Lasky and Lavin

Julie,

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Chicago accepts your love and returns it in full, and with large, wet snowflakes.

I also enjoyed that article about fidgeting away weight. I often tell my youngest stepson David (also known in this column as the Young Sports Expert) that he burns up more calories watching TV than most people do at the gym. He's always jumping up from, or over, the couch and running around the room especially when sports is on. Maybe this explains his athletic physique more than all the basketball practices he goes to.

For my closing volley, I want to talk some about an unspoken problem I see with journalists covering money issues. It's this: journalists, at least for the big city dailies, are not representative in their earnings of the majority of Americans, but tend to select topics as if they were.

Editors and reporters are not rich, but they're doing better than most in that umbrella class we call the middle class.

In 1995 the median annual earnings for all U.S. women working full-time was $23, 777; for men $32, 199. For families with kids (a group that typically earns less than families without children) the median annual earnings was $49,969--that's if both parents were present. If only the mother was present it was a low $16,235.

Consider a reporter at a big city daily, a guy, earning, say, $70,000, a typical salary. He and his wife have three kids. The wife is the primary parent and earns $15,000 working part-time. Even with $85,000/year they budget carefully: they make two car payments, pay a mortgage, and are saving for their kids' college educations.

What's hard to fathom is how much better off they are than most Americans.

I'm not saying that this hypothetical journalist should feel guilty; on the contrary he works hard for his buck. What I'm saying is that people tend to write about themselves. Plus advertisers aim at high-end earners. So, financial articles in the newspapers serve a relatively small and comparatively well-heeled segment of the population.

This could be one reason why we don't get more articles on how government policy impacts the daily financial lives of teachers, legal secretaries, carpenters, fast food managers, bookstore employees, and phone operators. And when we don't get that, we forget that most hard-working Americans don't have a lot of discretionary income and need government services for the taxes they pay.

Privatization--of Social Security or health care insurance for the elderly or whomever--best serves those with extra pocket change. When a household has $49,969 a year and two or three kids, they're not poor, not at all, but they need government afterschool programs and health insurance when they're old. And they've earned it. So, that, in a thumbnail, is my plea for more financial stories that serve households with less than $85,000 a year.

Julie, girlfriend, it's been wonderful working with you these past two weeks. A real pleasure.

See you in the funny papers,

Warmly, Maud

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