11 ms·

What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

362 points by inaros 7mo ago

booleandilemma 7mo ago
It's what we regularly accuse China of, right? While we're on the topic, why is it that we love to point the finger at other countries' corruption and we completely ignore the very obvious, rampant corruption in our own government? And I mean on both sides - Democrat and Republican. Insider trading, revolving door policies, etc. That's not even mentioning why we have people like Luigi Mangione. That's a whole separate elephant in the room.
- tomrod 7mo ago
  Not accuse. Observed. This is a lot of similar-sounding-but-different problems. EDIT: For those not realizing that China has a long history of less-trustworthy stats, along with Iran and some other governments, here is some reading you can consider [0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Happening%20to%20China%27s%20GDP%20Statistics.pdf https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha... [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w29349 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-sparse-pls_groen.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9217.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9... [4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050022018/original/Nightlights.pdf https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050... [5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 [7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 [8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/measuring-quarterly-economic-growth-from-outer-space-518876 https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea... [9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w23323.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233... [11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 [12] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w15199.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151... [13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sanctions-and-Export-Deflection-Evidence-from-Iran.pdf https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/S... [14] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 [15] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-lights_clark.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [16] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043951X14000753 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- zzleeper 7mo ago
  Please don't "both side" this. As much as there is corruption in any administration, R or D, the levels we are seeing now are completely unprecedent and blunt. EG: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-email-soldier https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-emai... (from earlier this morning on the HN frontpage)
  - fhdkweig 7mo ago
    On that topic, how many presidents in the past have had merch stores after elected? I can understand fundraising during a campaign, but after winning or losing, the fundraising usually stops.
    - bcrosby95 7mo ago
      Merch. NFTs. Playing cards. Crypto coins. A phone. It's like we have Dennis Duffy as POTUS. If it were 40 years ago it would be like Reagan starting his own MLM.
      - fhdkweig 7mo ago
        And the worst part is, I don't think we will ever close this door. Even if the Democrats are in charge of the next presidency, the temptation of easy money will be too strong to resist. It wasn't done in the past, because it was assumed that the people would push back severely, but now that it is clear that they won't, it is full speed ahead.
    - jfengel 7mo ago
      The fundraising never stops, not even for lame ducks, because the money can always be delivered into related war chests. But here it is going directly to the President's pockets. That has never happened before.
echelon 7mo ago
I feel like we're dancing on the razor's edge. On the one hand: high inflation, tariffs, layoffs, unemployment, high interest rate, energy crisis. Tons of economic red flags flashing. On the other hand: AI is showing signs of being the next industrial revolution, we're re-industrializing, onshoring/friendshoring, and have a clear lead on chips and space tech at a time when it matters the most. It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust. Europe won't be able to catch that. They're too busy regulating ahead of the tech. They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up. If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either. In a runaway takeoff scenario, they replace all their factory workers with robots and quickly scale and cost optimize. If America is smart, we might be able to do that too. Our growth could accelerate or crater. These are wild times. More exciting than the last 20. America needs to start pumping out new energy projects. It needs to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to import PhD students. And we do need factories and raw inputs. The robots will take over for humans within a decade. If we stick the landing, we could be the new China right here at home. Edit: rate limited on replies, so updating my comment instead. Edit 2: Europe supplies the EUV lithography, but intelligence manifests higher up the stack. If we're talking rate limits, lots of countries supply critical inputs. I'm saying that Europe hasn't made strides towards developing their own models and infra, and it doesn't look like it's even close to starting to attack this problem. I want it to. Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put America back into the position it was in post-WWII. Manufacturing, tech, and science powerhouse in all the places that matter. Peers a generation or two behind. That's literally where America was after the war, and it looks like we could be teeing up for a repeat if it all doesn't unravel first. America needs to double down on investing in energy and factories now. It looks like it will pay off in a big way. Edit 4: > You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code I would be extremely geopolitically anxious to rely on another country's tech in a take off scenario. Those tokens might be diverted to US businesses and factories. Or the US might strong arm concessions out of Europe. Europe needs domestic capability for this now. It's not just Europe and sovereign nations. Workers and labor capital will be effectively frozen out of participation if there aren't open source equivalents. > This is an downright evil take on the current situation. It's just reality. Multipolarity means we're going to see a lot more of this type of framing, because it's what's happening on the ground.
Papazsazsa 7mo ago
[flagged]
- tomrod 7mo ago
  1900 to 2024 for the US. For Iran, China, USSR, for example, you had to back in estimates from observable benchmark information uncontaminated by dictatorships. You didn't have to do that with the US. The US standard has been to document and standardize approaches -- and identify when things are changed and why. This was not common across all economies. It does give us several similar streams, e.g several versions of unemployment.
  - xanthor 7mo ago
    Can you address any of the points the commenter made instead of retreating into an ideological non sequitur?
    - tomrod 7mo ago
      My comment was made prior to the parent's edit.Further, familiarity with the subject does not make an informed comment a non-sequitur. Happy reading. [0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Happening%20to%20China%27s%20GDP%20Statistics.pdf https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha... [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w29349 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-sparse-pls_groen.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9217.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9... [4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050022018/original/Nightlights.pdf https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050... [5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 [7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 [8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/measuring-quarterly-economic-growth-from-outer-space-518876 https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea... [9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w23323.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233... [11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 [12] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w15199.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151... [13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sanctions-and-Export-Deflection-Evidence-from-Iran.pdf https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/S... [14] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 [15] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-lights_clark.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [16] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043951X14000753 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
