6 ms·

The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector

96 points by petethomas 1y ago

jacobyoder 1y ago
https://archive.ph/el7mM https://archive.ph/el7mM
charcircuit 1y ago
>As a result, a company’s data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients — it won’t capture the economy as whole. If no one needs some data doesn't that imply capturing it is a waste of time and energy?
- nemomarx 1y ago
  People who are not the clients could need accurate information about how the total market is doing?
- mlinhares 1y ago
  Everyone needs trustworthy employment data as this affects every single business in the country. If you don't know what the real employment rate is and you see your business going down you might think the problem is your business and not the whole economy. You can't run a modern country without collecting real world data about the country's economy.
  - parineum 1y ago
    how would that change your actions? Would it make you feel better about your business failing?
    - altcognito 1y ago
      If employment is strong, you might add marketing, because maybe you're not doing enough to get the money that is clearly being passed around. If employment is weak, you might cut staff yourself, or maybe cut costs elsewhere. You might change your product mix to serve a different set of customers. You could change pricing. No. It is not about feeling better.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    > real world data about the country's economy The data is backward looking, sometimes by as much as 3 months, rarely less than a month old. The only way the "data" knows there is a reccession is if it stared 3/4 of a year ago. If you are a CEO or running a business and you are blaming your business decisions on the stats from 3 months ago that came out today you should get out of the chair and let someone with a brain sit in it.
- regularization 1y ago
  Karl Marx used the British government Blue Books he found in the Reading Room of the British Museum to write Capital. If the British government wasn't publishing Blue Books in the 19th century, he would have had more difficulty forming his theories.
- altcognito 1y ago
  The whole paragraph explains it: > Private companies are in the business of making a profit, and to do that they need to attract customers. Some customers are more profitable than others. As a result, a company’s data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients — it won’t capture the economy as whole. Honestly, it is a very, very good paragraph. There is a slavish devotion to the idea that markets are efficient and that is the most desirable outcome in all situations. If you are in the business of being a government and running a country for all of your citizens, you need all the data, not just select aspects of it, and not just those that tell a particular story.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >you need all the data There is an infinite amount of data. And most of it is useless. Governments do not need to know how many fry cooks read exactly 3 novels from authors who names end with a letter in the first half of the alphabet in the last year.
    - altcognito 1y ago
      Reductio ad absurdum, sure. So that is why it is important to understand that the government needs data for it's purposes (and not more than that). Restricting data to the narrow purposes of whichever company is willing to pay to produce select economic statistics will leave everyone worse off.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        >Restricting data to the narrow purposes of whichever company This isn't what the article said. It essentially said the data would be based off what people who use the data need. If the government needs some data it would still be able to get it.
        altcognito 1y ago
        There is so much missing in what you're responding with, and I'm not even sure you're contradicting what's being said. Lets just start with something simple: Are you assuming that the government only needs what people are willing to pay for?
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  The federal reserve certainly needs that data when they are trying to decide on interest rate adjustments.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Soon they won't need any data, they can just ask Trump what the rate should be.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Does the Fed use BLS data for that or BEA employment data (BEA does use the BLS data as an input, so they aren't completely independent, but they also make adjustments to make them consistent with other BEA measures and I wonder if changes in BLS methodology or reliability will simply produce greater divergence between BLS and BEA employment information). I mean, the Fed uses BEA PCE data and not BLS CPI data for inflation, so it would seem consistent for them to use BEA employment data as well. Of course. if manipulating the source of the popular headline figures doesn't have the desired impact on the Fed, Trump would eventually probably exert the same pressure on BEA.
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
With the shoot the messenger management style. Will the BLS ever be trustworthy again? What happens to markets when we can't trust any government statistics.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  See, what they really need to do is release the politically-desired results in press releases while sending the real information using steganographic concealment in the page's logo. We must construct a Truman Show around Dear Leader for our own survival. /s Previous users of this data will seek alternative, less precise signals elsewhere and likely use conservative, pessimistic guesstimates that will tend to be risk-adverse and not encourage expansion or investment.
- noitpmeder 1y ago
