Mr. Johnston, your reponse makes it clear what’s going on here. Since I’m not really interested in hacking through all the numbers, let us grant you the $7 a day figure. The problem is not your analysis, the problem is that people took that number and then spouted drivel such as “60 million Americans LIVE ON $7 a day.”
This is patent nonsense, designed purely to work as agitprop. Indeed your own response includes the following: “the figure does not include government benefits such as welfare, disability and most Social Security payments.”
In other words, does not include sources of income that people are “living on.” Indeed, for the people in that bracket these are likely their major sources of income.
So the Los Angeles Times in its editorial is, in fact, spewing lies, and lies meant to promote a particular political agenda. Your reporting did no such thing, and I didn’t see anywhere in your original piece statements about what Americans “live on.”
Your work has been misused in ways that are all too predictable.