paulsutter 7mo ago
[flagged]
- testdelacc1 7mo ago
  Why is there always a both sides-er in these discussions? FWIW, one party generally deferred to nonpartisan commissions to draw boundaries to avoid gerrymandering. So one “side” did far more than propose a solution, they did the right thing even when the other side wasn’t. Gerrymandering is the worst example to pick when you’re pushing both-sides-bad.
  - paulsutter 7mo ago
    Great! So please explain what algorithms are used by these "nonpartisan" commissions?
    - unselect5917 7mo ago
      They're not.
    - testdelacc1 7mo ago
      I’ll reply in good faith even though I detect sarcasm in your comment. Generally nonpartisan commissions prioritise contiguity and compactness. There is an element of “I know it when I see it” because you’re trying to avoid both packing (packing minority voters from disparate areas into one) and cracking (distributing a minority district like Salt Like City into its 4 neighbouring districts, ensuring the city can’t vote for … whoever cities generally vote for). So there is a human element involved, but these commissions generally do a reasonable job. You know how we know? States that move from nonpartisan to partisan commissions cause a dramatic change in the results of the next election. If the nonpartisan was biased like you imply with your air quotes, we wouldn’t observe that effect. Also there are algorithms to draw fair districts without needing human judgement. See this paper[1] that expounds on one such algorithm. 1 - Swamy, R., King, D. M., & Jacobson, S. H. (2022). Multiobjective optimization for politically fair districting: A scalable multilevel approach. Operations Research, 71(2), 536–562. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311 https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311
looksjjhg 7mo ago
It’s amazing and terrifying watching an empire die
- lpa22 7mo ago
  The US is the best 400 mil population country in the world
  - ndr42 7mo ago
    What does "best" means? Which population size would you consider comparable to the US (i assume you don't meant it in a way in which Germany would be the best 83,6 mil population country in the World)?
    - rrr_oh_man 7mo ago
      > i assume you don't meant it in a way in which Germany would be the best 83,6 mil population country in the World I think that's exactly what OP meant.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - HarHarVeryFunny 7mo ago
    Well, it's certainly not the "best" if you remove that population stipulation. A bit like saying that Walmart is the best 4000 store grocery store in the USA.
  - tastyface 7mo ago
    What's the point of this comment? It says little, accomplishes nothing, and convinces no one of anything.
- ambicapter 7mo ago
  You should see it from the inside!
  - 7mo ago
chmorgan_ 7mo ago
[dead]
readthenotes1 7mo ago
The reported economic data has been squirrelly for many years. For instance, the employment report (establishment survey) has an error rate or +/- 122,000 with 90% confidence--completely swamping the actual value. It be like I said I was 2m tall on my dating profile and one date is frightened off by my being -0.2m tall and another by me being 4m tall. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm# https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm#
- lostlogin 7mo ago
  That dating analogy would work better if America wasn’t messing up every relationship with lunatic behaviour. Everyone swiped left long ago.
- twoodfin 7mo ago
  That’s 122,000 out of a labor force size of 170 million!! Yes, month to month you have large absolute error bars vs. the monthly delta, but being an imperfect monthly barometer of labor force momentum is only the headline use of the establishment report.
- pastage 7mo ago
  This is the point #1 in the article, the need for better sampling methods. You do not get that easily.
throwawa1 7mo ago
Its been unreliable my entire life. Every year the economy gets better but life gets worse. You can't even recognize the country any more.
- CalRobert 7mo ago
  The economy can get better while life gets worse for most people. After all, an economy where 95% of the work was done by enslaved people might produce amazing profits and a very high GDP....
  - Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
    GDP is a measure of economic activity, and goes up when people are forced to rebuild after natural disasters etc. %Debt to GDP excluding military pay and allowances indicates how your grandchildren will live. Above >130% they will be poor, and remain poor indefinitely. You may disagree, but it is not like anyone wants this to happen. The economic conservatives were compromised, and went insane =3
    - CalRobert 7mo ago
      I wish it were easier to measure well-being. Someone who works 20 hours a week and half has as much money may well be enjoying life more than someone working 40 hours a week, but we don't quantify this well. When I lived in California I was always weirded out by colleagues talking about how they never took vacations. It's like bragging about being poor.
      - Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
        Generally, there is a fundamental philosophical difference between currency and wealth. In silicon valley, a middle class life is well over >$180k/yr, as Rent-seeking economics is unsustainable. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a glorious day =3 The ikigai chart helps some highlight better options: https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-drained-at-work https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-d...
mark_l_watson 7mo ago
The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they can while the 'grabbing is still good.' Without this immoral looting, our government could do a better job of protecting US citizens as our empire collapses.
- jmull 7mo ago
  "for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up" That's quite a claim. A "whopper" one might say.
- smitty1e 7mo ago
  Depending upon which party controls the White House, numbers seem to be released to support a predictable narrative, then adjusted later. But that's probably just my lying' eyes.
  - cyanydeez 7mo ago
    Now they just stop releasing. Thats a sizeable change. Even if you have a known bias, we can adjusy for that bias. But if you just stop collecting data? No, these are not your father's red versus blue stats.
    - smitty1e 7mo ago
      One is safe to assume partisan shenanigans with every single government program and number until proven otherwise.
      - cyanydeez 7mo ago
        Thats great; that assumption can be used to adjust expectations of results. But you can't gaze into an abyss of "I told the guys to just not collect the data" That's beyond partisan, that's anti-social nonsense. All this bothsides stuff is the difference between a black hole and a mobius strip.
int32_64 7mo ago
"The change may cause policymakers to misjudge the economy’s health, investors to lose confidence in the reliability of the data, and the public to disengage from participating in official measures altogether." Many neoliberal Western countries with good data have completely fumbled their economies post-GFC and post-Covid, just look at Canada's disastrous GDP per capita growth.
- nikanj 7mo ago
  Canada’s population has increased at an astonishing rate, I wonder if that affects the per capita numbers. If you have the same industry in 2011 and 2026 but population went from 35 million to 42 million, per capita the numbers look terrible
