Did you ever notice that...?

[HughMoran]

1) Economic data can always be interpreted in different ways, but certain individuals consistently go out of their way to find the most negative interpretation. Do you ever wonder where these people were in good economic times? ...or why the relative nature of the their interpretation is never mentioned (i.e., since the error is always contained in the data, relative comparisons are mostly valid)?

2) A loaf of bread contains a full compliment of calories, but half a loaf has not even one calorie?

3) Personal injustice/suffering is now irrelevant. So what if some DUers could feast on the half loaf that is available? It's all or nothing - your suffering be damned.

4) "I want 10." Woohoo! we got 10! "I want 20."

5) "I support politician 'A'." "But your last 100 posts ripped them to shreds!" "Not so, see this one here..." "uh-huh :eyes: "

6) "Those aren't accomplishments, I decide what's an accomplishment - capice?" "Ummm, ok" :eyes:

7) ad infinitum

[rufus dog]

1. yup, I notice that

nuthin more

[boppers]

2. Know Your Meme

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trolling

[AllentownJake]

3. Did you ever notice that

1) Most people have no clue what the economic data is, how it is collected, and make crazy assumptions about it. For instance, the BLS statistics, most people think they measure actual unemployment claims, they don't it is a large telephone poll. One conducted weekly to employers that meet a preselected demographic and another to people of working age. Good thing to know on either side of talking about unemployment so you don't say foolish things like, people are just getting kicked off the rolls, when in fact, a discouraged worker could very well be collecting unemployment and a part-time worker might have a babysitting job 3 times a week for $75.

2) When an economic report comes out, nobody manages to actually read the report. Everyone bitches about the mainstream media, but a 3 page document on GDP or the BLS is too difficult for someone to read through.

3) The fact that 8,000,000 Americans have lost their jobs and 4,000,000 Americans have lost their homes is now something certain people don't want to talk about and that a number like 95,000 new jobs a month while sounding impressive puts us back to where we were before the crisis sometime after 2014, not counting the kids who are 14-21 right now?

4) Saying you don't like a particular policy, and articulating why you don't like it and being consistent about it pisses some people off, for instance the Health Care bill. Everyone knows that the private Health Insurance system is broken and insurers are gouging customers. So when the solution is to mandate everyone into that broken system asking questions on what that means and why are we mandating people into a broken system gets certain people angry.

5) People identify themselves more with personalities that actual policy, isn't that frightening. Like some stranger deserves your loyalty regardless of what they do because they are likable?

6) Spin is everywhere, at the end of the day are people's needs being met. Pull up Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and ask yourself where the majority of people are there, and where they were in the past and where they are going in the future and you can generally tell how the country is doing. Oh and the economic data, doesn't really measure that well.

7) Veritas.

BTW K&R, good OP, hope you don't mind my rebuttal.

[HughMoran]

4. Responses...

1) Most people have no clue what the economic data is, how it is collected, and make crazy assumptions about it. For instance, the BLS statistics, most people think they measure actual unemployment claims, they don't it is a large telephone poll. One conducted weekly to employers that meet a preselected demographic and another to people of working age. Good thing to know on either side of talking about unemployment so you don't say foolish things like, people are just getting kicked off the rolls, when in fact, a discouraged worker could very well be collecting unemployment and a part-time worker might have a babysitting job 3 times a week for $75.

Good info - I've read this from you in multiple posts, so it's not news to me. My question - is it OK if some people assume that unemployment numbers getting smaller (all else being equal) is better than getting bigger? In other words, unless you can very specifically enumerate the error now as opposed to when the numbers were 5%, can we use relative numbers as a measure of direction? If not, then what is there to talk about? If politicians use the published numbers, does it really matter that there is a built in error? Is this site about politics or economics?

2) When an economic report comes out, nobody manages to actually read the report. Everyone bitches about the mainstream media, but a 3 page document on GDP or the BLS is too difficult for someone to read through.

& many of us do read the report and still can't explain it sufficiently well enough to others, so the effort does not always seem worth it. Arguing the minutia on a fast-moving political forum such as this is rarely satisfying IMO.

3) The fact that 8,000,000 Americans have lost their jobs and 4,000,000 Americans have lost their homes is now something certain people don't want to talk about and that a number like 95,000 new jobs a month while sounding impressive puts us back to where we were before the crisis sometime before 2014, not counting the kids who are 14-21 right now?

once again, positive numbers (in this case) are far more desirable than negative numbers. I know that this number is only sufficient to hold unemployment at it's current rate for the foreseeable future, but as with most positive news, if people believe that things ARE getting better, they will be more likely to increase hiring, thus those numbers will end up looking conservative. Can we not celebrate the fact that we aren't losing 700,000 jobs a month as we were when Obama took office?



