened and read Moore’s crackpot, fact-free claims over the years I suspect he may just be a fool who has been brainwashed to be a true believer in the right’s fairy tale economic “theories”.
Theodora, the list of disparaging and negative adjectives that can fairly be applied to Moore is virtually endless. Everything he does is colored by dishonesty and stupidity. It is never possible to know with certainty whether someone like Moore can be explained 100% by stupidity, 100% dishonesty, or a toxic combination of the two.
I once heard him when he appeared on the Diane Rehm show on NPR. He was opposite two knowledgeable women and the subject was SNAP. Amazingly, Moore claimed that that very week he had been in line in a grocery store and there was someone in front of him buying lobster tails with SNAP. I'm an old man now and I once taught in a southern New Mexico school system where something like 2/3 to 3/4 of the families received food stamps. In that area, if you were in line in a grocery store with six other people, the chances were good that at least four of them were paying with food stamps. Yet, in all my years of going to grocery stores I never once witnessed people buying extreme luxury items of food with their food benefits. I'm not trying to claim it can't or doesn't happen, but the idea that the very week Moore was appearing on the radio to discuss how much he hated SNAP he just happened to be in line when someone was buying lobster tails -- the ultimate cliche food for opponents of SNAP -- was just too much to believe. It was a totally unbelievable story, based on the endless dishonest cliches that Republicans use to try to discredit SNAP. The two women were brilliant and ripped Moore apart. making him look like a complete fool, which he is. Their performance was what is so often missing when the Left confronts the Right -- total commitment to honestly discrediting the lies and distortions of the Right without the least bit of deference to being "polite" about it. The women simply laid it out honestly and without any attempt to be "radio nice" to Moore. He is a liar and a charlatan and deserves to be treated as such.
I have only heard such an effective take down of someone once before. I was traveling in northern New Mexico and the only things I could get on the radio was either Rush Limbaugh or some ultra-right wing Christianity. Somehow, an extremely knowledgeable person (must have) lied his way through Limbaugh's screening process. When Limbaugh started raving about environmentalists and environmental regulation, the caller delivered an amazing "smack down" of the big-mouthed idiot. He was left speechless and had to cut the caller off in mid-sentence to stop his humiliation, but not before his audience had heard Limbaugh thoroughly dismantled and his arguments torn to shreds.
JB: "His BLS chart seemed to add the initial revision to the final revision which makes no sense, but I can’t believe he would do that so maybe there’s a better explanation."
Oh, Mr. Bernstein, you are too old and too intelligent to be that naive about Stephen Moore. There is nothing dishonest or stupid that Moore won't do in order to "make his case."
Lies, damned lies and ststistics! Do you, JB, really think the 'average' HH income is $83k? Really? It's not. Mathematically, it might be TECHNICALLY average but it isn't average as in normal, common, median. First, the stats don't count all the homeless, the retired and the institutionalized. A real average would be lower. Secondly, stats-average includes the supper-rich .1% who own HALF the nation's wealth. Take them out and the average drops.
Mainstream worker-bees ain't making $83k.
It's not the average it's the median. If you make a simple list of all the incomes it is literally the one in the middle of the list. The average is usually different and it would be much lower like you point out.
'....make an average of ALL the incomes', Jim? Or average ALL the wages/salaries that report to the IRS? THAT is where the stats come from. Even at that, the homeless, addicted, the illegals, the incarcerated....got no wages OR income that is tabulated, spindled or mutilated by the bean counters in DC. Some poor is just 'dirt poor'.
But the main point is that the .1% distort ALL the numbers. BTW, Trump grifts, cheats, steals and takes bribes, gifts, emoluments and pays no taxes. That man alone skews the stats. AND HE IS THE CULT LEADER!
It also wouldn't count children, most sex workers or drug dealers. But that's OK. The measure here is median income, which assumes people are declaring their earnings. It's a fair measure to understand what a person could likely expect in the workforce.
Hey, Donny! Do You Really Want to Tell People They're Better Off Than They Think They Are?
Actually, Biden did a lot of that, and it did not work out well for us. He kept pointing at employment numbers while people were howling from the thumbscrew of inflation.
