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Things are doing great while: - Drug usage increasing - Depression/suicide increasing - Life expectancy going down as a result of the above - Homelessness i

• 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.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      > 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. They are counted, there are 6 different unemployment measures and the labor force participation rate, all easily available. So far all I see are nebulous/unfounded claims providing zero evidence. No one is denying that a certain portion of the population might be worse off, or that volatility is higher for some populations. But the official statistics are not denying that either.
    • SantalBlush 3y ago
      The reason you're getting pushback about your original assertion is because it isn't actually true. >Unemployment has changed, it used to mean people that want to work but can't find jobs. It still means that. >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. This is how full employment has been measured for a long time, so it's not an example of government changing measures to make things look better than they are. >If you think administrations don't fudge the numbers to make themselves look more successful I don't know where you've been This is not evidence. It's just a non sequitur. >Statistics are easy to mess with, and administrations favor the models that make them look better. Replacing the first conjecture with this one helps nothing. Again, where is the evidence for this statement? Is it a hunch that we're just meant to go along with? >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. This is how unemployment has been measured for more than half a century. It is not something that the government has changed to make things look better than they are. >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. There is, again, zero evidence in this statement. It is looking more and more like the original assertion, "They've literally been changing the measurements of economic indicators to make things seem better than they are," was made up.
      • christianqchung 3y ago
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