4 ms·

I'm sure I'll get clobbered for this, but I am wary of economists using statistics to make political arguments. Between "economist","statistics", and "politics"

I'm sure I'll get clobbered for this, but I am wary of economists using statistics to make political arguments. Between "economist","statistics", and "politics", that's three yellow flags right at the outset. Unless, of course, they agree with me, in which case they are simply wise academics trying to share their wisdom with the unwashed masses. :) There is a logical problem here, and it's much deeper than life expectancy. It's a problem with this form of argument. The problem is that, if you use statistics to make political arguments, you're going to be arguing forever. Whatever this guy wants to do -- and god bless him I hope he gets his way -- next year the same guy will be using statistics to tell us to do something else. That's because you can slice statistics in an almost infinite amount of ways, and I can guarantee you that one of those ways will show some kind of imbalance or injustice that needs addressing. That's all fine and dandy if the entire country could turn on a dime. I wish it could but it can't. Not reality. Instead we live in a system where it takes decades to make even one change, and it's extremely rare to stop doing things that don't work -- we just do more new stuff. I hate to rag on the IRS, but take a look at the tax code. It's so bad that I'm willing to wager nobody alive knows how to file taxes exactly correct. This puts us in an infinite cycle of where we're always measuring things with statistics, finding some social cause worth pursuing, painfully making changes, then making more measurements. Each time through the loop the system gets more and more unwieldy and complex. It's a feedback loop that increases government dysfunction. So instead of arguing about one cause or another, I'd like to suggest a rule for such discussions: if you want to make a case for some kind of social policy change, then make it in terms of a trade-off from whatever the existing status quo is. I realize there are a lot of problems with this suggestion, but at least it starts putting things in terms of trade-offs instead of wish-lists. Just from looking around, it seems to me that the real world is a lot more about trade-offs and compromises than moral crusades and justice. But that's just me. The only thing that I am observing is that this pattern can be repeated indefinitely, and each time through the loop conditions will continue to deteriorate. It's reactive leadership by statistics, and that almost never works.

nihilocrat 16y ago
On one hand you are suggesting "we can't know anything, let's not bother" but on the other hand you are saying "let's talk about things we should actually do". Ok! I moved to Canada (Quebec) from the US. The healthcare system is overloaded, there are weird things like a) it's extremely hard to get a family doctor, b) you have to go to a clinic early in the morning to get a number + time of day and then come back at that time to be seen, and c) you still need to pay your own way (or get insurance) for dental / vision. You have to wait weeks/months to have a surgery, but you have to do that in the US and then promptly file for personal bankruptcy. That's still a whole hell of a lot better than a random unexpected illness or injury sending an employed, insured person into bankruptcy. Seeing a doctor is now a possibility instead of a dangerous worst-case scenario that could ruin my life. No more hoping the pain/infection/whatever just goes away on its own. Thus, I still think moving towards a government program / single payer / whatever you want to call it system is the best idea. Now, I based this all on personal anecdotal experience and not statistics, so I wonder if anyone will actually agree with me. :)
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  That's still a whole hell of a lot better than a random unexpected illness or injury sending an employed, insured person into bankruptcy. Do you have any evidence that this occurs much in the US?
  - 27182818284 16y ago
    Harvard published a paper in the American Journal of Medicine in 2007 on the subject. It was also a big talking point by all US candidates and pundits that year. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/...
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Go read the actual study rather than a press release about it. It's deeply flawed, both for methodology (it has no control group) and for basic definitions. Basic definitions: a bankruptcy with $1001 or more in medical spending in the previous 2 years is a "medical bankruptcy". By this criteria, Michael Vick's bankruptcy was medical, even though any sane person would realize there were other causes [1]. Also, "uncontrolled gambling", "drug abuse" and "adoption/birth" are medical causes of bankruptcy, by the definition of that study. If we adopted the criteria of that study, we would discover that nearly every bankruptcy has "major tax cause", for example. By the way, a slightly less misleading way to phrase the conclusions of that study would be "medical bankruptcies drop by 33%, even while medical costs increase." Luckily, the language of the study hid that from lazy reporters. See this explanation: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/elizabeth-warren-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-utterly-misleading-bankruptcy-study/18826/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/elizabet... Try again. [1] Getting arrested for dogfighting and losing his job in the NFL, for example. While he certainly spent a few grand on doctors, he also owed about $600k in back taxes. [edit: oops, linked to the debunking, forgot to link to the actual study. http://pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/ http://pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/ Thanks floor(e x 10^10).]
      - 16y ago
barrkel 16y ago
There's also the whole is-ought problem here: leaping from some facts to justify some actions based on some values, without there being a solid connection between the facts and the values.

nihilocrat 16y ago

On one hand you are suggesting "we can't know anything, let's not bother" but on the other hand you are saying "let's talk about things we should actually do". Ok! I moved to Canada (Quebec) from the US. The healthcare system is overloaded, there are weird things like a) it's extremely hard to get a family doctor, b) you have to go to a clinic early in the morning to get a number + time of day and then come back at that time to be seen, and c) you still need to pay your own way (or get insurance) for dental / vision. You have to wait weeks/months to have a surgery, but you have to do that in the US and then promptly file for personal bankruptcy. That's still a whole hell of a lot better than a random unexpected illness or injury sending an employed, insured person into bankruptcy. Seeing a doctor is now a possibility instead of a dangerous worst-case scenario that could ruin my life. No more hoping the pain/infection/whatever just goes away on its own. Thus, I still think moving towards a government program / single payer / whatever you want to call it system is the best idea. Now, I based this all on personal anecdotal experience and not statistics, so I wonder if anyone will actually agree with me. :)

yummyfajitas 16y ago
That's still a whole hell of a lot better than a random unexpected illness or injury sending an employed, insured person into bankruptcy. Do you have any evidence that this occurs much in the US?
- 27182818284 16y ago
  Harvard published a paper in the American Journal of Medicine in 2007 on the subject. It was also a big talking point by all US candidates and pundits that year. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/...
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Go read the actual study rather than a press release about it. It's deeply flawed, both for methodology (it has no control group) and for basic definitions. Basic definitions: a bankruptcy with $1001 or more in medical spending in the previous 2 years is a "medical bankruptcy". By this criteria, Michael Vick's bankruptcy was medical, even though any sane person would realize there were other causes [1]. Also, "uncontrolled gambling", "drug abuse" and "adoption/birth" are medical causes of bankruptcy, by the definition of that study. If we adopted the criteria of that study, we would discover that nearly every bankruptcy has "major tax cause", for example. By the way, a slightly less misleading way to phrase the conclusions of that study would be "medical bankruptcies drop by 33%, even while medical costs increase." Luckily, the language of the study hid that from lazy reporters. See this explanation: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/elizabeth-warren-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-utterly-misleading-bankruptcy-study/18826/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/elizabet... Try again. [1] Getting arrested for dogfighting and losing his job in the NFL, for example. While he certainly spent a few grand on doctors, he also owed about $600k in back taxes. [edit: oops, linked to the debunking, forgot to link to the actual study. http://pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/ http://pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/ Thanks floor(e x 10^10).]
    - 16y ago

barrkel 16y ago

There's also the whole is-ought problem here: leaping from some facts to justify some actions based on some values, without there being a solid connection between the facts and the values.