5 ms·

They've literally been changing the measurements of economic indicators to make things seem better than they are.

by surge 3y ago

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Examples?
- JPLeRouzic 3y ago
  I don't have USA examples but as a French citizen, I know that we can have an increase in GDP thanks to an increase in state (+SS) spending which is itself enabled by a higher debt each year. We've been doing this in France for decades, but in recent years it was done by French politicians on an extraordinary scale while they claimed to an international audience that they bring more rigor in spending. I think you did the same on a bigger scale.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > we can have an increase in GDP thanks to an increase in state (+SS) spending This is juicing the metrics. Not changing the metrics. Juicing is real. Changing is mostly a conspiracy among the uneducated, at least in America.
    - surge 3y ago
      Juicing vs changing is just spin. Edit: Since I can't reply, if your measure doesn't account for unsustainable practices, then its not really a measure, or you're intentionally "changing" the measure to leave out accounting for unsustainable practices. Measuring growth in a fund when its all just a ponzi scheme isn't how we measure fund performance on a report. If this is done, its either intentional or incompetent. Either, is very bad when dictating policy.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Juicing vs changing is just spin This is obviously untrue. An owner of a timber forest may measure how many trees they cut down each year. If they double the rate at which they cut down trees, that doesn't mean the way trees are counted has changed. It means they're harvesting unsustainably. > then its not really a measure, or you're intentionally "changing" the measure to leave out accounting for unsustainable practices. No, it's the nature of measures. What gets measured gets managed. The measure is still useful, it's just being read without context. The degree of unsustainability is widely discussed because there are other measures, also collected and disseminated and picked apart, that characterise it. If you're making personal, commercial or policy decisions based on the headline metric, you should learn more about how to read the metrics as a whole. That isn't a problem with the measures, it's one of education.
- hattmall 3y ago
  Inflation and unemployment are the big ones. I believe they extended the time for recent gig work to count against unemployment even if you are job seeking, and gig workers don't feed into underemployed. So someone looking for work and also doing door dash etc but barely making any money would have previously counted as unemployed but now they are less likely to. Pushing stats like average income being up is misleading and the stock market is inflated by reverse repos. The concentration of market cap in the index is problematic as well. Reverse repos are still at shockingly high levels but drastically down from their recent highs. So the question is if there is another financial instrument at play that isn't as widely known since the repurchase agreements started taking heat. Wealth inequality though is the real metric to look at and it's hard to judge but record homelessness is obviously not a good sign.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > they extended the time for recent gig work to count against unemployment Not to my knowledge. Contingent employment has always counted as employment for broad measures; this is why many papers discuss non-farm payroll [1] or even full-time employed from surveys [2]. The problem is these data are less precise than broader payroll figures, and so can't be observed month to month nor even quarter to quarter, certainly not real time. You're discussing an actual measurement problem, one that's been discussed since 2019 [3][4]. But it's cause for changing the metrics, not caused by any change in the metrics. > the stock market is inflated by reverse repos This is wrong, but I'm not sure for what reason. Could you explain why you think this? Repos are a borrowing mechanism. Reverse repo means lending. Yes, lending boosted the stock market. But we're currently in a liquidity-draning environment, so this is a peculiar complaint. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000 [3] https://www.axios.com/2019/04/18/gig-economy-employment-economic-data-effect https://www.axios.com/2019/04/18/gig-economy-employment-econ... [4] https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/0416 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/0416
    - hattmall 3y ago
      >This is wrong, but I'm not sure for what reason. Could you explain why you think this? Overnight repurchase agreements give banks seemingly off the books money to invest in commodity and equity markets. They are a direct driver of inflation. Banks are able to maintain positions and their balances by purchasing Treasury products at 11:59pm and having the fed buy them back at 12:01am. They are supposed to be used strictly for emergency liquidity situations but as you can see from the chart we got very far away from that. They are finally coming down but still very high. They are the primary reason for the record inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- surge 3y ago
  Things are doing great while: - Drug usage increasing - Depression/suicide increasing - Life expectancy going down as a result of the above - Homelessness increasing - People are forced to take gig jobs, but this is somehow counted as fulltime employment. - Taking people off the unemployment numbers because they haven't been able to find a job for 6 months or may have given up. - College becoming unaffordable and leading to massive debt - Housing becoming increasingly unaffordable, middle class households can no longer buy a home (technically to me means they're not really middle class) I can go on. Fudging the statistical measures by which we define economic slumps or saying its all cool cause Wall Street is recovering doesn't change what reality is for the average person. Things are getting worse for most people while getting better for smaller portion (wealth disparity increase).
  - gruez 3y ago
    > Things are doing great while: [...] >Fudging the statistical measures by which we define economic slumps or saying its all cool cause Wall Street is recovering doesn't change what reality is for the average person But so far as I can tell indicators like GDP or unemployment were used for decades, and they haven't changed the methodology for those. Therefore I'm really sure what you mean by "fudging". However all the other indicators that you've listed are real and point to real issues, but aren't traditionally used in economic contexts. If anything changing the goalposts from gdp/unemployment to "Drug usage increasing" or whatever seems much closer to the "fudging" that you're decrying against.
    - surge 3y ago
      Unemployment has changed, it used to mean people that want to work but can't find jobs. It meant if a factory or industry left your town, and you can't move, and you can't find a job, and end up going on a government check or something. You're taken off the roster. It's not that you don't want to work, its that no jobs are available. No one's asking you because you stopped going to the unemployment office because its useless. If you lose a full time job and work two part time jobs you're considered fully employed, even though you lost benefits and have to work crazy hours. If you think administrations don't fudge the numbers to make themselves look more successful I don't know where you've been. Statistics are easy to mess with, and administrations favor the models that make them look better. It doesn't matter whose in office. Places like WV have seen mass unemployment for decades, but the numbers look better because people have gone on checks or government assistance and given up, thus aren't counted. It's very telling most of the people here live around economic centers and find it very easy to ignore what stark reality is in most areas of the country. It's easier to believe a fairy tale told by the government, and only be critical of it when the opposing party is in office, when supposedly nothing has changed.

