Poor Reporting on Millions
Even the best reporters covering issues of money and the economy do a poor job covering wealth. For example, take a listen to a segment from today’s Marketplace. The segment is on a report out today about the growing number of millionaires in the world. The report says that there are 9.5 million millionaires and that the number of new millionaires is growing fairly rapidly. From this, Marketplace says that the number of wealthy people around the world is increasing. However, there is no discussion about whether people are actually becoming wealthier (ie if they have more spending power) or whether they just have more dollars that aren’t worth as much. In other words, there is no discussion about how inflation has affected the number of millionaires.