4) Saying you don't like a particular policy, and articulating why you don't like it and being consistent about it pisses some people off, for instance the Health Care bill. Everyone knows that the private Health Insurance system is broken and insurers are gouging customers. So when the solution is to mandate everyone into that broken system asking questions on what that means and why are we mandating people into a broken system gets certain people angry.

The proposed solution will (due to exchanges) save me & my company owner $21,000 dollars a year. This is simply stopping the current system from ripping me off because I work for a small company. Should I be kicked to the curb (along with millions of other small business people) because the loaf is not all there in the initial bill?

5) People identify themselves more with personalities that actual policy, isn't that frightening. Like some stranger deserves your loyalty regardless of what they do because they are likable?

I think people here identify themselves with Democratic policy. I know of no other political party proposing solutions to the pressing issues in our country. Sometimes we like the personalities of those in our party who would help us achieve our common goals (i.e. Kucinich, Obama, Greyson etc.) I hope it's OK with you that people fight for policy AND praise the people who share common political policy goals and can help to achieve them for us.

6) Spin is everywhere, at the end of the day are people's needs being met. Pull up Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and ask yourself where the majority of people are there, and where they were in the past and where they are going in the future and you can generally tell how the country is doing.

Spin is here and it's all too often over the top

(note I didn't grammar check this well and don't have time nor inclination to respond to a second round - so this is it)

[AllentownJake]

10. :-)

I'll answer one

BLS labor statistics. You have to read how people were categorized to understand them and compare things month to month both in a % and raw data. It is a little voodoo. The media focuses on it and unless they are talking to an expert, the teletype reader has no clue what they are talking about.
There really isn't any accurate way to measure unemployment right now. You can game the number by moving people into different categories up and down the U1-U6 number and throwing some people out all together.

You can make assumptions from a varying degree of data sets. Income Tax collections, the BLS reports, weekly claims statistics, and the ADP payroll report. You also must wait 3 weeks after the initial report, because the initial number always changes. Look for 2 or more of the data sets to agree. The reason there was a lot of fuss last week is one BLS number said 20,000 job losses the other said the U3 and U6 number fell. Both were seasonally adjusted. You had two conflicting data sets.

Economics is politics. There are very, very, very few things in politics that do not have an economic basis in them. Almost all of politics is economics driven and based on economic factors. The debates are based on economic results.

Look at the Health Care debate and how much time was spent on debating budget neutral.

[ProSense]

5. "The fact that 8,000,000 Americans have lost their jobs..." Ever notice that most

rational people don't try to spin and attribute all the world ills to Obama?

These problems were not created by President Obama. They are the result of years of economic mismanagement under President George W. Bush, and misguided deregulation under Bush and his predecessors. But now, Obama must deal with them.

link

[AllentownJake]

6. I didn't say it was Obama's fault

However, getting angry about the fact they exist is rather silly.

[ProSense]

8. No, but you take every opportunity to

belittle his efforts in the face of an enormous crisis:

3) The fact that 8,000,000 Americans have lost their jobs and 4,000,000 Americans have lost their homes is now something certain people don't want to talk about and that a number like 95,000 new jobs a month while sounding impressive puts us back to where we were before the crisis sometime after 2014, not counting the kids who are 14-21 right now?

Yes, from a loss of nearly 900,000 jobs per month, a nubmer like 95,000 new jobs is damn impressive.




edited typo

[AllentownJake]

11. I'm not going to let those people be forgotten

So you can hate me for that.

[HughMoran]

12. Jake, you are a very noble person

If it wasn't for you, I'd never know that the unemployment rate was 'only approximately' 10%. The fact that I'm on my 3rd job this year after 15 years of stability and your lack of work for many months on end is irrelevant. ;)

[AllentownJake]

14. You know how Washington works

I'm working, just part-time. Nothing else out there right now.

A statistical number in a labor report falls and they think everything is OK and move to the next thing.

I have hope, the Chinese are getting mad at us, and we are getting madder at them. I think a tariff might actually pass if they don't float the Yuan since they stopped purchasing our municipal debt and greatly reduced their treasury purchases.

[HughMoran]

16. Would a tariff be good or bad for jobs?

I can't make an intuitive connection in my head. Will we make more stuff here if a tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive (my best assumption)? ...or is your hope that the fight will collapse the economy and reinforce your more negative perspective?

[AllentownJake]

18. It cuts both ways

Some industries will suffer, others will, thrive.

At the end of the day, we need to get a little more self sufficient in this country on a whole bunch of things.

Sustained bad economic times always breed nationalism, racism, and protectionism.

This crisis is the equivalent of an asteroid hitting the earth, and it isn't over yet, as evidenced on what is going on in the Eurozone and what soon will be going on in our states (they are in much worse shape). California runs out of money in April and Nevada could lay off every worker and still not come close to balancing the budget this year.

