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The only reason we are talking about the "official" definition is because the "people who say things", aka representatives of our government, are caught being b

The only reason we are talking about the "official" definition is because the "people who say things", aka representatives of our government, are caught being blatant hypocrites. Just like they were called out when they tried to tell us inflation was "transitory". It's like arguing over whether (254,0,0) is red or not. You said a decade ago it was red. You said two years ago it was red. But now that you really need it to NOT be red....well, technically, (255,0,0) is "Red", and (254,0,0) isn't "Red". 254 might be good enough for foreigners, and it might be good enough in common usage, but, ya know, it's not good enough for America(tm) in 2022. And if you say otherwise, you are spreading misinformation. Because we can't allow any more bad news for a deeply-unpopular administration to potentially bleed into the upcoming major elections. More and more people are seeing through such nonsense.

lukas099 4y ago
Cherry-picking quotes from officials does not change the fact that the government has not changed how they define a recession. Some of those quotes are not even inconsistent with the official definition. Cecilia Rouse's says that 2 quarters of negative growth" is indicative of a recession. Heather Boushey's clearly states that it is "a rule of thumb." The only damning one at face value is the top one, when Brian Deese states that two quarters of negative growth is "the technical definition of a recession." Why doesn't the post cite where he said this so we can put it into context? I tried to find an original source of him saying this and failed, but I did find a slightly larger snippet of the quote from @RNCResearch on Twitter [0]: > "What Senator Clinton has said is that of course economists have a technical definition of recession... [etc]" So not only was he saying that was Clinton's definition (not his own), but looking at the screenshot it is clear that it is from a transcript of a conversation. In other words, the best proof that the U.S. government is trying to change the definition of a recession is an off-the-cuff quote from a single official 16 years ago about one politician saying something was the definition. [0] https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1552369806413905923 https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1552369806413905923

lukas099 4y ago

Cherry-picking quotes from officials does not change the fact that the government has not changed how they define a recession. Some of those quotes are not even inconsistent with the official definition. Cecilia Rouse's says that 2 quarters of negative growth" is indicative of a recession. Heather Boushey's clearly states that it is "a rule of thumb." The only damning one at face value is the top one, when Brian Deese states that two quarters of negative growth is "the technical definition of a recession." Why doesn't the post cite where he said this so we can put it into context? I tried to find an original source of him saying this and failed, but I did find a slightly larger snippet of the quote from @RNCResearch on Twitter [0]: > "What Senator Clinton has said is that of course economists have a technical definition of recession... [etc]" So not only was he saying that was Clinton's definition (not his own), but looking at the screenshot it is clear that it is from a transcript of a conversation. In other words, the best proof that the U.S. government is trying to change the definition of a recession is an off-the-cuff quote from a single official 16 years ago about one politician saying something was the definition. [0] https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1552369806413905923 https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1552369806413905923