Just so I'm clear--I wasn't really casting aspersions on the numbers (though I can see the point you're making here) but referencing this video debate between Doug and a right wing hack.
http://lbo-news.com/2010/10/20/me-against-the-right/ The latter made some claim about wages being a direct representation of productivity--that wages only go up when productivity goes up and, therefore, since wages haven't gone up in thirty years it must mean productivity has also stagnated. Doug scoffed and both he and the host declared that the numbers for productivity had been rising significantly, but with no payoff (a version of this http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Payoff.html and arguments from *After the New Economy*). The guy then said those were BLS numbers and he didn't think they were correct, that we couldn't have had a rise in productivity because we have a trade deficit, that any rise in productivity was actually just calculating offshored jobs, and that our manufacturing sector was non-existent (and of course that hyperinflation is eminent and catastrophic, deflation is good, and the deregulation of the 90s was actually a boom in government regulation, making the bust big gubment's fault). If he didn't represent a particularly toxic form of conventional wisdom, I'd have thought his performance was rather inspired: a kind of verbal prestidigitation usually reserved for literary critics and poets. I'm sure there are things to quibble with in terms of the numbers, but it is a little too convenient to declare them universally defunct when someone happens to use them to categorically refute your argument. s On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:32, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >
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