321–330 of 514 posts
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I remember my parents being excited about the opportunity to refinance their mortgage to something in the high teens. And now these days headlines act like the apocalypse is occurring when mortgage rates are in the 6-7 range.
I'd rather owe 100k over 30 years at 15% than 300k at 4%.
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The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).
> If we were to also raise broad based taxes Tariffs affect households unevenly [0], but I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes. [0] Some good info here: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-septemb...
Tariffs are broad based regressive taxes, falling predominantly on the lower deciles of the income distribution.
The OP seems to be proposing broad based progressive taxes. However the place to start first, politically speaking, is raising taxes the 10th decile.
I think it's interesting that everyone's immediate reaction now-a-days is to assume incompetence or maliciousness, rather than curiosity at the root cause (very telling this attitude has even permeated a forum for supposed 'hackers'). A high-level is that 80% of the economy is very easy to track b/c it's not very volatile (teachers, for example). What we have seen is a huge surge in unpredictability in the most volat…
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It’s almost like the leaders of those organizations were incompetent. Such simple statistics and data gathering should be simple for a federal organization.
> Such simple statistics and data gathering [...] Simple?! "Sweet summer child..." On a more serious note, how would one ensure that a government department be sufficiently independent that it can publish data (implicitly) critical of its own political leaders without fear of retribution? Answers on a postcard, please...
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Chart with more historical revision context: https://www.statista.com/chart/34931/difference-between-prel...
That gives context, but lacks the final ~900K downward revision the article is about. If it had been shown, it would be the largest revision on the chart.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...
The monthly revisions are historically all over the place, up and down. My 2024 count says six months were revised up and six were revised down.
I think it's interesting that everyone's immediate reaction now-a-days is to assume incompetence or maliciousness, rather than curiosity at the root cause (very telling this attitude has even permeated a forum for supposed 'hackers'). A high-level is that 80% of the economy is very easy to track b/c it's not very volatile (teachers, for example). What we have seen is a huge surge in unpredictability in the most volat…
Explain to me please why job numbers aren’t simply a matter of querying the Federal social security database? A longstanding process of polling businesses for what they want to report, followed by corrections up to one year later, has got to be a pantomime to fudge the numbers.
What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
You might want to read up on the process a little more before forming such strong opinions. The BLS is extremely transparent, at least for now. The earlier reports are intentionally more noisy because there is value is being fast and then revising later, and everyone who uses this data is aware of that. Calling this a 50% error rate is simply wrong. If an earlier report said a single job had been created and that was…
I get it and yeah my tone is very exaggerated. I don't think anyone in BLS should be fired and whoever is suggesting that does not understand how public institutions work.
I am just curious why there is so much of a discrepancy. This has been pretty much the status quo in BLS for a long time. They issue numbers and then they revise them later. However, you'd expect the revision to be moderately within an error %age.
Also how will this retroactive change help everyone involved. Ok, the new job numbers reflect a gloomier past (or a more vibrant past) how is that even helping everyone who is so focused on 'what's going to happen tomorrow'.
I retract my stance about BLS being intentionally corrupt - that's uncalled for.
What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
They are neither. Revisions and surprises are routine. Data comes in gradually, but estimates are useful even before all data has arrived. Early data is based on business reporting and businesses that report on-time aren't necessarily representative of all businesses. Those people who use this data know this, and prepare for revisions. I hope this helps and you understand better. Anyone here who still thinks this is…
Or incentivize companies to report accurate data pretty fast. Payroll management systems can be plugged in real time, but that costs money and yeah small businesses are not going to be happy. So incentivization works better than punishment I think.
I think it's interesting that everyone's immediate reaction now-a-days is to assume incompetence or maliciousness, rather than curiosity at the root cause (very telling this attitude has even permeated a forum for supposed 'hackers'). A high-level is that 80% of the economy is very easy to track b/c it's not very volatile (teachers, for example). What we have seen is a huge surge in unpredictability in the most volat…
Is there really more volatility? My gut feeling is that government interventions have flattened it over recent decades. I’d like to see some real figures on this.
Manufacturing and mining are becoming much less correlated to the overall jobs market (likely, as you point out, b/c the government smooths the other sectors).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mc3I
This is despite being a relatively flat % of employment since 2010 (after a long period of decline).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mc4f
As mentioned, there is also the weirdness of SWE's going from 'better than the overall market' to 'worse than the overall market'.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mcer
Retail employment is also dislocating.
Those are just the examples I can think of with no research, I'm sure there are others.