  - next_xibalba 7mo ago
    According to OECD [1], population growth outran capital, housing, and infrastructure. So it's kind of like they didn't have enough "slots" to plug all of these additional people into. They don't claim this is to only or even primary cause of Canada's weak per-capita GDP growth though. As you would expect, there are many, many causes. [1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/05/oecd-economic-surveys-canada-2025_ee18a269/28f9e02c-en.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
arjie 7mo ago
One of the things I do like about the US, and that I think is a reason for America's ability to meet the challenges this country faces is that it has good data collection and aggregation mechanisms: from the seemingly-banal surveys and so on to satellite remote-sensing. There's three more years to go but afterwards (and perhaps even post the mid-terms) we should be able to hammer back some of this nonsense like being upset about job reports not showing favourable information and so on. Good information allows good decision-making and it's important we don't break that. Hopefully the current surge of low-quality corrupt executive choices isn't met by a counter-surge that kicks out people like Jerome Powell because he's a multi-millionaire capitalist or whatever. I think it won't be. The establishment folks are mostly sensible. It's the new crop of "no property tax" and "no income tax for tips" and "no tax for under $100k earners" and so on that makes me worried, but I'm hoping it will all settle down soon. We'll have to find better surveying methods than the phone surveys but provided #2 and #3 are solved in the article, which is just a matter of switching the admin, then we should be able to.
- mikeyouse 7mo ago
  This ratchet effect of partially righting the ship every four years followed by drunken sailors YOLOing further into a reef because the ‘responsible party’ didn’t fix things fast enough is unsustainable. No clue how it ends but it’s so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage.
  - david422 7mo ago
    > so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage Tangentially related, there was a local property nearby that had these large, aesthetic trees in the yard. The house was sold, a developer cut them all and flipped the house for sale. Probably took 50+ years to grow, gone in an hour.
  - hattmall 7mo ago
    I really have a hard time understanding the analogy of the "responsible party" existing, when it was objectively the Biden administration that did the most damage to the average American.
alexfromapex 7mo ago
[flagged]
- lkbm 7mo ago
  I don't know why I'd trust TikToks when I also shop at multiple grocery stores every week. Maybe there are a few outliers, but food inflation is definitely nowhere near 75=100+% YoY. The official price inflation numbers are much closer to what I've personally observed irl than what you see in viral TikToks. TikToks get attention for being outlandish/exceptional, not for being an accurate representation of the norm.
- iso1631 7mo ago
  Any many items don't. If you select the biggest changes then sure. My grocery spending is up about 45% since 2016. CPI in the UK is up 38% in the same time, but then my kids are teenagers and eating more.
- NewJazz 7mo ago
  I remember seeing a lot of social media posts during the Biden admin about grocery prices... Turns out a lot of folks were just comparing the same cart, not taking into account discontinued items that were being auto-replaced with more expensive goods, or things like that. It wasn't always an accurate representation.
- hattmall 7mo ago
  The issue is that this isn't really supply constrained inflation. This is price discovery and discrimination by major retailers. The amount of coupons, conditional sale prices, and member savings has skyrocketed. I have paid rather intense attention to the price of groceries since 2015 when I started purchasing for my business kitchen as we started providing prepared meals. In general, prices are very close to 2015 levels for the important goods. I have some basic guidelines for an acceptable range that are from when I started in 2015. Milk: $2.50 / g Frozen Fruit $2/ lb Cheese $3 / lb Wheat $3 / 5lb Oats $3 / 40 40 oz Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast $2 / lb These are all prices that I am still able to routinely meet or exceed in 2026.
ianhorn 7mo ago
Two things come to mind: - Whatever you measure gets optimized. - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. I have no idea which is more relevant here. Looking at the first one, my whole life people have been complaining that the measures that get touted in political discourse don't reflect quality of life. So if we stop looking at those as measures because they cease to be reliable, maybe they stop getting myopically optimized and we can get less myopic about what we prioritize in aggregate. But looking at the second one, I've also wondered whether those measures really do reflect typical quality of life, and it's just that the people doing worse than typical will always see the measure as the wrong measure. So then we'd be losing the ability to prioritize actually useful things. In my heart though, I kinda lean towards the first one. I've been in enough orgs where "the dashboard goes up" is incentivized to the detriment of the unmeasurable things that actually matter to the org.
doctaj 7mo ago
Wouldn't it be funny if they "fixed" spam calling in order to make it so that the government could call people again?
- logicallee 7mo ago
  the answer is reliable money. how much money would you pick up a verified 1 minute survey from the real u.s. government for? I'd do it for $5. (=$300 per hour) and hope for as many calls as possible. For comparison purposes the U.S. budget is about $20,000 per person ($7t budget, a bit under 350m people), so the government could definitely pay you to answer their "spam" calls. (While mandating that first parties show that it is the real U.S. government and not a spammer.) So it would be your actual first party telephone showing "Answer this real call from the U.S. government for $5 instantly, 1 minute average call time." I think that would be a good way to get good data fast. What do you think? (At the same time, impersonating the U.S. government would remain illegal, and the first party would ensure the payment is real.)
kittikitti 7mo ago
People in Florida, when I tell them about my background working with data, often scoff and claim that the data can be changed to spread lies. They have a government who arrested a data scientist when she published information about Coronavirus. This is prevalent across all of America, especially after DOGE, who encourage fraud so the data supports their political interests. I think the reliability problem is very bad. It's not just that the US government is encouraging fraud, it's also that the average American hates AI and data science. Usually, the public would prefer reliable data, but in this case, Americans seem to prefer corruption just to spite the AI. We're certainly living in a post-truth country. By vilifying higher education, the assumption that Americans can interpret data is challenging. Therefore, Americans are consuming biased information in their online bubbles because their media is comfortable with fraudulent data. A concrete example of what happens whenUS economic data becomes unreliable is employment numbers. At the end of 2025, the government couldn't produce any data because of the government shutdown. Most quants and analysts utilized ADP numbers instead. A few years ago, the ADP payroll numbers and the projections by the government were perceived as aligned. This is no longer the case, and most traders rely more on ADP indicators for things like the unemployment rate. Speculating on what other data is fraudulent, I suspect that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will become meaningless. It was supposed to be an indicator for economic wellbeing but now best describes wealth inequality. Nominal GDP is a slightly better measure because it adjusts for things like inflation but it's based on government produced data. Lastly, there is widespread fraud in climate data in order to deny climate change. The data feeds into economic models and affects property values and insurance rates. I have personally received gag orders from government agencies from both the US and Europe for publishing environmental data.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  > It's not just that the US government is encouraging fraud, it's also that the average American hates AI and data science. When all they see is it being used to push narratives, they'd rather not have it at all. Also, "There Are Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" dates to the 1800s. This is nothing new.
