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What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

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Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#321

Post by _heimdall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #174
_heimdall wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is tough, though, for me to fully buy labor statistics when it has become the norm recently for them to be revised down. This spans back into Biden's term as well so it isn't one party either. With a valid measure I would expect a roughly even distribution over time between underestimates and overestimates. For a valid measure worth considering I'd also expect the stat to be released later when revisions are less…

> With a valid measure I would expect a roughly even distribution over time between underestimates and overestimates This is a valid hypothesis. It’s wrong, and I’ll explain why. (It’s a bad and invalid thing to conclude.) If measurement errors were iid, you’d be correct. But they’re not. They’re well documented for not being so. Earlier survey results are biased by directional response bias inasmuch as the employers…

That's all well and good in theory, but job reports data over recent years have noticeably shifted towards downward monthly revisions. Prior to the pandemic response, the graph [1] looks much more balanced with regards to positive and negative decisions.

[1] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/blog/how-abnormal-are-the-rev...

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#322

Post by gwerbin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #203
gwerbin wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's the classic "both sides" myth. It is promulgated in order to manufacture consent for doing the thing that "both sides" are supposedly already doing.

> It is promulgated in order to manufacture consent for doing the thing that "both sides" are supposedly already doing Manufacturing consent is horseshit because it gets the direction of causation wrong. Nobody is master planning any of this. Storytellers sell stories. And then politicians sense the vacuum of attention. Fox News and Shadowstats don’t whip their flock up so DOGE could cut budgets. They did it to sell…

The whole point of the manufacturing consent propaganda model is that you don't need some vast conspiracy, you just need industry consolidation and the leaders of those consolidated industries to either be willingly part of the conspiracy, or under pressure/threat. And just look how consolidated the media is in the USA right now, and look at who makes decisions for those companies.

> Fox News and Shadowstats don’t whip their flock up so DOGE could cut budgets. They did it to sell ads.

There are a million things that could've done to sell ads. Funny how they chose the one thing that just so happens to align with the particular political agenda of the president, who just so happens to be the current figurehead of the entire political movement with which Fox just coincidentally happens to have been tightly aligned for my entire adult life. Must be a coincidence.

> And there was no fury about these cuts so they stuck.

There was plenty of it, you just didn't see anything about it in the news except as page 10 human interest stories in the liberal-aligned media like NPR and the Boston Globe. Must be another editorial coincidence.

There is no way you can earnestly believe that the right-wing media doesn't favorably report on right-wing politicians and their causes. The Manufacturing Consent model is extremely successful among social science models in that it implies clear and testable predictions that have been corroborated again and again and again around the world, pretty much since the dawn of news media. If you don't agree with that assessment, then in my opinion you are ignoring reality or at best ignorant of it.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#323

Post by b112 »

culi wrote: post #318
b112 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. That is, if you have $1B, I think you'd be a lunatic to not spend $20M in "insurance". Why wouldn't you "prep"? I'm not rich, but I live in rural Canada. So I have the possibility of being cut off from power, and during intense storms days or even weeks. I have 6 months of canned food, the logic being that I may have company, or I may need to care for my neighbours during time of need. And if…

Did you not read this part? > “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The paragraph that follows that says: > This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how w…

Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?

If you can make a compound, then of course you're worried it will be taken from you in times of stress or unrest. Why wouldn't you? What's the point of making it, if it can be taken away?

Disaster planning, security planning in fact, means taking into account all aspects of the scenario. This is a valid question.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#324

Post by orf »

tootie wrote: post #165

The article says: US Government surveys are suffering from poor response rates and decreasing budgets so business leaders will have to explore other options to improve reliability. This thread says: American Empire is dying and the world is a fraud. Are all of you bots? Is apocalyptic cynicism this widespread? Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce. We have enjo…

> Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce

In terms of absolute number of countries, maybe, but is this accurate out of comparable peer countries?

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#325

Post by joquarky »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163
culi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long time now https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep... > They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected…

> super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long time now For every prepper in the $100+ million class, I know a hundred who are not. They’re enjoying their lives or working to make more money.

You think you know a hundred who are not.

Why would they admit it? I imagine many of them have seen The Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter" (1961) or something like it.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#326

Post by jeffbee »

_heimdall wrote: post #321
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a valid measure I would expect a roughly even distribution over time between underestimates and overestimates This is a valid hypothesis. It’s wrong, and I’ll explain why. (It’s a bad and invalid thing to conclude.) If measurement errors were iid, you’d be correct. But they’re not. They’re well documented for not being so. Earlier survey results are biased by directional response bias inasmuch as the employers…

That's all well and good in theory, but job reports data over recent years have noticeably shifted towards downward monthly revisions. Prior to the pandemic response, the graph [1] looks much more balanced with regards to positive and negative decisions. [1] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/blog/how-abnormal-are-the-rev...

Sure, but it's totally ridiculous to post about that without discussing the survey response rate, which is the cause of that drift. People are attributing it to political meddling, and that is baseless.

Naturally all of this metadata about the BLS surveys is available for free from the BLS, so you can just go look at it.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#327

Post by scoofy »

It seems nobody has posted this, but the only reason why this would ever be an issue is the principal–agent problem. When a representative democracy has a significant divergence between the representatives and the people being represented, we encounter this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#328

Post by doom2 »

Aurornis wrote: post #236
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long time now For every prepper in the $100+ million class, I know a hundred who are not. They’re enjoying their lives or working to make more money.

I second this. Prepping is far more popular among the middle and lower class people I know than the upper classes. Some mainstream religions even encourage prepping. The perception that rich people are preppers comes from the string of stories about a few rich people prepping in New Zealand a few years ago. You can tell who gets their worldview from headlines when rich people are described as “they” who all act in un…

Was Larry Ellison a trendsetter? He bought the Hawaiian island of Lāna'i about 15 years ago from the owners of Dole, a continuation of American empire.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#329

Post by joquarky »

pocksuppet wrote: post #314
dh2022 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a drive on an interstate highways. Whenever I take an Uber/Lyft to the airport I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US. US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that.

The first world is defined as the countries that are affiliated with the USA, so that's not strictly accurate. However, we can say it's a developing country - a first-world developing country.

It's probably time to sit down, drink a cold one (or whatever relaxes you) and admit to yourself that the semantics have drifted.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#330

Post by ethbr1 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #195
suzzer99 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred more preppers who aren't $100+ millionaires? Or a hundred more $100+ millionaires who aren't preppers?

> Or a hundred more $100+ millionaires who aren't preppers? This. I live in Wyoming and frequent the Bay Area, New York and some places in Europe and India. The rich preppers are rare. (And mostly techies or oil men.) It’s mostly a middle-class pursuit, the singler and older and maler the person, the more likely they own clothing in camo. If they’ve spent any time in a military or intelligence service, their “preppin…

> (Though one retired special ops guy who started military contracting kept a map of the bunkers. I think as a joke. The saying being a well-stocked bunker owned by an asshole is a good target for a group of guys with guns.)

This made me laugh, as ultra wealthy preppers worrying about same (upthread) boils down to imposter syndrome: how can any of them be sure any of their individual value will still be valuable after a social collapse?

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