They've literally been changing the measurements of economic indicators to make things seem better than they are.

by surge 3y ago

They've literally been changing the measurements of economic indicators to make things seem better than they are.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

Examples?

JPLeRouzic 3y ago
I don't have USA examples but as a French citizen, I know that we can have an increase in GDP thanks to an increase in state (+SS) spending which is itself enabled by a higher debt each year. We've been doing this in France for decades, but in recent years it was done by French politicians on an extraordinary scale while they claimed to an international audience that they bring more rigor in spending. I think you did the same on a bigger scale.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > we can have an increase in GDP thanks to an increase in state (+SS) spending This is juicing the metrics. Not changing the metrics. Juicing is real. Changing is mostly a conspiracy among the uneducated, at least in America.
  - surge 3y ago
    Juicing vs changing is just spin. Edit: Since I can't reply, if your measure doesn't account for unsustainable practices, then its not really a measure, or you're intentionally "changing" the measure to leave out accounting for unsustainable practices. Measuring growth in a fund when its all just a ponzi scheme isn't how we measure fund performance on a report. If this is done, its either intentional or incompetent. Either, is very bad when dictating policy.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Juicing vs changing is just spin This is obviously untrue. An owner of a timber forest may measure how many trees they cut down each year. If they double the rate at which they cut down trees, that doesn't mean the way trees are counted has changed. It means they're harvesting unsustainably. > then its not really a measure, or you're intentionally "changing" the measure to leave out accounting for unsustainable practices. No, it's the nature of measures. What gets measured gets managed. The measure is still useful, it's just being read without context. The degree of unsustainability is widely discussed because there are other measures, also collected and disseminated and picked apart, that characterise it. If you're making personal, commercial or policy decisions based on the headline metric, you should learn more about how to read the metrics as a whole. That isn't a problem with the measures, it's one of education.
hattmall 3y ago
Inflation and unemployment are the big ones. I believe they extended the time for recent gig work to count against unemployment even if you are job seeking, and gig workers don't feed into underemployed. So someone looking for work and also doing door dash etc but barely making any money would have previously counted as unemployed but now they are less likely to. Pushing stats like average income being up is misleading and the stock market is inflated by reverse repos. The concentration of market cap in the index is problematic as well. Reverse repos are still at shockingly high levels but drastically down from their recent highs. So the question is if there is another financial instrument at play that isn't as widely known since the repurchase agreements started taking heat. Wealth inequality though is the real metric to look at and it's hard to judge but record homelessness is obviously not a good sign.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > they extended the time for recent gig work to count against unemployment Not to my knowledge. Contingent employment has always counted as employment for broad measures; this is why many papers discuss non-farm payroll [1] or even full-time employed from surveys [2]. The problem is these data are less precise than broader payroll figures, and so can't be observed month to month nor even quarter to quarter, certainly not real time. You're discussing an actual measurement problem, one that's been discussed since 2019 [3][4]. But it's cause for changing the metrics, not caused by any change in the metrics. > the stock market is inflated by reverse repos This is wrong, but I'm not sure for what reason. Could you explain why you think this? Repos are a borrowing mechanism. Reverse repo means lending. Yes, lending boosted the stock market. But we're currently in a liquidity-draning environment, so this is a peculiar complaint. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12500000 [3] https://www.axios.com/2019/04/18/gig-economy-employment-economic-data-effect https://www.axios.com/2019/04/18/gig-economy-employment-econ... [4] https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/0416 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/0416