  - XorNot 7mo ago
fifticon 7mo ago
the comment section for this post is a shit show, most of the main comments have been downvoted to gray-land.
- estimator7292 7mo ago
  No, the bad, lazy, and outright incorrect takes are downvoted to oblivion. They just have a lot of child comments because HNers like nothing more than rebutting the dumbest opinions.
  - mlrtime 7mo ago
    I disagree, top voted comments are threads comparing the collapse of US to USSR, like wtf, really? I wish HN would just stop with any political motivated threads, it brings out the worst in people here and there is 0 debate. The site is obviously mostly urban progressives and they will not allow any replies so you get the same hive mind nonsense as reddit/twitter etc..
bitroughj 7mo ago
Thankfully, we can totally trust noneconomic data like the census. No biases, design artifacts or legislative meddling there. Edit: noneconomic not none comic.
eagerpace 7mo ago
[flagged]
upsidepotential 7mo ago
The claim that economic data was ever 'accurate' is flawed. The real signal lies in the variability over time.
tootie 7mo ago
The article says: US Government surveys are suffering from poor response rates and decreasing budgets so business leaders will have to explore other options to improve reliability. This thread says: American Empire is dying and the world is a fraud. Are all of you bots? Is apocalyptic cynicism this widespread? Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce. We have enjoyed an incredibly high standard for breadth, depth and quality of data and it's now proving unsustainable. Political manipulation thus far remains a specter to be wary of, but there's no indication any headline numbers are inaccurate. The downstream affects on policy are equally off in the distance maybe never to appear.
- MarkusQ 7mo ago
  I was just thinking the same thing. The vitriol/projective pessimism on display above seems wildly inauthentic.
- orf 7mo ago
  > Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce In terms of absolute number of countries, maybe, but is this accurate out of comparable peer countries?
- mlrtime 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - squibonpig 7mo ago
    Do you like Trump and why?
    - mlrtime 7mo ago
      Do you think someone's political belief system can be summed up with a 'Do you like <president>'? Do I like him? I don't know him at all. Maybe if I had a chance to sit down for a dinner and ask him questions I could give you that answer.
lateforwork 7mo ago
Speaking of US economic data reliability: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/economy/inflation-cpi-pce-methodology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/economy/inflatio... Story title: Change in Data Sources Led to Lower Inflation Reading Excerpts: “On its merits, you can defend the change,” said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, a forecasting firm. “Optically, it’s just not a good look in an environment when people are worried about political interference.” Mr. Sharif said he did not believe the change was politically motivated. But Courtney Shupert, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives, another forecasting firm, said such decisions undermine public confidence in the statistical system. “It seems like we are moving to more of a vague, uncertain, cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market participants less confident in the data that we do receive,” Ms. Shupert said.
- tomrod 7mo ago
  The US fired many of its government-employed economists. The administration head tried to fire people at NOAA his first term, until he got a yes-head. Data was deliberately buried in a mad rush the first few weeks and months of 2025. I'm not quite sure Mr. Sharif's opinion is well-founded given the known facts. [0] https://digitalgovernmenthub.org/library/federal-data-are-disappearing-as-statistical-agencies-face-budget-cuts-and-political-pressure/ https://digitalgovernmenthub.org/library/federal-data-are-di... [1] https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2026/03/report-nearly-95k-science-employees-left-government-trump-downsized-agency-workforces/411888/ https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2026/03/report-nearly-95k-...
up2isomorphism 7mo ago
US economy data is not even WORM data anymore, lol. Let alone to be accurate.
- marcosdumay 7mo ago
  Are you talking about the data revisions organization publish or is the data really changing silently between views?
Sam6late 7mo ago
That will lead to serious problems, as in the case of China, underestimating threats lead to losing edge, from EV to robots and other vital tech, and without experts to ground policy in reality, the country risks making erratic market moves and failing to spot risks from adversaries like China or Russia.Add to that inexperienced staff in the administration who makes the U.S. easier to manipulate.
comet_browser 7mo ago
[flagged]
stevenwoo 7mo ago
The books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor (by two of the winners of past years Nobel Economics award, both books are a simple thesis and lots of historical examples IMHO) will have to be updated to include this and other current events in the USA. This is one of many aspects mentioned in both books.
bmitch3020 7mo ago
It's sad how counter productive the unreliable economic data is. The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive. And the people looking for a job know how hard it is to find work. But this administration wants to say everything is fine, and fires those that say otherwise. So now unemployment seems under control even though it's not great. Now the Fed, with their dual mandate to maintain a healthy labor market and control inflation, is considering raising rates. If it turns out the job market was much worse than we realized, raising rates could tank the economy more than it already is tanking. All because they wanted to pretend everything is fine.
- roysting 7mo ago
  Unfortunately America has pretended everything was fine for at the very least 130 years now, arguably longer, and we have allowed an extremely predatory, toxic, parasitic, fraudulent, thieving and lying set of people plunder not only the money through "money printing" but also plunder the very government through various types and forms of judicial and legislative authoritarian fraud, which was then installed in people's minds through education as the acceptable norm even though there was nothing "democratic" of free, let alone Constitutional about it.
- reddozen 7mo ago
  > The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive. This isn't born out in polling data. Grocery store prices went from being all anyone talked about to magically solved January 20, 2025. If only Biden had pressed the magic "solve inflation" button
scoofy 7mo ago
It seems nobody has posted this, but the only reason why this would ever be an issue is the principal–agent problem. When a representative democracy has a significant divergence between the representatives and the people being represented, we encounter this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
coldtea 7mo ago
Hasen't that been the case for decades?
- fuzzfactor 7mo ago
  Really, when you look at it first hand over more than just a few decades, what's all the debate about? What happens is what you're seeing right now. Same as ever. Any unflattering statistics still existing that were originally designed to reveal, were reversed during applicable times of desperation in case they revealed too much. Leaving almost nothing that does not serve to conceal instead, often more well crafted to conceal the exact thing expected and relied upon to be revealed.

