US Government economic numbers: Lies?

[dtilque]

An article on the Daily Kos webpage has doubts about the veracity of government economic numbers:

Denmark now leads the world, as the US economy steadily deteriorates across...

Regrettably, this column has reached the conclusion that data published by the USA is no longer accurate. This arises from two observations.

First, the latest official data showing unemployment in June lower than in May does not accord with verified outcomes. Nor are official inflation figures consistent with reality.
Second, it has been clear from the outset of the Trump administration that senior personnel in key positions are required to lie routinely on behalf of the president.
We now hold the same reservations regarding US figures as with those published by North Korea, Turkiye and Russia. We will continue to use the published data, but will flag our scepticism.

It would not surprise me in the least if the Trump admin were lying about the economy, though I’d expect more bragging from the liar-in-chief. Maybe he is bragging, but no one’s reported it. Googling finds a variety of opinions both ways.

[Buck_Godot]

This was definitely something I thought Trump might try to do, but I find it hard to believe that he succeeded, yet. Given the number of different hands those numbers pass through, if there was a blatant attempt to fudge it would be pretty obvious to lots of people on the inside. People whose careers have been devoted to getting the numbers right. I think that if there really was pressure to lie resignations would be tendered and whistles would be blown.

[Wesley_Clark]

It sucks our entire country (and the world) is held hostage to a severely mentally ill man and the 77 million people who voted for him.

Anyway, Trump will lie about anything that makes him look good or lie to cover up anything that makes him look bad. Its why he said he is 6’3 and weighs 239 lbs. Bad economic numbers make him look bad, so I’m not surprised he’d like about that.

[PhillyGuy]

See:

Can Americans trust economic data from the Trump administration?

So basically it is what Buck_Godot said. No faking yet. But staff cutbacks mean more risk of non-systematic errors.

[ParallelLines]

I suspect we’ll very quickly (if not already) end up in the situation of the old saw “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”. They’ll publish information that looks good and is largely accurate, but with those pesky (*) at the end, where if you read the fine print in 100 pages of analysis, you’ll see where they cherry-picked, compressed or expanded graphs, admitted to “speculative” analysis, or otherwise cold-stacked the reports to the point where it has minimal accuracy.

And of course, it doesn’t really matter to the 77 million who support Trump, who are already very well trained to take his/Fox New’s assessment of what’s going on despite the evidence available to their eyes.

Or in other words, those of us pre-disposed to distrust Trump (which includes me to be clear) aren’t going to believe anything that comes out of his administration sans impartial third-party evidence, and those who are already part of his (dis)informationsphere are going to believe whatever he says, possibly even after they’ve lost their Social Security/401ks/etc.