For many years after the Great Recession of 07-09 - the Fed sprinkled fairy dust on the markets to keep employment and economic growth positive. Inflation was held down ( primarily, I think ) by world wide markets- with millions more people available to work in the labor force.
Now , the chickens have come home to roost and we are facing another Stagflation- this time with
almost 40 percent of our population in the US with no net worth. Corporations have much more monopoly power given the unprecedented merger mania our justice system allowed . AND
we are 70 percent a service economy with manufacturing down to 10 percent- way different from
the previous Stagflation. So - I wish I could predict how it will turn out.
About all I can say that our Mango
Coated Disaster in Chief along with the most incompetent cabinet ever assembled does not provide confidence that needed steps will be taken to avert a crisis ( in fact a crisis they certainly helped to usher in) .
I agree wholeheartedly and a comment I posted here criticizes JB's use of language. In the context of this essay, I objected to his use of the word "conservative" to describe Stephen Moore. However, I also pointed out, as have you, that the Biden administration repeatedly told the American people who were about to vote for Trump that the economy was really strong. It was, by traditional statistical measures, but those ignored the reality that millions of Americans disagreed emphatically. They felt the economy was not working for them at all. Being both honest and realistic is critical in communication, despite the unparalleled success Trump has enjoyed by lying constantly as in delved into pure fantasies. He, unlike Biden, acknowledged that the economy was not delivering for many people. Sadly, of course, he had no intention of doing anything other than offering empty rhetoric, but that was enough for an electoral than suffers from a lack of intelligence and being badly ill-informed.
Stephen Moore is not a competent economist and is illiterate regarding data. He has always created fictional numbers for Trump. We need to monitor private sector economic numbers to know what's going on.
A Washington Post story yesterday had this about the charts
"Moore’s presentation largely didn’t look at the current economy — most of the charts compared Trump’s first term with Biden’s term, he said in the Oval Office."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/07/trump-oval-office-economy/
If that is accurate, then the charts are close to irrelevant to the current situation. But no one is talking about that. They are treating the charts as present-day data. So are they or aren't they about now?
It’s August in the Hamptons, roads bumper to bumper, $125 for 1.5 lb lobster, just flash the credit card, personal chefs are booked through Labor Day, an awful lot of folks with an awful lot of $$$. In Manhattan apartment houses pop up, $4K a month for a studio, a bargain… if inflation continues to creep up, the economy slows, the folks with bucks, who do seem to run the world, shrug.
My latest JPMorgan newsletter, positive…
Unless, and that’s a big unless, the market falls off a cliff … and drags the dollar with it .. not a soothsayer … the clockdown clock seems to be ticking. 🤒
In fairness to Moore, the chart does clearly say "Estimates". Anybody can make an estimate, anyway he likes. It could be just an (un)educated guess. The chart doesn't claim that the estimates are based on any actual data. It's a good example for a stats class to demonstrate that estimates do not have to be any good to earn that designation, and why they need to be accompanied by sources of information, methodology, and indications of accuracy or lack thereof.
Thank you
Can we please stop referring to Moore as an economist. He’s just an idiot playing economist so he can spin for politicians. He truly is an idiot. Speak with him for 5 minutes and you will walk away shaking your head.
What to do about this sorry state of affairs? Republicans would need a total nuclear shock in order to get them to grow a spine, and in the meantime they appear determined to steal our elections with their egregious gerrymandering until we have no electoral accountability left. Move to Canada, or Europe, or Mexico.
I'm afraid this is just the beginning of make-believe 2.0 and lots of people will buy into it - even as they spend more for everything
Obviously, Stephen Moore is trying to audition for the Fed Chair 🤷🤬
You call Moore a “fixture.” You’re way too nice. He’s an imposter.
Unfortunately, too many people in this country are too stupid to listen to reason. Also unfortunate, we have millennial darling dimwits in the media, like Josh Barro, who pushed the narrative that it was Biden’s stimulus that produced all the inflation, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. When you couple the 49% of the electorate that are, apparently, complete morons with bad journalism, you begin to see how we got to where we are.
It depends on what is the real MAGA priority: racism or the economy? A lot of MAGAs are willing to suffer and "take one for the team" as long as it's OK to be a white supremacist.