{"id":1514,"date":"2004-08-07T19:59:14","date_gmt":"2004-08-07T23:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/08\/07\/finally-someone-gets-it-accurate\/"},"modified":"2004-08-07T19:59:14","modified_gmt":"2004-08-07T23:59:14","slug":"finally-someone-gets-it-accurate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/08\/07\/finally-someone-gets-it-accurate\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally someone gets it accurate"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Brad de Long, Berkeley economist extraordinaire posts today to explain why a NYT story on different sets of unemployment numbers proves itself worthless<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

And, of course, what is missing is the context. A lot of smart
\npeople have been looking at the difference between the household and
\nthe payroll surveys, and have come to firm conclusions. Let me turn
\nover the microphone to Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan to tell us
\nwhat those conclusions are: <\/p>\n

\n

Greenspan Testimony February 11, 2004<\/a>:
\n‘I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate,’ Alan
\nGreenspan, the Fed chairman, said in congressional testimony on Feb.
\n11. ‘Everything we’ve looked at suggests that it’s the payroll data
\nwhich are the series which you have to follow.’… The Fed’s conclusion
\nwas that the household survey’s results had been inflated by
\noverestimates of population growth…. If the population estimate is
\ntoo high, the estimated number of jobs will also be too high. The
\nbureau bases its population estimate on the 2000 census, but it then
\nupdates that estimate yearly with data on births, deaths and
\nimmigration. But immigration numbers are largely guesswork, because so
\nmuch immigration is illegal. Fed officials suspect the immigration
\nestimate is inflated because it fails to reflect tighter immigration
\ncontrols since Sept. 11, 2001, as well as declines caused by the
\neconomic slowdown.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why can’t we have a real civic discource in this country?  Part of
\nit, I think, is that we lack a contextualized understanding of the
\nissues and facts before us.  Sure we might have some unemployment
\nnumber out there.  But is it the best one?  Why? 
\nWithout such information, we can’t even really begin to make an
\nintelligent decision about Bush or Kerry’s policies (whatever they are,
\nbecause neither candidate has offered any real specifics on what he
\nwill do in the years 2004-08).  And so we’re left with trying to
\ndecide who we’d rather have a beer with.<\/p>\n

I don’t know.  But I’m not sure that the friends I’d have a few
\nbeers with are people whose hands I’d want on the nuclear arsenal or
\nappointing officials.  Not because they’re righties, but because
\nsome of them are very lefty.  But beer just shouldn’t be a
\npresidential selection criterion.<\/p>\n

UPDATE — 9.39 PM: Dan Drezner discusses incivility in the blogosphere<\/a>, and I’m gonna incoporate this into a longer piece on the current incivility sooner or later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brad de Long, Berkeley economist extraordinaire posts today to explain why a NYT story on different sets of unemployment numbers proves itself worthless. And, of course, what is missing is the context. A lot of smart people have been looking at the difference between the household and the payroll surveys, and have come to firm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-oq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}