8 ms·

We have good metrics. The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete pi

We have good metrics. The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. Your scenario would be called out by median household income, or better median disposable household income. Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers, since you fall out of the count once unemployment benefits expire. However, we need to look at it by age bracket. Lower workforce participation between 20 and 60 is probably bad whereas higher workforce participation over 60 might also be bad. IMO the problem isn't that the metrics aren't there but that the public discourse either lacks motivation, understanding or incentive to take a proper look. That every discussion of these numbers on social media has a substantial portion of people not understand the difference between median and mean certainly doesn't give me confidence this will ever improve.

psunavy03 1y ago
> The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. This is what I'm getting at. I recognize there are more detailed measures, but they also never seem to inform the public discourse.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  Not to come off as too cynical but I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the public discourse stays generally at a very shallow level that basic research for 30 minutes quickly moves you beyond. On one hand I find that appalling and poisonous for a democracy. On the other hand, imagine everyone having to spend 30+ minutes on every important topic. It quickly gets out of hand. One could argue that the media should do that research but if they incorporate that in their communication they lose most of their audience who needs to be picked up where they are. It's why I recently have been convinced that we need something like election my jury
  - mathiaspoint 1y ago
    Sortition would help a little but at the end of the day this is why democracy just doesn't work in practice.
    - ajmurmann 1y ago
      Lol, wut? Any system that's been working better in practice? There are small outlier countries like Singapore that have extremely well but at scale democratic countries have greatly outperformed other systems
      - Analemma_ 1y ago
        Technically these aren't incompatible: it's possible that democracy doesn't work but nothing else does either— there's no natural law that says there must be a system of political and social organization which actually works in the world we have now. I have been drifting in this direction myself the last few years; it's discouraging, but it seems to be the only conclusion supported by the evidence.
        mathiaspoint 1y ago
        It works ok in the short term. Note that most democracies (especially the current best performing ones) are extremely young despite the idea being ancient. You see this on smaller scales as well. Most of people's complaints about "capitalism" are really about the short sighted decisions corporate leadership often make because it has to answer to an anonymous mob of shareholders. The only thing that actually works is good leadership with long term vision and if anything democracy gets in the way of that.
        ajmurmann 1y ago
        The benefit of democracy is that it has somewhat of a self-correcting mechanism build in and it functions without violence. Autocracies don't have that. You say Democracies have a short track record. While this is true in the grand scheme of things, each individual non-Democracy that came before did as well. Rulers conquered each other's countries, usurped the current leaders etc. quite regularly. I'm not sure I'd count that as stable and longer-lasting.
- HDThoreaun 1y ago
  A quick conversation with an LLM can point in the right direction. Wont even take very long, you just have to do it.
thayne 1y ago
> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Not necessarily. If most of the difference in pay goes to shareholders and/or executives, then the GDP per capita doesn't change. This could be because technology increases productivity, but in a way that increases wealth inequality, and results not only in greater wealth for the already wealthy, but less wealth for workers who are no longer needed.
Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Absolutely not. If corporate revenue increases, but wages stay the same, GDP per capita goes up, yet the workers aren't any better off. All that extra money is being absorbed by the ones at the top. Median disposable household income is probably the best measure.
- shafyy 1y ago
  Even better one: real wages, and income and wealth inequality.
  - ajmurmann 1y ago
    Why does wealth inequality matter? If my real wealth doubles and Elon's real wealth doubles, inequality went up, yet everyone is tremendously better off. I think we are using inequality as a very bad proxy for poverty but we have much better metrics for that. I suspect people just dislike it for emotional reasons. I want to point out that Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US. Yet everyone is fine with Sweden. I can set an argument about political influence that's gotten really strong lately but maybe that's better addressed by strengthening the politically system
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      > Why does wealth inequality matter? If my real wealth doubles and Elon's real wealth doubles, inequality went up, Not in terms of the ratio between you, which is the way we normally talk about wealth inequality : "he has X times more wealth than I do", or "she makes X times more than I do". Anyway, this is not how wealth inequality has grown at all. It has happened by most people's real income barely rising at all over 40-50 years, while the rich have seen theirs rise by huge factors (hundreds to many thousands in some cases).
      - ajmurmann 1y ago
        That's not at all what I've seen in the US. The middle class has shrunk but that part of the overall population has moved to upper income. Meanwhile, real (aka inflation corrected) median household income has gone up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N If what you care about is standing real wages why talk about inequality? I'm concerned that it just functions better as rage bait and leads to unproductive policies.
kranke155 1y ago
It's the incentive. There is a reason the media focuses on easily juiced metrics.
- pixl97 1y ago
  Add in that most media companies these days are a branch of large corporations and it's easy to see where their incentives lie.
  - kranke155 1y ago
    It’s always been the case, save for rare exceptions (ie early internet) that the rich and powerful own the means of information.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  That is part of it but it goes beyond it. I have a group of friends who are pretty much all nerds and every once in a while we end up discussing how desirable different countries are to live in. Because we are nerds metrics will be pulled out. You just need to look at so much and depending what you personally care about things can be very misleading just because you scoped some metrics wrong. It's not obvious to everyone that Ireland has a high GDP because corporate profits get funneled through there. Looking at many European countries you might think salaries are pretty good, especially when PPP corrected. Well, Unless you are a software engineer. Houses might be cheaper, till you look at price per squarfoot... It's genuinely hard.
  - kranke155 1y ago
    Yes but there are less easily juiced metrics, which no government or media company likes to talk about, because they are less easily juiced.
t_mann 1y ago
