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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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There are a lot of economic data conspiracy theories out there but they can never point us to what data we're actually supposed to be looking at. What do you want us to consider aside from vibes and anecdotes? Anyway for your specific points:

Not to mention that "core inflation" excludes housing and gas and food

There's a lot to discuss on why it makes sense to think about non-core or core for the purposes of various policy decisions and evaluations. Nevertheless they are both calculated and easy for people to look up, and they are usually pretty close. Incidentally non-core inflation was lower in September than core inflation. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf

as if home prices reaching unaffordable highs is some sort of triviality when The Economy Is Doing Great.

Since most people own homes this is in fact a good thing

Unemployment is good because the numbers are gamed in a million ways. A typical pattern these last few years has been for employment figures to be "better than expected" when first announced, then quietly revised to much lower numbers a few months later. But it's always been a gamed figure, when people who stop looking for work are no longer counted as employed.

Propose an alternate measure and defend it. The most obvious alternative that gets at what you're worried about is the labor force participation rate, which is also high and increasing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART. There are good reasons that this isn't the default measure but obviously the data is out there.

The economy is growing?

Yes, real output increased 4.9% year over year.

Remember when they changed the definition of a recession because they didn't want to admit we were in one?

They did not, but anyway whether we're technically in a recession or not is an even coarser economic measure than GDP growth (which is doing very well) so it's not clear why people harp on this so much.

The economy must be doing well, because we've proclaimed it. And since no one believes us, we have to understand what's causing all this irrationality.

They went out and measured it, and the found out that unemployment is low, GDP growth is high, and inflation, however you measure it, is coming down. As I said you are free to come up with and defend your own measures but you should come to the table with more than vibes and anecdotes.

Are Republicans just that impervious to the truth?

Republicans are doing a weird thing where they say their own situation is good but think that other people's situations are bad. It would be helpful to understand this phenomenon.

My understanding is that there's a similar effect under all governments, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker. Dems criticized Trump for his economic policies, even though the economy was buoyant during his term.

There are a lot of economic data conspiracy theories out there but they can never point us to what data we're actually supposed to be looking at. What do you want us to consider aside from vibes and anecdotes?

What do you want me to trust, gamed statistics? I put no faith in the officials who are knowingly conning me. Why do you?

I think it's a tremendous self-own if you have to reduce your personal experience in the world to "vibes and anecdotes". Do you need to read about your life in the papers before you know if it's good or not? The cost of everything has gone up tremendously in a few years, that doesn't stop being true just because two years have passed and high prices are the new normal so that the year-over-year statistic is "good".

and inflation, however you measure it, is coming down

Well yes that's just it -- inflation is still going up, it's just not going up as fast as it was before. We broke things, and then we fixed it halfway -- this is the glass-half-full economics success.

what do you want me to trust, gamed statistics?

I wouldn’t mind finding some not-gamed ones.

Clearly, there are at least two camps of people in this thread. @Tomato’s situation looks pretty different from yours, which looks pretty different from mine. How else are we supposed to figure out which is more generally applicable, if not looking for stats?

My economic life and the lives of everyone around me is incredibly good, so it’s useful for me to look at statistics to see how far-off people in different areas with different professions and backgrounds are doing. And when I look at the data it turns out they’re doing great too!

I don't know anybody who voted for Nixon!

You understand this is literally the argument you yourself are making when you suggest we operate off anecdotes and not statistics.

The statistics are all made-up, they are gamed for political purposes, believing them is worse than ignorance. Why would you put your trust in numbers that are lying to you?

they are gamed for political purposes

In what manner? Please read this and tell me which specific elements of their methodology you question. Be specific.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/cpihom.pdf

Now this is just tedious.

"These metrics are all unverifiable and can be trivially manipulated."

"Oh yeah? What about this one?"

Yes, CPI is a gamed bullshit statistic. What do you want me to say? Note that it so obviously lacks objective criteria that BLS has to publish several versions to keep up with all their competing ideas about how to measure it.

Now, you could make an argument that what CPI is trying to measure is worthwhile. But that loses all meaning in the human context -- note that CPI is measured over a period of time, and prices mainly rose highest long enough ago that many of these measures are no longer counting it -- I shot you last week, are you still hung up on that?

This is indeed tedious; specifically, it's tedious for so many people in this thread to sling shit about economic statistics without ever actually clarifying what their problem is. If you tell me a key statistics is being manipulated, it's hardly unreasonable for me to ask how.

What do you want me to say?

I want you to tell me HOW it is gamed.

Note that it so obviously lacks objective criteria that BLS has to publish several versions to keep up with all their competing ideas about how to measure it.

Yes, economic metrics, especially something like inflation, are indeed difficult to measure with total accuracy. What is the easy and simple way of measuring inflation that you seem to think exists? I'd rather hear from the analysts in the arena who actually try to do a good job than someone who makes unsubstantiated criticisms of statistics despite having nothing to contribute on the subject himself.

"Statistics show things are not bad" -> "believe the anecdotes around you!"

"People are doing well around me" -> "no, not those anecdotes!"

Chadyes.jpg

I believe in the things happening to me way more than the things happening to you

Likewise!

I genuinely don’t know what you’re looking for. People say they’re doing good. Dems think other people are doing good. Republicans, who also think they’re doing good, think other people are doing bad. I’m not sure who these other people republicans are worried about are but I hope things get better for them (in the minds of republicans!)

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