Sean Andrews wrote: > Yeah, but can we really trust the government numbers.
the rule is that we can't really trust _any_ economic numbers. They are all based on assumptions and assumptions on ideology. But it's better to look at shadows on the cave wall (imperfect representations of the actual underlying reality) than to shut our eyes. And it's much easier to let some government agency collect the numbers (so that they can be analyzed critically) than to collect them ourselves. One thing is not to trust time series of something like the BLS unemployment rate, since the structure of the economy, labor markets, and people were different in (say) 1980 than now. That is, 9.6% unemployment now means something different from the same number seen in 1982, due to changes in unemployment insurance laws, the demographic mix of the labor force, the degree to which employed workers have job security, and the like. A more meaningful number would be the change in the unemployment rate between a pair of subsequent years. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