362 points by inaros 7mo ago

It's what we regularly accuse China of, right? While we're on the topic, why is it that we love to point the finger at other countries' corruption and we completely ignore the very obvious, rampant corruption in our own government? And I mean on both sides - Democrat and Republican. Insider trading, revolving door policies, etc. That's not even mentioning why we have people like Luigi Mangione. That's a whole separate elephant in the room.

tomrod 7mo ago
Not accuse. Observed. This is a lot of similar-sounding-but-different problems. EDIT: For those not realizing that China has a long history of less-trustworthy stats, along with Iran and some other governments, here is some reading you can consider [0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Happening%20to%20China%27s%20GDP%20Statistics.pdf https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha... [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w29349 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-sparse-pls_groen.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9217.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9... [4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050022018/original/Nightlights.pdf https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050... [5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 [7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 [8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/measuring-quarterly-economic-growth-from-outer-space-518876 https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea... [9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w23323.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233... [11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 [12] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w15199.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151... [13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sanctions-and-Export-Deflection-Evidence-from-Iran.pdf https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/S... [14] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 [15] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-lights_clark.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [16] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043951X14000753 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
zzleeper 7mo ago
Please don't "both side" this. As much as there is corruption in any administration, R or D, the levels we are seeing now are completely unprecedent and blunt. EG: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-email-soldier https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-emai... (from earlier this morning on the HN frontpage)
- fhdkweig 7mo ago
  On that topic, how many presidents in the past have had merch stores after elected? I can understand fundraising during a campaign, but after winning or losing, the fundraising usually stops.
  - bcrosby95 7mo ago
    Merch. NFTs. Playing cards. Crypto coins. A phone. It's like we have Dennis Duffy as POTUS. If it were 40 years ago it would be like Reagan starting his own MLM.
    - fhdkweig 7mo ago
      And the worst part is, I don't think we will ever close this door. Even if the Democrats are in charge of the next presidency, the temptation of easy money will be too strong to resist. It wasn't done in the past, because it was assumed that the people would push back severely, but now that it is clear that they won't, it is full speed ahead.
  - jfengel 7mo ago
    The fundraising never stops, not even for lame ducks, because the money can always be delivered into related war chests. But here it is going directly to the President's pockets. That has never happened before.

echelon 7mo ago

I feel like we're dancing on the razor's edge. On the one hand: high inflation, tariffs, layoffs, unemployment, high interest rate, energy crisis. Tons of economic red flags flashing. On the other hand: AI is showing signs of being the next industrial revolution, we're re-industrializing, onshoring/friendshoring, and have a clear lead on chips and space tech at a time when it matters the most. It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust. Europe won't be able to catch that. They're too busy regulating ahead of the tech. They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up. If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either. In a runaway takeoff scenario, they replace all their factory workers with robots and quickly scale and cost optimize. If America is smart, we might be able to do that too. Our growth could accelerate or crater. These are wild times. More exciting than the last 20. America needs to start pumping out new energy projects. It needs to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to import PhD students. And we do need factories and raw inputs. The robots will take over for humans within a decade. If we stick the landing, we could be the new China right here at home. Edit: rate limited on replies, so updating my comment instead. Edit 2: Europe supplies the EUV lithography, but intelligence manifests higher up the stack. If we're talking rate limits, lots of countries supply critical inputs. I'm saying that Europe hasn't made strides towards developing their own models and infra, and it doesn't look like it's even close to starting to attack this problem. I want it to. Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put America back into the position it was in post-WWII. Manufacturing, tech, and science powerhouse in all the places that matter. Peers a generation or two behind. That's literally where America was after the war, and it looks like we could be teeing up for a repeat if it all doesn't unravel first. America needs to double down on investing in energy and factories now. It looks like it will pay off in a big way. Edit 4: > You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code I would be extremely geopolitically anxious to rely on another country's tech in a take off scenario. Those tokens might be diverted to US businesses and factories. Or the US might strong arm concessions out of Europe. Europe needs domestic capability for this now. It's not just Europe and sovereign nations. Workers and labor capital will be effectively frozen out of participation if there aren't open source equivalents. > This is an downright evil take on the current situation. It's just reality. Multipolarity means we're going to see a lot more of this type of framing, because it's what's happening on the ground.

Papazsazsa 7mo ago

[flagged]

tomrod 7mo ago
1900 to 2024 for the US. For Iran, China, USSR, for example, you had to back in estimates from observable benchmark information uncontaminated by dictatorships. You didn't have to do that with the US. The US standard has been to document and standardize approaches -- and identify when things are changed and why. This was not common across all economies. It does give us several similar streams, e.g several versions of unemployment.
- xanthor 7mo ago
  Can you address any of the points the commenter made instead of retreating into an ideological non sequitur?
  - tomrod 7mo ago
    My comment was made prior to the parent's edit.Further, familiarity with the subject does not make an informed comment a non-sequitur. Happy reading. [0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Happening%20to%20China%27s%20GDP%20Statistics.pdf https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha... [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w29349 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-sparse-pls_groen.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9217.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9... [4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050022018/original/Nightlights.pdf https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050... [5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733 [7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620 [8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/measuring-quarterly-economic-growth-from-outer-space-518876 https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea... [9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf [10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w23323.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233... [11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649 [12] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w15199.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151... [13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sanctions-and-Export-Deflection-Evidence-from-Iran.pdf https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/S... [14] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505 [15] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2020/epr_2020_china-lights_clark.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2... [16] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1043951X14000753 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...

