The White House claims wages haven't stagnated under Trump. Here's why you shouldn't buy it
The effort to persuade working-class Americans that they're doing just fine in today's economy despite the evidence of their own wallets and purses has turned into quite the cottage industry among right-wing think tanks.
This week the Trump White House joined the party. In a paper issued Wednesday, its Council of Economic Advisors offered several tweaks to how wage changes customarily are measured, aiming to show that on an inflation-adjusted basis, wages grew by 1.4 percent over the last year, "well above the near-zero real wage change suggested by headline measures."
The political subtext of the paper should be obvious: It's to dress up the record of the Trump administration, especially by putting in a word for the tax cuts enacted by Republicans in December, which can "increase the economic value of work for
