Chris Matthews needs to stop reading Paul Krugman:

MATTHEWS: When you pick up the big papers, which are written by people who make a pretty good income, and edited by people who make more, especially the financial papers, the Financial Times, it seems like everybody says the economy’s doing pretty well. But I get a sense…

Stop the financial presses! Chris Matthews is getting “a sense.” Not a statistic, really… just call it anchorman’s intuition:

MATTHEWS: … but I get a sense that the money’s going to the top.
CHARLIE COOK: Yes.
MATTHEWS: And that people at the top because of the tax breaks they got under Bush, and because of the way the economy is just geared right now, the working stiff out there, making 30 or 40 a year, is not getting a raise, they’re working as hard as ever — 50 hours, 60 hours a week* — they’re not spending time with their family, and they’re wearing out. And they’re wearing out, and they’re not making any more money, and prices still creep up, and they’re saying to themselves, this isn’t doing it for me.

Where to begin. First of all, Matthews and I must be reading different “big papers,” because the ones I read bury any good news about the economy. In fact, his analysis of the economy is straight out of Paul Krugman’s column, which runs in a pretty big paper. Second, Matthews must know different journalists than I know, because he refers to them as people who make a “pretty good income.” Of course, this description does apply to Matthews, who seems to be unaware that he’s the only person left in America who uses the term “working stiff.”

Matthews ends his excursion into make-believe with, “I think we ought to talk more about the economy. It’s just harder to do on television.”

It might be easier, Chris, if you let the facts speak for themselves, rather than presuming to speak for all those “working stiffs” out there with whom you have so little in common.

Video here.

* See this post for an update regarding the transcript.