Boring But Important

   One of the skills needed for good writing is to take a topic or development that on the surface is boring, but translate it into something that grabs the attention of the reader and tells an important story.
   Example: A report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave the U.S. high praise for the longest period of economic growth in its history, but added warnings that must be heeded to avoid a problem.
   Unfortunately, much of the mainstream media will ignore the report and leave it to business and economic journals to pass it on. But the reality is that the story needs to be passed to the general readership, and that's where the skill of clear writing comes in.
   Fortunately, much of the report is indeed clear, but few people make a habit of reading comments from the IMF. More's the pity.
   In any case, here's a summary of the report.
   Things look great, but ...

   Specifically, the U.S. got high praise for the longest period of economic growth in its history, but there are warnings.
   In July, the report says, "The U.S. economy will have achieved the longest expansion recorded in U.S. history." Moreover, real growth of gross domestic product (GDP) "is expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.6 percent this year, before moderating to around 2 percent in 2020."
   Now comes the but.

   Despite this, the benefits of this ten-year expansion "have not been widely shared," and a broader look shows "a more sobering picture."
   For example, life expectancy is declining, suicide rates and deaths from drug overdoses are rising, median income for U.S. households is only 2 percent than it was in the 1990s, even as GDP person is 23 percent higher.
   Wealth and income distribution "are increasingly polarized," the report said, with the poorest 40 percent of American households having a level of wealth that is lower now than it was in 1983, and a growing share of the population earn less than half the median income.
   Note: Don't confuse median and average. The median is the thing in the middle, while the average is calculated by dividing the total by the number of participants.
   Next, the IMF points out that the poverty rate is about the same as it was before the financial crisis ten years ago, and socioeconomic mobility has steadily eroded. For example, half the young adults today earn less than their parents did at a similar age. Forty years  ago, only 10 percent of young adults had this problem.
   
   What to do about it? That will take action on many fronts, the IMF says, including raising the federal minimum wage and boosting social assistance programs.
   Perhaps more important, the national public debt "is on an unsustainable path" upward.
   Warning, the IMF says: "There has been little institutional response to counter these growing risks."

   Meanwhile, we can expect the current Administration to tout the virtues of the nation's economic health as noted at the beginning of the IMF report, and to ignore the warnings.