The media watchdog group FAIR says that the ABC News special Is America #One? contained many inaccuracies. We stand by our report:

--FAIR claims that numerous countries (the UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. itself) run government budget surpluses comparable to Hong Kong's.

In fact, Hong Kong is unique in chronically running a surplus, often a "huge surplus," as one interviewee put it, while most other countries have regularly run deficits. In 1992-1996, for example, all but two of the countries FAIR cites had budget deficits every year. It would be unfair to dismiss Hong Kong's consistent performance based on rare good years among its competitors.

--FAIR implies that Dinesh D'Souza was falsely presented as an economist.

However, as FAIR noted, we identified D'Souza (correctly) as an author and research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Many interviewees on the show commented on economics-related matters, from radio commentator Jim Hightower to former steel worker George O'Neil, without any implication that they were economists. Furthermore, D'Souza's views were shared and supplemented by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who also appeared in the hour.

--FAIR suggests that the U.S. lacks earnings mobility.

FAIR notes only seven countries purported to have greater income mobility, most of them small, homogeneous nations that have less distance between the highest and lowest earners to begin with than does the large, diverse U.S. Europe as a whole-the entire continent-might be a more justifiable standard of comparison with the U.S. than any individual European nation. Europe would be found to be more income-stratified than the U.S., and the likelihood of rising from, say, Greek levels of poverty to, say, upper-class British levels of wealth would be considerably rarer than climbing the economic ladder in the U.S.

In fact, a University of Michigan study of people starting out in the lowest earnings quintile in the U.S. found that less than one percent remained there over the entire sixteen-year period of the study.

--FAIR disputes the claim that China is mired in poverty.

In a Communist nation where millions have often found themselves on the brink of starvation or beyond (due to tragic government plans such as ordering people to grow rice plants too close together, in a misguided effort to save space), it doesn't take much to look like a comparative boom-just as a very clumsy bowler may be more likely to win the "most improved" award. Even after two decades of loosened controls, China's per capita annual income has risen only to about $600. Any improvement in China's situation is cause for celebration, but compared to Hong Kong's $28,000 per capita annual income, mainland China remains impoverished.

--FAIR denies that the Federal Reserve uses wage data.

The Federal Reserve has all sorts of economic data. The compensation statistics featured in Is America #One? came from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The resulting compensation-increase graph seen in our show did indeed have dates on it (contrary to FAIR's implication), running from 1973-1999.

--FAIR repeats the common claim that American wages have stagnated.

FAIR's wage-stagnation claim only holds true by artificially restricting the debate to hourly workers' compensation at precisely the juncture in history when more and more high-earners are getting their compensation in the form of commissions, bonuses, and other non-hourly forms. About a third of the working population, most of them high earners, no longer fall within FAIR's "hourly workers" category, biasing FAIR's compensation numbers downward. Furthermore, the recent immense boom in teen employment means an increase in the number of usually lower-paid, fledgling workers (who will go on to higher-paying jobs as they age), also biasing FAIR's numbers downward. The "median worker" FAIR refers to is less and less representative of the whole population.

More importantly, the great rise in real buying power (caused by increased productivity and improved technology) has greatly enriched the average worker and dwarfs subtle changes in mere dollar amount of hourly compensation.

--FAIR accuses ABC of misrepresenting the views of Prof. James Galbraith.

We too were surprised to find that the author of the book Created Unequal, which depicts the U.S. as terribly economically stratified, was now saying that America has become more egalitarian than Europe, but that was precisely what Prof. Galbraith's latest data showed. As a result, he was upbeat about America during our interview. Here, for instance, is some more context for the (admittedly brief) quote used in our show, which is indicated in italics:

In our interview, Galbraith told us we are "reducing unemployment and reducing inequality at the same time. I don't think the Europeans can claim as much. And in fact, the European economies are slipping toward stagnation. They may be slipping toward recession. They have unemployment rates in a number of countries which would be catastrophic in the United States. Unemployment in Spain has been 20% and above for over twenty years now. It would not be-such unemployment in the United States would not be tolerated for twenty weeks...if you compare Europe and the United States as continents, I think the U.S. comes across right now rather well, and I think there might be a moment for the Europeans to learn from us, rather than for us to be studying them quite as closely as we've sometimes done in the past."

While we would not pretend that the entire complexity of Galbraith's thought could be summed up in a single sound bite, his views on this particular matter were not misrepresented. We acknowledged in narration that his enthusiasm about the U.S. represented a change of tone for him, and we did not intend anyone to think he endorsed every statement made in the hour.

--FAIR claims millions lack health care.

One of the side effects of America's increasingly dynamic economy is a rising generation of freelancers and people who change jobs frequently. Many of those lacking health insurance at any given time fall into this category or are young workers who will soon be enrolled in standard health plans. Saying they temporarily lack health insurance is very different from saying they lack health care. Even in worst-case scenarios, people chronically too poor to afford either health insurance or out-of-pocket health care receive Medicaid and Medicare. We acknowledged, though, that our healthcare system has its problems. Whether those problems are a result of markets or yet another detrimental effect of excessive regulation is a debate unto itself.

--FAIR claims millions suffer from "food insecurity."

No nation is perfect, but a nation is doing relatively well when the closest thing to hunger that can be found is some degree of uncertainty amongst a small subset of the population about how long food in the refrigerator will last. This is a far cry from the severe hunger that, as we suggested, still plagues many places on Earth.

--FAIR calls John Stossel a free-market ideologue, noting his claim that markets are the best protectors of consumers.

As a reporter, Stossel reached his conclusions about the efficacy of markets not as a result of armchair philosophizing or gut instinct but as a result of years of accumulated evidence, having started out as a Nader-style consumer-advocate reporter. Taking note of the spectacular rise in living standards created by markets in this century-and the millions killed or impoverished by governmental control-makes one a careful observer, not an ideologue.