Dowd's Weak Stats

Contrary to Bob Herbert, Alan W. Dowd says, "the declinist were wrong yesterday. And if their record-and America's- are any indication, they are just as wrong today." Dowd, reffers to anyone who thinks America is in decline as a declinist. Basically he is saying they are wrong and America is not in decline. They are exagerated ideas and there is a decline in declinism. As he is supporting his argument by using today's current economic statistics, he fails to represent all the information and explanations of the statistics.

Dowd says that the U.S. statis is okay because workers are more productive and 1/5 of the world economy represents America. Each year on average the U.S. is 2.7% more productive. He also compares our average income with China's. Ours being about 44,000 and China's around 20,000. He also mentions that major american companies are exported more than we recieve other countries major companies. Looking at this information he has presented you might be suprised.

This information looks to be promising but Dowd fails to mention some things. In this case, what is productive? Dowd doesn't define what productive is according to his statistics and doesn't address who is this productivity helping. Yes, the productivity is increasing each year in America, but is our wages increasing with productivity? No. We are doing more and more work for the same amount of pay. Dowd also doesn't mention anything about unemployment in this argument, which could affect how we look at some of these statistics. In the statistic comparing America and China's average income, there is a problem. America's wealthy earn most of the economies money. There is a dimishing middle class and the median average income for America is skewed. The mean is being pulled up by the large amount of money that the very few rich people are making. Finally, when talking about how we export our companies more than we recieve other countries companies. Who is the money going to and which economy is it supporting?

Dowd has a lot of flaws in his argument. He fails to mention facts, therefore, making his information look better than it really is. I think Dowd might be in denial and has a weak argument. He is falsely reprisenting information. Next time he writes an essay he should go deeper and explain the meanings of his statistics.