  Maybe the best move at this point is to move toward the BLS releasing all the raw data, but do not publish conclusions of their own? Then at least you have a central "unbiased" (if that's ever an actual state) agency responsible for collection, and leave it up to the more polarized outlets/statisticians/... to produce their own interpretations. E.g. similar to Census data -- central data collection managed by govt, generalized anonymous data released for interpretation by anyone.
  - croes 1y ago
    That opens the door for lots of Wrong conclusions either lack of knowledge and maliciousness. Statistics is often counterintuitive.
    - noitpmeder 1y ago
      Sure, but the alternative is implicitly trusting the conclusions and interpretations the govt agency, who are (almost assuredly) humans with biases and not impartial robots. It's a lot harder to attack general best practice statistic collection than it is to throw shade at an editorial. (not that certain administrations have issues attacking best practice science) Issue also arise "easily" when the people charged with producing editorials are political appointees who are easy targets for subsequent administrations looking to shift blame. (seems we're at this stage now)
jacobyoder 1y ago
> Instead of firing the commissioner, the president should be giving the agency a raise in the form of a bigger budget. The goal should be to restore public trust in government statistics, not undermine it. When you believe that government should not be providing many services, or doing most of what it currently does overall, why would you want to bolster trust in government statistics? Those statistics might contradict the administration, which is not a goal of the administration and its backers.
- noitpmeder 1y ago
  Exactly. Instead of battling with their own internal departments when they show lack-luster numbers in good faith, they can just blame the "agendas" of the non-blessed private sector companies who show the same data. Even better, they can exult the virtues of select private sector companies who show "good" "approved" data. What? No, no conflict of interest that members of the President's immediate family happens to hold board seats in those "approved" companies.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  I understand why articles like this are written and why we have these conversations but it all feels like we're sane washing this administration. Any other administration (especially a Democrat) firing the head of BLS due to unsavory numbers would be a scandal on its own. Yet, we're seven months into this one with multiple corruption scandals flooding the zone. It just seems crazy that we're here justifying basic concepts of government/public service and not outright calling this out for what it is.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    Right. That's a good deal of what gets them away with it. You have to crush this stuff while it's small.
    - piva00 1y ago
      Unfortunately there are lots of people on the sidelines that watch them screaming "censorship!", "persecution!", "injustice!" and fall for it. Any act against them is met with whining and fake outrage, and it works politically. You can see this in action even in here, a forum where most people are more well-educated than 90% of the global population, they still swallow those cries as if this administration is the victim. What is even more amusing and weird is how much the same side likes to scream "stop being a victim" while continuously playing into victimising themselves.
chasing 1y ago
That’s the point. When Trump disagrees with facts the facts must be destroyed. When people are actually trying to solve problems they desire more information, not less.
- dionian 1y ago
  The problem is the BLS was putting out wildly incorrect facts
  - chasing 1y ago
    Yes, they had that bias towards reality that authoritarians can’t stand.
  - croes 1y ago
    They put out estimations and numbers based on reported data. When the reported data changed they changed their data too. That‘s not putting out wildly incorrect facts that’s putting out data based on currently known facts
  - unethical_ban 1y ago
    That claim has never been backed up with evidence.
- derbOac 1y ago
  I think this pattern of behavior needs to be cast as incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality. Avoiding transparency, rigorous analysis, and competitive disagreement and review is a sign that one cannot make a convincing argument, or does not have courage to do so. I don't think they care about the morality of it, or see themselves as morally justified.
  - chasing 1y ago
    > incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality Why not all three?
root_axis 1y ago
Presumably private firms will become a necessary component of economic projections since BLS statistics will be less trustworthy going forward.
- dv_dt 1y ago
  We have been seeing news reporting, media, and education private organizations knuckling under from pressure by the administration - is there any reason to believe that we would not see the same from data reporting companies
  - root_axis 1y ago
    Fair point, but private organizations would at least have a financial incentive to give accurate numbers since that's they're business, if they earn a reputation of unreliability then there'd be no reason to pay them, you could just trust the government numbers for free.
    - jeffhwang 1y ago
      There's significant evidence contradicting this hypothesis. See industry analysts like Gartner, IDC, etc. who all ask tech firms to "pay to play" for better rankings in their reports. As well as the ratings agencies like Moody's, S&P's, and Fitch during the 2008 financial crisis. These ratings agencies were paid by the banks selling CDOs, MBS, and other debt derivatives that were especially tied to the US housing market. The agencies were incentivized to not downgrade those products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the_subprime_crisis#Competitive_pressure_to_lower_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...
      - root_axis 1y ago
        This makes sense. Thanks for the info.
      - tristor 1y ago