I think it's time to switch from GDP per capita to household income. You might think the two are practically the same, and globally that's true, but at the regional level there can be stark discrepancies. One example: Ireland's GDP grew a staggering 25% in 2015 [0], mainly because Apple decided to book more of their profits there. It does lead to higher tax revenue, but creates relatively few jobs or other income there. The profits go to Apple shareholders, who mainly live outside Ireland. Household income would more adequately reflect where those benefits go than GDP. Plus, with household income it's more natural to look at the median in addition to the mean, which is the more robust metric, statistically speaking. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=IE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  I think income is still too crude and misleading. You really need some kind of complex individual economic health measure made of many indicators. But a more informative proxy would be median net worth - individual, not household, with married couple net worth divided by two for simplicity - as a fairly simple assets vs liabilities calculation. The net worth distribution would be even more revealing because it would highlight the difference between owners and renters. This still doesn't reveal net worth stability. In the US you can - and many people do - go from a seven figure net worth to bankruptcy because of a health crisis or (increasingly) a climate disaster. So you'd want a supplemental distribution showing how variable net worth is, how many people are reduced to bankruptcy at each decile, and how much movement there is in each decile. Reducing these kinds of complexities to a single number seems misleading at best.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
pkaye 1y ago
> Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers, since you fall out of the count once unemployment benefits expire. Unemployment rates are calculated based on surveys. They call many people and ask a series of questions to determine which category they fit into.
- sehansen 1y ago
  Yeah, the relevant definition of unemployed is basically "did you reach out to anyone in any way about a job within the last four weeks?", even asking a friend if their workplace is hiring would count. And the survey is surprisingly thorough, with around 110,000 individuals surveyed each month. There's a quite good writeup at: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
bentt 1y ago
Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy. Everyone has a vested interest in the stock market rising, in keeping their jobs, and a shared desire to see things go up forever. This is why there needs to be some kind of safety net so that the economy is not a proxy for life and death. In the USA, if you run out of money, you are in real trouble. We need to decouple success/failure in the market from personal safety. You should be able to try opening a hot dog stand, have it tank, and still be able to eat and go to the doctor.
- pedroma 1y ago
  >Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy. Isn't the media incentivized to keep you watching or reading? The common criticism of media is they like to exaggerate a minor issue to get you to click on a headline.
  - hello_moto 1y ago
    except when it affects the economy thus their investment (be it 401k or something else)
    - pedroma 1y ago
      They might be short sellers, or they might be foreign and view the US as an economic rival. There may be more incentives than just more clicks for the media.
    - ajmurmann 1y ago
      Yet, for the last few years the media has been poopooing and economy that's by pretty much all measures was very strong.
    - nradov 1y ago
      A more likely explanation is that outside of a few specialized publications, most members of the media are just as financially and economically illiterate as the average person. I mean how many finance and economics courses do you have to pass to get a degree in journalism or communications? There's no deep media conspiracy here.
root_axis 1y ago
> the public discourse either lacks motivation, understanding or incentive to take a proper look. Indeed. Almost always in these discussions people have already made up their minds about the state of the economy and will just cherry-pick whatever metric best justifies their case (typically that the economy sucks). There's never been a time in my life where people weren't complaining about how the economy is terrible and how that's clearly obvious if you just look at the real numbers.
tootie 1y ago
Media covers plenty. We call it "headline unemployment" because it fits in a headline. If you read articles and analysis there's plenty of places in the MSM that get into nitty gritty.
hopelite 1y ago
I’m just going to pile on by suggesting you really concern yourself with looking into why GDP is absolutely not a good measure. You may want to start with the fact that the economist that developed GDP has long been outspoken against how it has been used and wished he had never developed it. The fact that the government printing money and then squandering it on some thing useless makes the GDP go up, should be your first clue. I don’t think you are a great success in life if you take on debt from organized crime, spend it on hookers and blow, and then tell everyone how rich you are based on how much you spent, i.e., squandered.
layoric 1y ago
> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. I think the following joke encapsulates the problem with GDP pretty well.. --- Two economists go for a walk in the forest, and having a competitive nature, the first economist sees a pile of bear shit and says to the second "I'll give you $100 to eat that bear shit". The second economist, being one that generally does anything for money, eats the bear shit, takes the $100 and they continue on their walk. The second economist wants to get back at the first, sees another pile of bear shit and says "I dare YOU to eat that bear shit for $100" thinking no way they will actually do it. Not wanting to be outdone by the second economist, the first also eats the bear shit and takes $100. After walking a bit further, the second economist stops and says to the first "Wait.. did we just both eat shit for nothing??" to which the first replies "No of course not, that would be crazy.. we increased GDP by $200". --- I can't remember the source of the joke but been around for a while and I may have butchered some of the original details.
- chii 1y ago
  the joke is a joke, and is meant to illustrate a point. However, i think it's actually illustrating a different point than the intended one. The fact is, those economists valued watching someone eating shit at $100 dollars. How is that any different than someone paying $100 dollars to watch a concert? It perfectly illustrates the idea that value is in the eye of the beholder.
pzo 1y ago
> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. GDP or even GDP per capita is not the best metric. You can sell 100 iphones for $1000 or sell 500 cheap androids for $200 and both countries will have same GDP but I think output and outcome is much better in latter case (you produced 5x more products and 5x more people can benefits and be more productive with those 'tools'). Sure iphone for $1000 is better than $200 android phone but is it 5x better? Same with cars you can sell ferrari or more cheaper toyotas for the same value. We would have to measure how much goods we can produce.
- hnanon12341 1y ago
  But it covers their case.
- cjbillington 1y ago
  If it's true that more phones will allow people to be more productive, that increase in productivity should show up in GDP as well
wnc3141 1y ago
Quatar has a very high GDP per capita, day laborers may not celebrate. We could use metrics such as GINI but it also matters to look at qualitative factors such as worker rights etc. to measure well being

