Anything you don’t like has cost tens of billions of honest hardworking( * ) taxpayers’ dollars. Anything.
Part of the philosophy from this crowd is that being poor and disadvantaged means, well, that you should live poorly, unless you raise yourself out of it and so forth. But don’t provide them anything that could help that raising , like for instance educational content that points to wanting something different.
And note, a minor correction to Dewey_Finn, Scalise is Majority Leader in the House, not the Senate.
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( * always “hard working”. What, slackers’ taxes not getting used too?)
Republicans definitely do NOT like numbers. They must have felt great relief when Dear Leader gave his official permission to just make numbers up (by firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics head).
Here is some other reality that Republicans do NOT care for:
Unfortunately for the Trumperor, he doesn’t have quite a lock on the media the way his crush Putin does. So data still gets out there.
The Producer Price Index (PPI) for July showed inflation for businesses rose 0.9% over the prior month, well ahead of the 0.2% increase that was forecast, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Thursday. On an annual basis, prices rose 3.3%, the most since February.
And even with the BLS not being allowed to give real data anymore, someone is still going to be able to get that data put together somehow. He can’t really hide it.
They don’t like reality and numbers make them itch because there are discrepancies between what the numbers point to and the alternate facts they prefer. This is why I suggested somebody rich buy up Fox News and OAN and give them Potemkin news of what they want to hear. With the advances in AI CGI it’d be a cinch,
Independent, alternate measures have existed for years. I know there’s a considerable number of people who say the “official numbers” are cooked (or at least they said so when a Democrat was in the White House) but all the numbers trend the same way. They kind of have to - it’s hard to fake prices at every online and brick and mortar store out there.
One example is PriceStats, which grew out of the Billion Price Project out of MIT. They track online prices for a basket of goods. It’s not quite as comprehensive as the data BLS collected but, on the whole, the numbers tracked. On the plus side, the data is updated more frequently.
Somebody will definitely notice very quickly if the official narrative on prices doesn’t track.
That doesn’t mean the average MAGA cultist will believe it, but their wallets will feel it, either way.
I don’t know of any, but labor statistics are a much more difficult problem. The BLS relies heavily on survey data and other data voluntarily provided by businesses, the states, and the workforce itself. But a sane and competent government understands the value of accurate information about the status of its workforce, so sane and competent governments put the effort into collecting it (even if initial estimates need to be revised as better data comes in later).
Inflation data, by comparison, is a much easier problem - people can find prices covering most aspects of the economy by looking for them online or in person. A government agency has some advantages where such prices are not as easily found (say large real estate or industrial scale import/export) but it’s not such a fundamental difference as to affect the underlying trends.
The willful blindness is the part I don’t get. How can anyone believe Trump et al. when they BS about prices going down, when just shopping in a store proves that’s wrong?
Trump says eggs were like $30 a dozen and now they’re only $1 a dozen. You don’t see that, but that’s because the stores you shop at are weird, and he’s talking about all of the other stores you don’t see, which means the economy is better and he’s the best president in the history of the universe.
The same way congress is nothing but a bunch of greedy, corrupt politicians. “Except my representative – s/he’s great! That’s why I keep voting for them every two years.”
Agreed about AI improvements making a fictional “news” channel a possibility. But Fox News and OAN already provide faked news…are you suggesting it be faked in a direction that Donald wouldn’t like?
AI could make random fake news quickly. RW news outlets work hard to create propaganda to promote an agenda. AI doesn’t necessarily need to worry about an agenda if it’s just trying to produce a lot of content.
always “hard working”. What, slackers’ taxes not getting used too?)