        > See industry analysts like Gartner, IDC, etc. who all ask tech firms to "pay to play" for better rankings in their reports. Do you have any evidence of this happening? I've been involved on the side of the firm in many of these analyst reports, and I've never seen this happen. What /does/ happen is that to be listed at all, e.g. to have the analyst invest time/resources to review you, you have to pay. They don't exhaustively review every company in the segment or every product in the segment, regardless of size and market position. They only review those who pay to be reviewed or are large enough in market position that they are must-reviews (almost all of which also pay). But I've never seen the rankings/outcome dictated by pay at all. Much to my chagrin sometimes, the analyst will lower your ranking due to something I may have felt was a small issue, but they considered a large issue. Analyst Relations is a major investment area for large tech companies, and given my exposure over the last nearly decade, I've never seen any form of quid pro quo / money changing hands.
softwaredoug 1y ago
Counterpoint: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Doesn't seem to be a counterpoint?
- altcognito 1y ago
  (Great post/article!) I was so confused as to why you said counterpoint -- it is deep in the article, if at all. > If the government’s jobs data is considered biased or unreliable, Wall Street will have other places to look. ADP reports figures on private payrolls, for instance. (And it also tells a bearish story: ADP showed a net loss of jobs in June, for instance.) Meanwhile, Gallup once tracked employment numbers on a weekly basis based on its large-scale surveys and could resume that effort. Or investment banks like Goldman Sachs might conclude they could have a competitive edge by tracking their own economic data. But in the following paragraph he points out that the numbers aren't likely to be as accurate, comprehensive, or as reassuring as numbers generated by the government. Overall though it is a really good article worth a share of its own.
StopTheWorld 1y ago
Should point out this is not the first time the BLS came under serious fire, politically. When the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 1995, they set up a commission (Boskin commission) that said inflation had been overstated, and henceforth cut Social Security cost of living adjustments.
- rtkwe 1y ago
  Cuts will continue until the statistics improve and match the desired narrative! Wish that was a /s but it's just what's happening now and happened then.
VeejayRampay 1y ago
don't you worry, people in the public sector who want everything to be private will make sure that the BLS becomes shit enough that the private alternative will end up being appealing, we've seen that millions of times before
ksherlock 1y ago
With this and SCOTUS neutering Humphrey’s Executor (with Federal Reserve penumbras -- for now) I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Like the judiciary, nominated by President, confirmed by the senate, funded by congress, impeachable, limited executive authority, etc.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  If we're launching a fourth branch of government, it should be explicitly aimed at enforcing the Constitution on the government. Having the judiciary try to do that and all the other adjudication is not working.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  We thought we already had that for a bunch of stuff. Turns out, words on paper don't matter if Congress says nothing, the Executive goes rampant, and the SCOTUS either stays suspiciously quiet or gives an approving nod and wink here and there.
- krapp 1y ago
  >I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Now you have four problems, as it were. If the thesis is that the government can't be trusted to run its own affairs, then more government isn't a solution. The actual "fourth branch" of government is supposed to be the people, either giving a shit and being engaged in their civic duty and not electing tyrants for entertainment value or to "own the libs," or else doing the other thing that Americans love to talk about doing.
- mtts 1y ago
  Interestingly, this is what the EU is. After WW2 it was decided to set things up so that European countries no longer could wage war against each other. Hence starting out with coal and steel (no war without those). In such a setup, lack of democratic oversight is not a bug but a feature. It prevents democratically elected but possibly not entirely stable governments from doing something stupid. The drawback, of course, is that it also prevents democratically elected and intensely well meaning governments from doing the right thing if the supranational entity does not wish to facilitate that right thing. This setup works (after a fashion) for a group of small and fairly weak countries, but for a single large and powerful country like the US there simply isn’t a supranational entity powerful enough to reign it in.
TacticalCoder 1y ago
More state-loving propaganda from big government afficionados. I want a minimal government enforcing both internal and external property and ensuring private property rights are respected. And that's it. The government debt is in the tens of trillions. Government deficit is more than a trillion. No, more government and more government-loving propaganda is not what's needed.
thisisit 1y ago
Nate Silver has a piece on this: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont... The point being that revisions can be huge. Given the climate created by the TACO-ing over tariffs its not surprising that these numbers are inconsistent. And Trump keeps rewriting history about the numbers impacting elections. The last number before elections were the Oct numbers released on 1-Nov-24. That was abysmal at 12k jobs. Trump even complained about in his campaign speeches. But never let truth stand in the way of Trump and his supporters. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.ht...
emorning3 1y ago
[dead]