  - hattmall 3y ago
    >This is wrong, but I'm not sure for what reason. Could you explain why you think this? Overnight repurchase agreements give banks seemingly off the books money to invest in commodity and equity markets. They are a direct driver of inflation. Banks are able to maintain positions and their balances by purchasing Treasury products at 11:59pm and having the fed buy them back at 12:01am. They are supposed to be used strictly for emergency liquidity situations but as you can see from the chart we got very far away from that. They are finally coming down but still very high. They are the primary reason for the record inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
surge 3y ago
Things are doing great while: - Drug usage increasing - Depression/suicide increasing - Life expectancy going down as a result of the above - Homelessness increasing - People are forced to take gig jobs, but this is somehow counted as fulltime employment. - Taking people off the unemployment numbers because they haven't been able to find a job for 6 months or may have given up. - College becoming unaffordable and leading to massive debt - Housing becoming increasingly unaffordable, middle class households can no longer buy a home (technically to me means they're not really middle class) I can go on. Fudging the statistical measures by which we define economic slumps or saying its all cool cause Wall Street is recovering doesn't change what reality is for the average person. Things are getting worse for most people while getting better for smaller portion (wealth disparity increase).
- gruez 3y ago
  > Things are doing great while: [...] >Fudging the statistical measures by which we define economic slumps or saying its all cool cause Wall Street is recovering doesn't change what reality is for the average person But so far as I can tell indicators like GDP or unemployment were used for decades, and they haven't changed the methodology for those. Therefore I'm really sure what you mean by "fudging". However all the other indicators that you've listed are real and point to real issues, but aren't traditionally used in economic contexts. If anything changing the goalposts from gdp/unemployment to "Drug usage increasing" or whatever seems much closer to the "fudging" that you're decrying against.
  - surge 3y ago
    Unemployment has changed, it used to mean people that want to work but can't find jobs. It meant if a factory or industry left your town, and you can't move, and you can't find a job, and end up going on a government check or something. You're taken off the roster. It's not that you don't want to work, its that no jobs are available. No one's asking you because you stopped going to the unemployment office because its useless. If you lose a full time job and work two part time jobs you're considered fully employed, even though you lost benefits and have to work crazy hours. If you think administrations don't fudge the numbers to make themselves look more successful I don't know where you've been. Statistics are easy to mess with, and administrations favor the models that make them look better. It doesn't matter whose in office. Places like WV have seen mass unemployment for decades, but the numbers look better because people have gone on checks or government assistance and given up, thus aren't counted. It's very telling most of the people here live around economic centers and find it very easy to ignore what stark reality is in most areas of the country. It's easier to believe a fairy tale told by the government, and only be critical of it when the opposing party is in office, when supposedly nothing has changed.