psunavy03 1y ago

> The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. This is what I'm getting at. I recognize there are more detailed measures, but they also never seem to inform the public discourse.

ajmurmann 1y ago
Not to come off as too cynical but I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the public discourse stays generally at a very shallow level that basic research for 30 minutes quickly moves you beyond. On one hand I find that appalling and poisonous for a democracy. On the other hand, imagine everyone having to spend 30+ minutes on every important topic. It quickly gets out of hand. One could argue that the media should do that research but if they incorporate that in their communication they lose most of their audience who needs to be picked up where they are. It's why I recently have been convinced that we need something like election my jury
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  Sortition would help a little but at the end of the day this is why democracy just doesn't work in practice.
  - ajmurmann 1y ago
    Lol, wut? Any system that's been working better in practice? There are small outlier countries like Singapore that have extremely well but at scale democratic countries have greatly outperformed other systems
    - Analemma_ 1y ago
      Technically these aren't incompatible: it's possible that democracy doesn't work but nothing else does either— there's no natural law that says there must be a system of political and social organization which actually works in the world we have now. I have been drifting in this direction myself the last few years; it's discouraging, but it seems to be the only conclusion supported by the evidence.
      - mathiaspoint 1y ago
        It works ok in the short term. Note that most democracies (especially the current best performing ones) are extremely young despite the idea being ancient. You see this on smaller scales as well. Most of people's complaints about "capitalism" are really about the short sighted decisions corporate leadership often make because it has to answer to an anonymous mob of shareholders. The only thing that actually works is good leadership with long term vision and if anything democracy gets in the way of that.
        ajmurmann 1y ago
        The benefit of democracy is that it has somewhat of a self-correcting mechanism build in and it functions without violence. Autocracies don't have that. You say Democracies have a short track record. While this is true in the grand scheme of things, each individual non-Democracy that came before did as well. Rulers conquered each other's countries, usurped the current leaders etc. quite regularly. I'm not sure I'd count that as stable and longer-lasting.
HDThoreaun 1y ago
A quick conversation with an LLM can point in the right direction. Wont even take very long, you just have to do it.

thayne 1y ago

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Not necessarily. If most of the difference in pay goes to shareholders and/or executives, then the GDP per capita doesn't change. This could be because technology increases productivity, but in a way that increases wealth inequality, and results not only in greater wealth for the already wealthy, but less wealth for workers who are no longer needed.