96 points by petethomas 1y ago

https://archive.ph/el7mM https://archive.ph/el7mM

>As a result, a company’s data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients — it won’t capture the economy as whole. If no one needs some data doesn't that imply capturing it is a waste of time and energy?

nemomarx 1y ago
People who are not the clients could need accurate information about how the total market is doing?
mlinhares 1y ago
Everyone needs trustworthy employment data as this affects every single business in the country. If you don't know what the real employment rate is and you see your business going down you might think the problem is your business and not the whole economy. You can't run a modern country without collecting real world data about the country's economy.
- parineum 1y ago
  how would that change your actions? Would it make you feel better about your business failing?
  - altcognito 1y ago
    If employment is strong, you might add marketing, because maybe you're not doing enough to get the money that is clearly being passed around. If employment is weak, you might cut staff yourself, or maybe cut costs elsewhere. You might change your product mix to serve a different set of customers. You could change pricing. No. It is not about feeling better.
- blitzar 1y ago
  > real world data about the country's economy The data is backward looking, sometimes by as much as 3 months, rarely less than a month old. The only way the "data" knows there is a reccession is if it stared 3/4 of a year ago. If you are a CEO or running a business and you are blaming your business decisions on the stats from 3 months ago that came out today you should get out of the chair and let someone with a brain sit in it.
regularization 1y ago
Karl Marx used the British government Blue Books he found in the Reading Room of the British Museum to write Capital. If the British government wasn't publishing Blue Books in the 19th century, he would have had more difficulty forming his theories.
altcognito 1y ago
The whole paragraph explains it: > Private companies are in the business of making a profit, and to do that they need to attract customers. Some customers are more profitable than others. As a result, a company’s data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients — it won’t capture the economy as whole. Honestly, it is a very, very good paragraph. There is a slavish devotion to the idea that markets are efficient and that is the most desirable outcome in all situations. If you are in the business of being a government and running a country for all of your citizens, you need all the data, not just select aspects of it, and not just those that tell a particular story.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >you need all the data There is an infinite amount of data. And most of it is useless. Governments do not need to know how many fry cooks read exactly 3 novels from authors who names end with a letter in the first half of the alphabet in the last year.
  - altcognito 1y ago
    Reductio ad absurdum, sure. So that is why it is important to understand that the government needs data for it's purposes (and not more than that). Restricting data to the narrow purposes of whichever company is willing to pay to produce select economic statistics will leave everyone worse off.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      >Restricting data to the narrow purposes of whichever company This isn't what the article said. It essentially said the data would be based off what people who use the data need. If the government needs some data it would still be able to get it.
      - altcognito 1y ago
        There is so much missing in what you're responding with, and I'm not even sure you're contradicting what's being said. Lets just start with something simple: Are you assuming that the government only needs what people are willing to pay for?
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
The federal reserve certainly needs that data when they are trying to decide on interest rate adjustments.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Soon they won't need any data, they can just ask Trump what the rate should be.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Does the Fed use BLS data for that or BEA employment data (BEA does use the BLS data as an input, so they aren't completely independent, but they also make adjustments to make them consistent with other BEA measures and I wonder if changes in BLS methodology or reliability will simply produce greater divergence between BLS and BEA employment information). I mean, the Fed uses BEA PCE data and not BLS CPI data for inflation, so it would seem consistent for them to use BEA employment data as well. Of course. if manipulating the source of the popular headline figures doesn't have the desired impact on the Fed, Trump would eventually probably exert the same pressure on BEA.

FrustratedMonky 1y ago

With the shoot the messenger management style. Will the BLS ever be trustworthy again? What happens to markets when we can't trust any government statistics.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
See, what they really need to do is release the politically-desired results in press releases while sending the real information using steganographic concealment in the page's logo. We must construct a Truman Show around Dear Leader for our own survival. /s Previous users of this data will seek alternative, less precise signals elsewhere and likely use conservative, pessimistic guesstimates that will tend to be risk-adverse and not encourage expansion or investment.
noitpmeder 1y ago
Maybe the best move at this point is to move toward the BLS releasing all the raw data, but do not publish conclusions of their own? Then at least you have a central "unbiased" (if that's ever an actual state) agency responsible for collection, and leave it up to the more polarized outlets/statisticians/... to produce their own interpretations. E.g. similar to Census data -- central data collection managed by govt, generalized anonymous data released for interpretation by anyone.
- croes 1y ago
  That opens the door for lots of Wrong conclusions either lack of knowledge and maliciousness. Statistics is often counterintuitive.
  - noitpmeder 1y ago
    Sure, but the alternative is implicitly trusting the conclusions and interpretations the govt agency, who are (almost assuredly) humans with biases and not impartial robots. It's a lot harder to attack general best practice statistic collection than it is to throw shade at an editorial. (not that certain administrations have issues attacking best practice science) Issue also arise "easily" when the people charged with producing editorials are political appointees who are easy targets for subsequent administrations looking to shift blame. (seems we're at this stage now)

