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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

#351

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

throw0101c wrote: post #157
mark_l_watson wrote: post #25

The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they…

> Calculation of unemployment […] Define "unemployment". There are six (U-1 to -6) ways of classification in the US: * https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm * https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-... * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unemployment.asp And the fact that they're different between the US and other countries, and between other countries and other-other countries is well recognized;…

> Even stacking government with loyalist appointees is, to a certain extent, returning to 'the old ways' before reforms were enacted to clamp down on the practice:

The irony of the anti DEI crowd being even less meritocratic than the caricature that they’ve created of their opposition.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#352

Post by specialist »

input_sh wrote: post #106
quacked wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustrating thing about the empire collapse is that it doesn't need to happen. There are still tons of highly energized and ostensibly disciplined and competitive people here. It's just that the production base was sold off to foreign lands and the aesthetic and moral project of "America" was effectively discontinued, for reasons unclear.

I would argue the empire already collapsed, about a year ago when DOGE was tasked with killing every form of soft power that were put in place to present the country in the best possible light across the world. Even with tons of talented and well-intentioned people and everyone fully aligned to re-build everything broken, it'd take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in a matter of weeks.

IMHO Pax Americana ended (passed the point of no return) with GWB. Iraq, 2008 financial crisis, SCOTUS picks, unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, breaking of weapons treaties (nuke testing, bio & chem warfare), abandoning peace between Isreal & Palestinians, etc, etc.

Forfieted any remaining goodwill.

(Post 9/11, It would have been so easy to choose the other path.)

Trump just made it undeniable.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#353

Post by _heimdall »

jeffbee wrote: post #326
_heimdall wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting that you're claiming this is baseless without providing any sources for your alternative. How do you know that (a) the response rate is down meaningfully and (b) that data shows a strong correlation or causation between the two?

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#354

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #338
gwerbin wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

> 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 I’m saying that’s nonsense. The media operates on independent incentives. The political calculus then responds to it. Attention-driven society doesn’t need a maestro, and rarely has one. Pretending it does is comforting but wrong.

You’re arguing against the evidence that is mounting that there are coordinated campaigns to influence public opinion to be more sympathetic to reactionary ideology. It’s been a century since Bernays wrote the seminary work on this topic, why the credulity? The connections are not tenuous, these people are operating in the daylight, even giving public talks and publishing treatises about their strategies.

Personally, I view Trump as a useful idiot for them, as a charismatic figurehead. He knew how to tap into the heartbeat of the populace scorned by globalism. He’s of course sympathetic to their beliefs: his campaign against the New York 5 stands as testament enough. But now he surrounds himself with them and is clearly becoming increasingly convinced that they represent public opinion, emboldened enough to claim just recently that those of Arab descent have inherently inferior genetics.

You do realize we live in a country where Megachurch Pastors are billionaires, the Mormon church has one of the largest private investment funds, Scientology has a death grip on its members, etc etc. These are not innocent business ventures, they manipulate their victims into providing them exorbitant amounts of money and labor.

Capturing American minds is a solved problem for those who have enough money, and has been for awhile. Maybe not every single manipulative actor is working together in coordination, but they’re certainly manipulating.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#355

Post by [deleted] »

sroussey wrote: post #246
actionablefiber wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's increasingly a pet theory of mine that the uncontrolled concentration of wealth into the hands of the richest, their subsequent existential ennui, and their disconnect from reality owing to media consolidation and algorithmic content feeds have basically created a world where the superrich are in a "post-game" mentality. There are no further material comforts to obtain. They just want to feel anything at all and…

Sounds like Fallout

[deleted]

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#356

Post by _heimdall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334
_heimdall wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> 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 Yes. The reasons for this are well documented. Changing methodology for the preview estimates is rigorous. That means our published estimates lag best estimates, something the primary sources note in…

Why would the shift to a new methodology bias the estimates to one end? I would expect a new methodology to make comparisons of data between the two systems to potentially be unhelpful, but I wouldn't expect a valid methodology to bias one way or another.