paulsutter 7mo ago

[flagged]

testdelacc1 7mo ago
Why is there always a both sides-er in these discussions? FWIW, one party generally deferred to nonpartisan commissions to draw boundaries to avoid gerrymandering. So one “side” did far more than propose a solution, they did the right thing even when the other side wasn’t. Gerrymandering is the worst example to pick when you’re pushing both-sides-bad.
- paulsutter 7mo ago
  Great! So please explain what algorithms are used by these "nonpartisan" commissions?
  - unselect5917 7mo ago
    They're not.
  - testdelacc1 7mo ago
    I’ll reply in good faith even though I detect sarcasm in your comment. Generally nonpartisan commissions prioritise contiguity and compactness. There is an element of “I know it when I see it” because you’re trying to avoid both packing (packing minority voters from disparate areas into one) and cracking (distributing a minority district like Salt Like City into its 4 neighbouring districts, ensuring the city can’t vote for … whoever cities generally vote for). So there is a human element involved, but these commissions generally do a reasonable job. You know how we know? States that move from nonpartisan to partisan commissions cause a dramatic change in the results of the next election. If the nonpartisan was biased like you imply with your air quotes, we wouldn’t observe that effect. Also there are algorithms to draw fair districts without needing human judgement. See this paper[1] that expounds on one such algorithm. 1 - Swamy, R., King, D. M., & Jacobson, S. H. (2022). Multiobjective optimization for politically fair districting: A scalable multilevel approach. Operations Research, 71(2), 536–562. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311 https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2311

looksjjhg 7mo ago

It’s amazing and terrifying watching an empire die

lpa22 7mo ago
The US is the best 400 mil population country in the world
- ndr42 7mo ago
  What does "best" means? Which population size would you consider comparable to the US (i assume you don't meant it in a way in which Germany would be the best 83,6 mil population country in the World)?
  - rrr_oh_man 7mo ago
    > i assume you don't meant it in a way in which Germany would be the best 83,6 mil population country in the World I think that's exactly what OP meant.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- HarHarVeryFunny 7mo ago
  Well, it's certainly not the "best" if you remove that population stipulation. A bit like saying that Walmart is the best 4000 store grocery store in the USA.
- tastyface 7mo ago
  What's the point of this comment? It says little, accomplishes nothing, and convinces no one of anything.
ambicapter 7mo ago
You should see it from the inside!
- 7mo ago

chmorgan_ 7mo ago

[dead]

readthenotes1 7mo ago

The reported economic data has been squirrelly for many years. For instance, the employment report (establishment survey) has an error rate or +/- 122,000 with 90% confidence--completely swamping the actual value. It be like I said I was 2m tall on my dating profile and one date is frightened off by my being -0.2m tall and another by me being 4m tall. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm# https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm#

lostlogin 7mo ago
That dating analogy would work better if America wasn’t messing up every relationship with lunatic behaviour. Everyone swiped left long ago.
twoodfin 7mo ago
That’s 122,000 out of a labor force size of 170 million!! Yes, month to month you have large absolute error bars vs. the monthly delta, but being an imperfect monthly barometer of labor force momentum is only the headline use of the establishment report.
pastage 7mo ago
This is the point #1 in the article, the need for better sampling methods. You do not get that easily.

throwawa1 7mo ago

Its been unreliable my entire life. Every year the economy gets better but life gets worse. You can't even recognize the country any more.

CalRobert 7mo ago
The economy can get better while life gets worse for most people. After all, an economy where 95% of the work was done by enslaved people might produce amazing profits and a very high GDP....
- Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
  GDP is a measure of economic activity, and goes up when people are forced to rebuild after natural disasters etc. %Debt to GDP excluding military pay and allowances indicates how your grandchildren will live. Above >130% they will be poor, and remain poor indefinitely. You may disagree, but it is not like anyone wants this to happen. The economic conservatives were compromised, and went insane =3
  - CalRobert 7mo ago
    I wish it were easier to measure well-being. Someone who works 20 hours a week and half has as much money may well be enjoying life more than someone working 40 hours a week, but we don't quantify this well. When I lived in California I was always weirded out by colleagues talking about how they never took vacations. It's like bragging about being poor.
    - Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
      Generally, there is a fundamental philosophical difference between currency and wealth. In silicon valley, a middle class life is well over >$180k/yr, as Rent-seeking economics is unsustainable. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a glorious day =3 The ikigai chart helps some highlight better options: https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-drained-at-work https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-leadership/feeling-d...

mark_l_watson 7mo ago

The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they can while the 'grabbing is still good.' Without this immoral looting, our government could do a better job of protecting US citizens as our empire collapses.

jmull 7mo ago
"for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up" That's quite a claim. A "whopper" one might say.
smitty1e 7mo ago
Depending upon which party controls the White House, numbers seem to be released to support a predictable narrative, then adjusted later. But that's probably just my lying' eyes.
- cyanydeez 7mo ago
  Now they just stop releasing. Thats a sizeable change. Even if you have a known bias, we can adjusy for that bias. But if you just stop collecting data? No, these are not your father's red versus blue stats.
  - smitty1e 7mo ago
    One is safe to assume partisan shenanigans with every single government program and number until proven otherwise.
    - cyanydeez 7mo ago
      Thats great; that assumption can be used to adjust expectations of results. But you can't gaze into an abyss of "I told the guys to just not collect the data" That's beyond partisan, that's anti-social nonsense. All this bothsides stuff is the difference between a black hole and a mobius strip.

int32_64 7mo ago

"The change may cause policymakers to misjudge the economy’s health, investors to lose confidence in the reliability of the data, and the public to disengage from participating in official measures altogether." Many neoliberal Western countries with good data have completely fumbled their economies post-GFC and post-Covid, just look at Canada's disastrous GDP per capita growth.

nikanj 7mo ago
Canada’s population has increased at an astonishing rate, I wonder if that affects the per capita numbers. If you have the same industry in 2011 and 2026 but population went from 35 million to 42 million, per capita the numbers look terrible
- next_xibalba 7mo ago
  According to OECD [1], population growth outran capital, housing, and infrastructure. So it's kind of like they didn't have enough "slots" to plug all of these additional people into. They don't claim this is to only or even primary cause of Canada's weak per-capita GDP growth though. As you would expect, there are many, many causes. [1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/05/oecd-economic-surveys-canada-2025_ee18a269/28f9e02c-en.pdf https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

arjie 7mo ago

One of the things I do like about the US, and that I think is a reason for America's ability to meet the challenges this country faces is that it has good data collection and aggregation mechanisms: from the seemingly-banal surveys and so on to satellite remote-sensing. There's three more years to go but afterwards (and perhaps even post the mid-terms) we should be able to hammer back some of this nonsense like being upset about job reports not showing favourable information and so on. Good information allows good decision-making and it's important we don't break that. Hopefully the current surge of low-quality corrupt executive choices isn't met by a counter-surge that kicks out people like Jerome Powell because he's a multi-millionaire capitalist or whatever. I think it won't be. The establishment folks are mostly sensible. It's the new crop of "no property tax" and "no income tax for tips" and "no tax for under $100k earners" and so on that makes me worried, but I'm hoping it will all settle down soon. We'll have to find better surveying methods than the phone surveys but provided #2 and #3 are solved in the article, which is just a matter of switching the admin, then we should be able to.