jacobyoder 1y ago

> Instead of firing the commissioner, the president should be giving the agency a raise in the form of a bigger budget. The goal should be to restore public trust in government statistics, not undermine it. When you believe that government should not be providing many services, or doing most of what it currently does overall, why would you want to bolster trust in government statistics? Those statistics might contradict the administration, which is not a goal of the administration and its backers.

noitpmeder 1y ago
Exactly. Instead of battling with their own internal departments when they show lack-luster numbers in good faith, they can just blame the "agendas" of the non-blessed private sector companies who show the same data. Even better, they can exult the virtues of select private sector companies who show "good" "approved" data. What? No, no conflict of interest that members of the President's immediate family happens to hold board seats in those "approved" companies.
hypeatei 1y ago
I understand why articles like this are written and why we have these conversations but it all feels like we're sane washing this administration. Any other administration (especially a Democrat) firing the head of BLS due to unsavory numbers would be a scandal on its own. Yet, we're seven months into this one with multiple corruption scandals flooding the zone. It just seems crazy that we're here justifying basic concepts of government/public service and not outright calling this out for what it is.
- throwanem 1y ago
  Right. That's a good deal of what gets them away with it. You have to crush this stuff while it's small.
  - piva00 1y ago
    Unfortunately there are lots of people on the sidelines that watch them screaming "censorship!", "persecution!", "injustice!" and fall for it. Any act against them is met with whining and fake outrage, and it works politically. You can see this in action even in here, a forum where most people are more well-educated than 90% of the global population, they still swallow those cries as if this administration is the victim. What is even more amusing and weird is how much the same side likes to scream "stop being a victim" while continuously playing into victimising themselves.

chasing 1y ago

That’s the point. When Trump disagrees with facts the facts must be destroyed. When people are actually trying to solve problems they desire more information, not less.

dionian 1y ago
The problem is the BLS was putting out wildly incorrect facts
- chasing 1y ago
  Yes, they had that bias towards reality that authoritarians can’t stand.
- croes 1y ago
  They put out estimations and numbers based on reported data. When the reported data changed they changed their data too. That‘s not putting out wildly incorrect facts that’s putting out data based on currently known facts
- unethical_ban 1y ago
  That claim has never been backed up with evidence.
derbOac 1y ago
I think this pattern of behavior needs to be cast as incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality. Avoiding transparency, rigorous analysis, and competitive disagreement and review is a sign that one cannot make a convincing argument, or does not have courage to do so. I don't think they care about the morality of it, or see themselves as morally justified.
- chasing 1y ago
  > incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality Why not all three?

root_axis 1y ago

Presumably private firms will become a necessary component of economic projections since BLS statistics will be less trustworthy going forward.

dv_dt 1y ago
We have been seeing news reporting, media, and education private organizations knuckling under from pressure by the administration - is there any reason to believe that we would not see the same from data reporting companies
- root_axis 1y ago
  Fair point, but private organizations would at least have a financial incentive to give accurate numbers since that's they're business, if they earn a reputation of unreliability then there'd be no reason to pay them, you could just trust the government numbers for free.
  - jeffhwang 1y ago
    There's significant evidence contradicting this hypothesis. See industry analysts like Gartner, IDC, etc. who all ask tech firms to "pay to play" for better rankings in their reports. As well as the ratings agencies like Moody's, S&P's, and Fitch during the 2008 financial crisis. These ratings agencies were paid by the banks selling CDOs, MBS, and other debt derivatives that were especially tied to the US housing market. The agencies were incentivized to not downgrade those products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the_subprime_crisis#Competitive_pressure_to_lower_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...
    - root_axis 1y ago
      This makes sense. Thanks for the info.
    - tristor 1y ago
      > See industry analysts like Gartner, IDC, etc. who all ask tech firms to "pay to play" for better rankings in their reports. Do you have any evidence of this happening? I've been involved on the side of the firm in many of these analyst reports, and I've never seen this happen. What /does/ happen is that to be listed at all, e.g. to have the analyst invest time/resources to review you, you have to pay. They don't exhaustively review every company in the segment or every product in the segment, regardless of size and market position. They only review those who pay to be reviewed or are large enough in market position that they are must-reviews (almost all of which also pay). But I've never seen the rankings/outcome dictated by pay at all. Much to my chagrin sometimes, the analyst will lower your ranking due to something I may have felt was a small issue, but they considered a large issue. Analyst Relations is a major investment area for large tech companies, and given my exposure over the last nearly decade, I've never seen any form of quid pro quo / money changing hands.

