As David Cay Johnston points out, his article does not state that people live on $7/day. He was clear about what he meant. If other people decided to misinterpret what he wrote, that isn’t his problem. Those same people also changed the IRS to the Census Bureau. When I file my taxes, I try to avoid confusing the two.
As I discussed in my previous post, Mr. Johnston’s results are off. However, he used good data, documented his sources, and described his calculations. I can’t ask for more.
I am disappointed by the many complaints about David Cay Johnston, who wrote a good article and responded in useful ways to comments on this blog. He doesn’t deserve those complaints.
The Los Angeles Times deserves far more complaints than it received on this blog. The editorial cited by Ms. Jacobsen states as she quoted “In our America, 60 million people survive on $7 a day.” Even minimal checking shows this to be wildly incorrect. The source of the statement, as Ms. Jacobsen points out, is an article that is obviously not a reliable source of information. To me, The Onion seems more believable. Standards at the Los Angeles Times must be extremely low.