mikeyouse 7mo ago
This ratchet effect of partially righting the ship every four years followed by drunken sailors YOLOing further into a reef because the ‘responsible party’ didn’t fix things fast enough is unsustainable. No clue how it ends but it’s so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage.
- david422 7mo ago
  > so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage Tangentially related, there was a local property nearby that had these large, aesthetic trees in the yard. The house was sold, a developer cut them all and flipped the house for sale. Probably took 50+ years to grow, gone in an hour.
- hattmall 7mo ago
  I really have a hard time understanding the analogy of the "responsible party" existing, when it was objectively the Biden administration that did the most damage to the average American.

alexfromapex 7mo ago

[flagged]

lkbm 7mo ago
I don't know why I'd trust TikToks when I also shop at multiple grocery stores every week. Maybe there are a few outliers, but food inflation is definitely nowhere near 75=100+% YoY. The official price inflation numbers are much closer to what I've personally observed irl than what you see in viral TikToks. TikToks get attention for being outlandish/exceptional, not for being an accurate representation of the norm.
iso1631 7mo ago
Any many items don't. If you select the biggest changes then sure. My grocery spending is up about 45% since 2016. CPI in the UK is up 38% in the same time, but then my kids are teenagers and eating more.
NewJazz 7mo ago
I remember seeing a lot of social media posts during the Biden admin about grocery prices... Turns out a lot of folks were just comparing the same cart, not taking into account discontinued items that were being auto-replaced with more expensive goods, or things like that. It wasn't always an accurate representation.
hattmall 7mo ago
The issue is that this isn't really supply constrained inflation. This is price discovery and discrimination by major retailers. The amount of coupons, conditional sale prices, and member savings has skyrocketed. I have paid rather intense attention to the price of groceries since 2015 when I started purchasing for my business kitchen as we started providing prepared meals. In general, prices are very close to 2015 levels for the important goods. I have some basic guidelines for an acceptable range that are from when I started in 2015. Milk: $2.50 / g Frozen Fruit $2/ lb Cheese $3 / lb Wheat $3 / 5lb Oats $3 / 40 40 oz Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast $2 / lb These are all prices that I am still able to routinely meet or exceed in 2026.

ianhorn 7mo ago

Two things come to mind: - Whatever you measure gets optimized. - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. I have no idea which is more relevant here. Looking at the first one, my whole life people have been complaining that the measures that get touted in political discourse don't reflect quality of life. So if we stop looking at those as measures because they cease to be reliable, maybe they stop getting myopically optimized and we can get less myopic about what we prioritize in aggregate. But looking at the second one, I've also wondered whether those measures really do reflect typical quality of life, and it's just that the people doing worse than typical will always see the measure as the wrong measure. So then we'd be losing the ability to prioritize actually useful things. In my heart though, I kinda lean towards the first one. I've been in enough orgs where "the dashboard goes up" is incentivized to the detriment of the unmeasurable things that actually matter to the org.

doctaj 7mo ago

Wouldn't it be funny if they "fixed" spam calling in order to make it so that the government could call people again?

logicallee 7mo ago
the answer is reliable money. how much money would you pick up a verified 1 minute survey from the real u.s. government for? I'd do it for $5. (=$300 per hour) and hope for as many calls as possible. For comparison purposes the U.S. budget is about $20,000 per person ($7t budget, a bit under 350m people), so the government could definitely pay you to answer their "spam" calls. (While mandating that first parties show that it is the real U.S. government and not a spammer.) So it would be your actual first party telephone showing "Answer this real call from the U.S. government for $5 instantly, 1 minute average call time." I think that would be a good way to get good data fast. What do you think? (At the same time, impersonating the U.S. government would remain illegal, and the first party would ensure the payment is real.)

kittikitti 7mo ago

People in Florida, when I tell them about my background working with data, often scoff and claim that the data can be changed to spread lies. They have a government who arrested a data scientist when she published information about Coronavirus. This is prevalent across all of America, especially after DOGE, who encourage fraud so the data supports their political interests. I think the reliability problem is very bad. It's not just that the US government is encouraging fraud, it's also that the average American hates AI and data science. Usually, the public would prefer reliable data, but in this case, Americans seem to prefer corruption just to spite the AI. We're certainly living in a post-truth country. By vilifying higher education, the assumption that Americans can interpret data is challenging. Therefore, Americans are consuming biased information in their online bubbles because their media is comfortable with fraudulent data. A concrete example of what happens whenUS economic data becomes unreliable is employment numbers. At the end of 2025, the government couldn't produce any data because of the government shutdown. Most quants and analysts utilized ADP numbers instead. A few years ago, the ADP payroll numbers and the projections by the government were perceived as aligned. This is no longer the case, and most traders rely more on ADP indicators for things like the unemployment rate. Speculating on what other data is fraudulent, I suspect that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will become meaningless. It was supposed to be an indicator for economic wellbeing but now best describes wealth inequality. Nominal GDP is a slightly better measure because it adjusts for things like inflation but it's based on government produced data. Lastly, there is widespread fraud in climate data in order to deny climate change. The data feeds into economic models and affects property values and insurance rates. I have personally received gag orders from government agencies from both the US and Europe for publishing environmental data.