softwaredoug 1y ago

Counterpoint: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Doesn't seem to be a counterpoint?
altcognito 1y ago
(Great post/article!) I was so confused as to why you said counterpoint -- it is deep in the article, if at all. > If the government’s jobs data is considered biased or unreliable, Wall Street will have other places to look. ADP reports figures on private payrolls, for instance. (And it also tells a bearish story: ADP showed a net loss of jobs in June, for instance.) Meanwhile, Gallup once tracked employment numbers on a weekly basis based on its large-scale surveys and could resume that effort. Or investment banks like Goldman Sachs might conclude they could have a competitive edge by tracking their own economic data. But in the following paragraph he points out that the numbers aren't likely to be as accurate, comprehensive, or as reassuring as numbers generated by the government. Overall though it is a really good article worth a share of its own.

StopTheWorld 1y ago

Should point out this is not the first time the BLS came under serious fire, politically. When the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 1995, they set up a commission (Boskin commission) that said inflation had been overstated, and henceforth cut Social Security cost of living adjustments.

rtkwe 1y ago
Cuts will continue until the statistics improve and match the desired narrative! Wish that was a /s but it's just what's happening now and happened then.

VeejayRampay 1y ago

don't you worry, people in the public sector who want everything to be private will make sure that the BLS becomes shit enough that the private alternative will end up being appealing, we've seen that millions of times before

ksherlock 1y ago

With this and SCOTUS neutering Humphrey’s Executor (with Federal Reserve penumbras -- for now) I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Like the judiciary, nominated by President, confirmed by the senate, funded by congress, impeachable, limited executive authority, etc.

andrewflnr 1y ago
If we're launching a fourth branch of government, it should be explicitly aimed at enforcing the Constitution on the government. Having the judiciary try to do that and all the other adjudication is not working.
actionfromafar 1y ago
We thought we already had that for a bunch of stuff. Turns out, words on paper don't matter if Congress says nothing, the Executive goes rampant, and the SCOTUS either stays suspiciously quiet or gives an approving nod and wink here and there.
krapp 1y ago
>I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Now you have four problems, as it were. If the thesis is that the government can't be trusted to run its own affairs, then more government isn't a solution. The actual "fourth branch" of government is supposed to be the people, either giving a shit and being engaged in their civic duty and not electing tyrants for entertainment value or to "own the libs," or else doing the other thing that Americans love to talk about doing.
mtts 1y ago
Interestingly, this is what the EU is. After WW2 it was decided to set things up so that European countries no longer could wage war against each other. Hence starting out with coal and steel (no war without those). In such a setup, lack of democratic oversight is not a bug but a feature. It prevents democratically elected but possibly not entirely stable governments from doing something stupid. The drawback, of course, is that it also prevents democratically elected and intensely well meaning governments from doing the right thing if the supranational entity does not wish to facilitate that right thing. This setup works (after a fashion) for a group of small and fairly weak countries, but for a single large and powerful country like the US there simply isn’t a supranational entity powerful enough to reign it in.

TacticalCoder 1y ago

More state-loving propaganda from big government afficionados. I want a minimal government enforcing both internal and external property and ensuring private property rights are respected. And that's it. The government debt is in the tens of trillions. Government deficit is more than a trillion. No, more government and more government-loving propaganda is not what's needed.

thisisit 1y ago

Nate Silver has a piece on this: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont-fool https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont... The point being that revisions can be huge. Given the climate created by the TACO-ing over tariffs its not surprising that these numbers are inconsistent. And Trump keeps rewriting history about the numbers impacting elections. The last number before elections were the Oct numbers released on 1-Nov-24. That was abysmal at 12k jobs. Trump even complained about in his campaign speeches. But never let truth stand in the way of Trump and his supporters. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.ht...

emorning3 1y ago

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