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Anne Savage's avatar

'Important-person' readings of statistics really need this kind of correction to the real. Thanks.

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Diogenes's avatar

Great article.

On the matter of questioning assumptions, that's a big taboo in m/stream economics however

For that you have to go heterodox

;=)

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Nolan Hummel's avatar

True rate of unemployment is lower under Biden than any other time in the last 30 years. Don't really see that indicates that the economy is bad, actually.

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Luke Savage's avatar

Right, but what I'm saying here is that this oft-cited claim about the Biden economy is actually incorrect.

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Nolan Hummel's avatar

It's not incorrect, just a different statistic. If you want underemployed and those who stopped looking for employment out of discouragement to be counted you can look at U6 umeployment. None of these 3 are the "wrong statistic". They just look at different things.

You can argue Ludwig's number is better, but again, put into historical context it is still very good.

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Diogenes's avatar

In historical context regular employers weren't as devious as is commonplace since deregulation and neoliberal ideology etc has helped create the difficult conditions faced by many.

Therefore it's a meaningless comparison to appeal to 'historical context' as if there were any consistency to validate it. Which there isn't. You can say what you want but it's not TikTok that tells them they are worse off.

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Levose Cross's avatar

You did not read the article.

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