CNN (along with other major news outlets) has been trying to talk the US into a recession now for several years, and while the jury is still out on whether they’ve succeeded yet, they still aren’t letting up. Although this article has some admirable counter-points thrown in, it still relies mainly on anecdotal perceptions rather than the facts to examine the state of the economy.

The article also highlights one of the things which, as a Brit, I find most puzzling about American politics and economics – the definition of the “Middle Class” – which appears sometimes to include everyone except Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and at other times now includes apparently almost no-one because it is being “squeezed”. Where I come from, being Middle Class is about the kind of work you do – sitting in an office rather than working in a factory, for example – not about your level of income or what you can afford to buy with it.

At any rate, quoting from that article:

Only a few years ago, Americans who considered themselves middle class were scrimping to pay for their kids’ college education.

Now, many of them are struggling to cover far more basic needs – gas and groceries.

Take Stacy and Chuck Burris. The Pittsburgh, Pa., couple view themselves as solidly middle class. In recent months, however, they’ve felt anything but.

Burdened by high cost of food and fuel, they are having trouble balancing their budget even though Chuck Burris earns a “comfortable salary” as a software engineer. The parents of five children, three of whom are grown, have essentially stopped eating out and entertaining and are considering canceling the annual family vacation to Maine. They keep to a Spartan shopping list and have planted a larger garden. Instead of buying their 12-year-old daughter summer clothes, they are turning her pants into shorts by cutting off the legs and getting hand-me-downs from family.

Never before in previous recessions have they had to cut back like this.

Without wishing to belittle this or other families’ hardships, I find it hard to understand how current circumstances could be having such a significant impact on their financial status. The article says that:

Food prices, for instance, climbed 5.1% over the past 12 months and April’s 0.9% rise was the largest in 18 years, according to the Consumer Price Index. Gas, meanwhile, hit its highest recorded price of $3.937 on Monday, up nearly 21% from a year ago and 9.7% over the past month, according to AAA.

Well, assume the weekly grocery bill is $200 – not unreasonable, I would think – and the price has gone up by 5% – that would be a sum total of $10 per week extra, or $45 per month. If gas has gone up by 20%, perhaps the gas bill (assuming filling a 15-gallon tank once a week) has gone up by 20%, from $50 to $60, and that’s another $10 per week or $45 per month. Is there really a middle-class family that’s going to be pushed into cancelling its vacation by a $20 increase in spending per week? We’re never told what the household’s income actually is, but assume it’s $60,000 per year gross (which may be conservative since the salary is described as “comfortable”). That increase represents just 1.7% of gross income.

At the same time, the article says, housing prices are falling, but unless you’re actually trying to sell your house that shouldn’t really affect your current financial status. In fact, because the federal funds rate has fallen from 5.25% to around 2% in the last year many people’s mortgage payments should actually be falling during this time, probably by a rather greater amount than those small increases in food and gas payments.

My point here isn’t to argue the specifics of this case – because we’re not given them – but rather to suggest that it seems odd that truly middle class families should be suffering so badly because of the increases in gas and food prices, since these items are typically a small percentage of people’s incomes, especially in the middle class. And that makes this article feel more like further scaremongering from CNN than real reporting. How about emphasizing instead the factual evidence cited elsewhere in the article, and helping to turn around these perceptions, instead of leading with the perceptions and burying the facts halfway down the article and later? And how much are those poll results influenced by the fact that CNN’s been polling people about whether we’re in a recession for the last three years anyway?