Related, I wouldn't expect past data to bias a current estimate. If 6 or 12 months of positive growth biases the next prediction it falls into the hot hands fallacy. It isn't predicting based on current predictions, its predicting based on recent past behavior and extrapolating forward. This only makes sense to do if the data is not yet available, and even then the extrapolation isn't a useful estimate of current conditions.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#357

Post by _heimdall »

throw0101c wrote: post #173
_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…

> It is tough, though, for me to fully buy labor statistics when it has become the norm recently for them to be revised down. There have been revisions since the forever, and this is because they depend in part of surveys, and if companies (and the people with-in them) don't bother responding in a timely or accurate manner then that's going to throw the sampling off. > CES estimates are considered preliminary when fi…

My argument wasn't that there shouldn't be revisions though, only that recent years have shown consistent negative revisions rather then a roughly even distribution.

If response rates are down or something else is making surveys more difficult, its reasonable that confidence windows would weaken and size of revisions would increase. Its unreasonable that difficulty in surveying would lead to a consistent bias in results though, that's a methodological issue at best.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#358

Post by culi »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #96
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…

As a statist, I personally always found it as a fascinating way to look at the future. They are actively preparing for a collapse they themselves are ushering.

I've never heard the term "statist" as a self-identified label. I've only ever heard anarchists use it pejoratively. Can I ask what you've read or what influenced you to take up that identity?

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#359

Post by JumpCrisscross »

svnt wrote: post #350
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we were doing a good job gathering data that these structural biases could be compensated for with more conservative initial numbers There is no more conservative. The data will bias in the direction of trend. The point of the data are, in part, to measure that trend. Fucking with it to make it politically correct to the statistically illiterate is precisely the sort of degradation of data we’re worried about. (…

What you wrote suggests the data will bias predictably, which matches my understanding. Reporting biased data as the default because the bias compensation is already built into the audience seems like a weak argument for not improving. They can provide for the continuation of data visibility/granularity by releasing the prior numbers as previously calculated and at the same time changing the calculation of the headli…

> What you wrote suggests the data will bias predictably

Ex post facto. Before the fact, we don’t know.

Imagine you know the weather will be a strong gust regardless of direction. Averaging the models will produce a central estimate. But you know it will be biased away from the center. You just don’t know, until it happens, in which direction.

> They can provide for the continuation of data visibility/granularity by releasing the prior numbers as previously calculated and at the same time changing the calculation of the headline number to be better compensated

They do. These data are all recalculated with each methodological change. They’re just deprecated indices the media don’t report on because they’re of academic, not broad, concern.

> simpler argument is that changing it at all will result in a negative step change in the reporting

Simpler but wrong. Those data would be useless for the same reason we don’t let CEOs smooth revenues.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#360

Post by gcanyon »

genthree wrote: post #293
gcanyon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? Do you have evidence that the ultra wealthy are actually taking this into account? Over a human timeframe every ultra wealthy person has access to plenty of “climate change safe“ locations, no particular advance planning is needed.

“Climate change safe” for the rich: - Hard to reach by land (not vulnerable to migration waves) - Not so small there will be incredible deprivation if sea trade volume plunges (this rules out the vast majority of island nations) - Not badly overpopulated - Correct latitude (not too close to the equator) - Stable liberal democracy (so they probably won’t take all your stuff) - Unlikely target for outright conquest in…

In the next 30 years:

Is anyone predicting damaging "migration waves" in: Washington state, British Columbia, Argentina, Italy, Australia, South Africa, Japan? That's just off the top of my head, I think the real list would be much longer than that.

"The vast majority of island nations" -- this doesn't seem like much of a constraint in the first place? But are you talking about Japan, New Zealand, and Indonesia? Or Tuvalu and Fiji?

"Not badly overpopulated" -- apart from a very small handful of countries, this doesn't shorten the list of locations.

Do you expect latitude to matter in the next 30 years?

My guess is that the ultra wealthy will, in general, not have "all their stuff" in one place. But also that most places are unlikely to take advantage of people bringing significant spending to the location.

If the U.S. continues its current course, yeah, games and expansion are risk factors. But again, there's a long list of countries that meet this criterion.

I'm just failing to see how we're headed for Mad Max-style anarchy in a human time frame.

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