Sohcahtoa82 1y ago

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Absolutely not. If corporate revenue increases, but wages stay the same, GDP per capita goes up, yet the workers aren't any better off. All that extra money is being absorbed by the ones at the top. Median disposable household income is probably the best measure.

shafyy 1y ago
Even better one: real wages, and income and wealth inequality.
- ajmurmann 1y ago
  Why does wealth inequality matter? If my real wealth doubles and Elon's real wealth doubles, inequality went up, yet everyone is tremendously better off. I think we are using inequality as a very bad proxy for poverty but we have much better metrics for that. I suspect people just dislike it for emotional reasons. I want to point out that Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US. Yet everyone is fine with Sweden. I can set an argument about political influence that's gotten really strong lately but maybe that's better addressed by strengthening the politically system
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    > Why does wealth inequality matter? If my real wealth doubles and Elon's real wealth doubles, inequality went up, Not in terms of the ratio between you, which is the way we normally talk about wealth inequality : "he has X times more wealth than I do", or "she makes X times more than I do". Anyway, this is not how wealth inequality has grown at all. It has happened by most people's real income barely rising at all over 40-50 years, while the rich have seen theirs rise by huge factors (hundreds to many thousands in some cases).
    - ajmurmann 1y ago
      That's not at all what I've seen in the US. The middle class has shrunk but that part of the overall population has moved to upper income. Meanwhile, real (aka inflation corrected) median household income has gone up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N If what you care about is standing real wages why talk about inequality? I'm concerned that it just functions better as rage bait and leads to unproductive policies.

kranke155 1y ago

It's the incentive. There is a reason the media focuses on easily juiced metrics.

pixl97 1y ago
Add in that most media companies these days are a branch of large corporations and it's easy to see where their incentives lie.
- kranke155 1y ago
  It’s always been the case, save for rare exceptions (ie early internet) that the rich and powerful own the means of information.
ajmurmann 1y ago
That is part of it but it goes beyond it. I have a group of friends who are pretty much all nerds and every once in a while we end up discussing how desirable different countries are to live in. Because we are nerds metrics will be pulled out. You just need to look at so much and depending what you personally care about things can be very misleading just because you scoped some metrics wrong. It's not obvious to everyone that Ireland has a high GDP because corporate profits get funneled through there. Looking at many European countries you might think salaries are pretty good, especially when PPP corrected. Well, Unless you are a software engineer. Houses might be cheaper, till you look at price per squarfoot... It's genuinely hard.
- kranke155 1y ago
  Yes but there are less easily juiced metrics, which no government or media company likes to talk about, because they are less easily juiced.

t_mann 1y ago

I think it's time to switch from GDP per capita to household income. You might think the two are practically the same, and globally that's true, but at the regional level there can be stark discrepancies. One example: Ireland's GDP grew a staggering 25% in 2015 [0], mainly because Apple decided to book more of their profits there. It does lead to higher tax revenue, but creates relatively few jobs or other income there. The profits go to Apple shareholders, who mainly live outside Ireland. Household income would more adequately reflect where those benefits go than GDP. Plus, with household income it's more natural to look at the median in addition to the mean, which is the more robust metric, statistically speaking. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=IE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
I think income is still too crude and misleading. You really need some kind of complex individual economic health measure made of many indicators. But a more informative proxy would be median net worth - individual, not household, with married couple net worth divided by two for simplicity - as a fairly simple assets vs liabilities calculation. The net worth distribution would be even more revealing because it would highlight the difference between owners and renters. This still doesn't reveal net worth stability. In the US you can - and many people do - go from a seven figure net worth to bankruptcy because of a health crisis or (increasingly) a climate disaster. So you'd want a supplemental distribution showing how variable net worth is, how many people are reduced to bankruptcy at each decile, and how much movement there is in each decile. Reducing these kinds of complexities to a single number seems misleading at best.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

pkaye 1y ago

> Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers, since you fall out of the count once unemployment benefits expire. Unemployment rates are calculated based on surveys. They call many people and ask a series of questions to determine which category they fit into.