SoftTalker 7mo ago
> It's not just that the US government is encouraging fraud, it's also that the average American hates AI and data science. When all they see is it being used to push narratives, they'd rather not have it at all. Also, "There Are Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" dates to the 1800s. This is nothing new.
- XorNot 7mo ago

fifticon 7mo ago

the comment section for this post is a shit show, most of the main comments have been downvoted to gray-land.

estimator7292 7mo ago
No, the bad, lazy, and outright incorrect takes are downvoted to oblivion. They just have a lot of child comments because HNers like nothing more than rebutting the dumbest opinions.
- mlrtime 7mo ago
  I disagree, top voted comments are threads comparing the collapse of US to USSR, like wtf, really? I wish HN would just stop with any political motivated threads, it brings out the worst in people here and there is 0 debate. The site is obviously mostly urban progressives and they will not allow any replies so you get the same hive mind nonsense as reddit/twitter etc..

bitroughj 7mo ago

Thankfully, we can totally trust noneconomic data like the census. No biases, design artifacts or legislative meddling there. Edit: noneconomic not none comic.

eagerpace 7mo ago

[flagged]

upsidepotential 7mo ago

The claim that economic data was ever 'accurate' is flawed. The real signal lies in the variability over time.

tootie 7mo ago

The article says: US Government surveys are suffering from poor response rates and decreasing budgets so business leaders will have to explore other options to improve reliability. This thread says: American Empire is dying and the world is a fraud. Are all of you bots? Is apocalyptic cynicism this widespread? Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce. We have enjoyed an incredibly high standard for breadth, depth and quality of data and it's now proving unsustainable. Political manipulation thus far remains a specter to be wary of, but there's no indication any headline numbers are inaccurate. The downstream affects on policy are equally off in the distance maybe never to appear.

MarkusQ 7mo ago
I was just thinking the same thing. The vitriol/projective pessimism on display above seems wildly inauthentic.
orf 7mo ago
> Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce In terms of absolute number of countries, maybe, but is this accurate out of comparable peer countries?
mlrtime 7mo ago
[flagged]
- squibonpig 7mo ago
  Do you like Trump and why?
  - mlrtime 7mo ago
    Do you think someone's political belief system can be summed up with a 'Do you like <president>'? Do I like him? I don't know him at all. Maybe if I had a chance to sit down for a dinner and ask him questions I could give you that answer.

lateforwork 7mo ago

Speaking of US economic data reliability: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/economy/inflation-cpi-pce-methodology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/economy/inflatio... Story title: Change in Data Sources Led to Lower Inflation Reading Excerpts: “On its merits, you can defend the change,” said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, a forecasting firm. “Optically, it’s just not a good look in an environment when people are worried about political interference.” Mr. Sharif said he did not believe the change was politically motivated. But Courtney Shupert, an economist at MacroPolicy Perspectives, another forecasting firm, said such decisions undermine public confidence in the statistical system. “It seems like we are moving to more of a vague, uncertain, cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market participants less confident in the data that we do receive,” Ms. Shupert said.

tomrod 7mo ago
The US fired many of its government-employed economists. The administration head tried to fire people at NOAA his first term, until he got a yes-head. Data was deliberately buried in a mad rush the first few weeks and months of 2025. I'm not quite sure Mr. Sharif's opinion is well-founded given the known facts. [0] https://digitalgovernmenthub.org/library/federal-data-are-disappearing-as-statistical-agencies-face-budget-cuts-and-political-pressure/ https://digitalgovernmenthub.org/library/federal-data-are-di... [1] https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2026/03/report-nearly-95k-science-employees-left-government-trump-downsized-agency-workforces/411888/ https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2026/03/report-nearly-95k-...

up2isomorphism 7mo ago

US economy data is not even WORM data anymore, lol. Let alone to be accurate.

marcosdumay 7mo ago
Are you talking about the data revisions organization publish or is the data really changing silently between views?

Sam6late 7mo ago

That will lead to serious problems, as in the case of China, underestimating threats lead to losing edge, from EV to robots and other vital tech, and without experts to ground policy in reality, the country risks making erratic market moves and failing to spot risks from adversaries like China or Russia.Add to that inexperienced staff in the administration who makes the U.S. easier to manipulate.

comet_browser 7mo ago

[flagged]

stevenwoo 7mo ago

The books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor (by two of the winners of past years Nobel Economics award, both books are a simple thesis and lots of historical examples IMHO) will have to be updated to include this and other current events in the USA. This is one of many aspects mentioned in both books.

bmitch3020 7mo ago

It's sad how counter productive the unreliable economic data is. The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive. And the people looking for a job know how hard it is to find work. But this administration wants to say everything is fine, and fires those that say otherwise. So now unemployment seems under control even though it's not great. Now the Fed, with their dual mandate to maintain a healthy labor market and control inflation, is considering raising rates. If it turns out the job market was much worse than we realized, raising rates could tank the economy more than it already is tanking. All because they wanted to pretend everything is fine.

roysting 7mo ago
Unfortunately America has pretended everything was fine for at the very least 130 years now, arguably longer, and we have allowed an extremely predatory, toxic, parasitic, fraudulent, thieving and lying set of people plunder not only the money through "money printing" but also plunder the very government through various types and forms of judicial and legislative authoritarian fraud, which was then installed in people's minds through education as the acceptable norm even though there was nothing "democratic" of free, let alone Constitutional about it.
reddozen 7mo ago
> The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive. This isn't born out in polling data. Grocery store prices went from being all anyone talked about to magically solved January 20, 2025. If only Biden had pressed the magic "solve inflation" button

scoofy 7mo ago

It seems nobody has posted this, but the only reason why this would ever be an issue is the principal–agent problem. When a representative democracy has a significant divergence between the representatives and the people being represented, we encounter this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

coldtea 7mo ago

Hasen't that been the case for decades?

fuzzfactor 7mo ago
Really, when you look at it first hand over more than just a few decades, what's all the debate about? What happens is what you're seeing right now. Same as ever. Any unflattering statistics still existing that were originally designed to reveal, were reversed during applicable times of desperation in case they revealed too much. Leaving almost nothing that does not serve to conceal instead, often more well crafted to conceal the exact thing expected and relied upon to be revealed.