sehansen 1y ago
Yeah, the relevant definition of unemployed is basically "did you reach out to anyone in any way about a job within the last four weeks?", even asking a friend if their workplace is hiring would count. And the survey is surprisingly thorough, with around 110,000 individuals surveyed each month. There's a quite good writeup at: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

bentt 1y ago

Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy. Everyone has a vested interest in the stock market rising, in keeping their jobs, and a shared desire to see things go up forever. This is why there needs to be some kind of safety net so that the economy is not a proxy for life and death. In the USA, if you run out of money, you are in real trouble. We need to decouple success/failure in the market from personal safety. You should be able to try opening a hot dog stand, have it tank, and still be able to eat and go to the doctor.

pedroma 1y ago
>Nobody is incentivized to share bad news about the economy. Isn't the media incentivized to keep you watching or reading? The common criticism of media is they like to exaggerate a minor issue to get you to click on a headline.
- hello_moto 1y ago
  except when it affects the economy thus their investment (be it 401k or something else)
  - pedroma 1y ago
    They might be short sellers, or they might be foreign and view the US as an economic rival. There may be more incentives than just more clicks for the media.
  - ajmurmann 1y ago
    Yet, for the last few years the media has been poopooing and economy that's by pretty much all measures was very strong.
  - nradov 1y ago
    A more likely explanation is that outside of a few specialized publications, most members of the media are just as financially and economically illiterate as the average person. I mean how many finance and economics courses do you have to pass to get a degree in journalism or communications? There's no deep media conspiracy here.

root_axis 1y ago

> the public discourse either lacks motivation, understanding or incentive to take a proper look. Indeed. Almost always in these discussions people have already made up their minds about the state of the economy and will just cherry-pick whatever metric best justifies their case (typically that the economy sucks). There's never been a time in my life where people weren't complaining about how the economy is terrible and how that's clearly obvious if you just look at the real numbers.

tootie 1y ago

Media covers plenty. We call it "headline unemployment" because it fits in a headline. If you read articles and analysis there's plenty of places in the MSM that get into nitty gritty.

hopelite 1y ago

I’m just going to pile on by suggesting you really concern yourself with looking into why GDP is absolutely not a good measure. You may want to start with the fact that the economist that developed GDP has long been outspoken against how it has been used and wished he had never developed it. The fact that the government printing money and then squandering it on some thing useless makes the GDP go up, should be your first clue. I don’t think you are a great success in life if you take on debt from organized crime, spend it on hookers and blow, and then tell everyone how rich you are based on how much you spent, i.e., squandered.

layoric 1y ago

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. I think the following joke encapsulates the problem with GDP pretty well.. --- Two economists go for a walk in the forest, and having a competitive nature, the first economist sees a pile of bear shit and says to the second "I'll give you $100 to eat that bear shit". The second economist, being one that generally does anything for money, eats the bear shit, takes the $100 and they continue on their walk. The second economist wants to get back at the first, sees another pile of bear shit and says "I dare YOU to eat that bear shit for $100" thinking no way they will actually do it. Not wanting to be outdone by the second economist, the first also eats the bear shit and takes $100. After walking a bit further, the second economist stops and says to the first "Wait.. did we just both eat shit for nothing??" to which the first replies "No of course not, that would be crazy.. we increased GDP by $200". --- I can't remember the source of the joke but been around for a while and I may have butchered some of the original details.

chii 1y ago
the joke is a joke, and is meant to illustrate a point. However, i think it's actually illustrating a different point than the intended one. The fact is, those economists valued watching someone eating shit at $100 dollars. How is that any different than someone paying $100 dollars to watch a concert? It perfectly illustrates the idea that value is in the eye of the beholder.

pzo 1y ago

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. GDP or even GDP per capita is not the best metric. You can sell 100 iphones for $1000 or sell 500 cheap androids for $200 and both countries will have same GDP but I think output and outcome is much better in latter case (you produced 5x more products and 5x more people can benefits and be more productive with those 'tools'). Sure iphone for $1000 is better than $200 android phone but is it 5x better? Same with cars you can sell ferrari or more cheaper toyotas for the same value. We would have to measure how much goods we can produce.

hnanon12341 1y ago
But it covers their case.
cjbillington 1y ago
If it's true that more phones will allow people to be more productive, that increase in productivity should show up in GDP as well

wnc3141 1y ago

Quatar has a very high GDP per capita, day laborers may not celebrate. We could use metrics such as GINI but it also matters to look at qualitative factors such as worker rights etc. to measure well being