People had a constant economic growth model, because they didn't think this type of thing happens anymore.

The bad debt is like an economic plague and until it works its way out of the system we are in for a bumpy road..

We didn't have the safety net we have now, it would feel like 1932.

[HughMoran]

19. Agreed. And yes,

we're not out of the woods yet - and that is exactly why I do my darnedest to put a positive spin on any good news that is released. We are in a delicate time during this recovery. If consumer confidence goes into the trash can, then we're really fucked. You may think that one voice on one website is meaningless, but imagine if there were no positive voices to offset the perpetually miserable and pessimistic? If one voice has no weight, then why are you equally driven to push your viewpoint here (and admit to using 'hot' subject lines to get the 'extra views')?

[AllentownJake]

21. Greece defaults

and the Euro drops, the dollar goes up the stock market goes down consumer confidence dips. California doesn't pay its workers for 3 weeks state workers in most other states look at their state budget and throw a few more dollars in the mattress.

Exports get hit with a falling Euro and one industry lays off workers, Exports go up because of a construction project in another country like Brazil another company hires workers.

The Euro rises and people come to the States because it is a deal, the Euro falls people go to Europe because it is a deal.

A company does something fraudulent and the market tanks.

We are going to have good months, we are going to have very bad months. This isn't a straight line out of this shit hole. People can't get too excited in the good months, and the world isn't going to end in the bad.

Normally these would be minor fluctuations. In this environment, they won't be. Everyone is going to be scared till there is some sense of stability, and there isn't going to be any stability to the bad debt works its way out of the system.

Like I said in the BLS report, the one data point that was awesome that no one wanted to talk about is that 1.2 million people that they estimated that were put on part-time by their company returned to full time hours in January. People who have had their hours cut, will go back to full-time work long before companies hire new full time people in established industries.

Me talking about it on a website, will do nothing to consumer confidence. Trust me Zero Hedge and the Market Ticker have 1000X the following that I do, and they are a lot more pessimistic.

[ProSense]

23. Good grief, you're still spinning Greece?

Euro perspective

Overall, the group of stressed economies account for about 20 percent of the eurozone’s GDP. So even a sharp fiscal retrenchment wouldn’t be all that big a shock; still, it certainly wouldn’t help.

[AllentownJake]

24. Greece isn't about Greece

and you know that.

So stop spinning yourself.

Greece defaults everyone starts looking at another country, the speculators move in, their CDS goes up, their bond issue becomes harder to fund, and it ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy.

Do you know how much debt needs to be refinanced this year?

[ProSense]

25. Disingenuous much? It is about Greece, despite your "doom" spin. n/t

[AllentownJake]

28. There is no "doom" spin

This is what is going on in the real world, I fail to see how you can get mad about talking about PIIG nations being highly leveraged and it causing problems for the European Union or the fact that there are 7 fairly large states in some serious, serious budget trouble this year which are going to have difficulty financing debt and balancing budgets.

[ProSense]

29. "This is what is going on in the real world"

In the real world, Greece is still about Greece.

[AllentownJake]

31. Sigh

Why do we even bother with each other

:rofl:

[HughMoran]

27. Diving into the details again...

I know they're important to you, but diving into the details of every possible way the world can crash and burn isn't my idea of a good time - sorry.

[AllentownJake]

32. Than don't respond to my OPs

:rofl:

You would think that someone who made his living for 7 years speculating and testing and looking for ways to test on what the riskiest thing that could happen in a situation for a process and what the likelihood of that happening probably has some spare capacity in his brain right now when he's working part-time at a lower mental job.

My brain needs to problem solve and speculate and test hypothesis in order to stay active it also needs people to poke and prod and test what I'm thinking and challenge it.

My Dad was an engineer, he took things apart and put them back together for no reason when he retired and wouldn't miss an episode of how things work.

[HughMoran]

35. "Ve must figure how to use dis brain for good"

You know, Krugman alternates between the hard truths (and negativity) and "oops, I may have been too pessimistic". C'mon, you know you want to be the next Krugman ;)








Ahhh, so you do think us engineers are useful people. Everybody loves (and thinks it's so appropriate) my T-Shirt that says "Engineers Motto" "If it isn't broken, take it apart and fix it" :rofl:

[AllentownJake]

37. I may go back to school for it PHD

I'm actually looking into it.

Problem is, I'd probably be even a louder mouth than Paul, and Paul has two settings, we are fucked, we are really fucked.

We have a problem Paul doesn't see. We might need another stimulus package, we don't have the buyers of Treasuries to fund another Stimulus package.

We eventually have to decide on the guns or butter thing.

[HughMoran]

42. You'd learn to tone it down in order to appeal to a wider audience

Paul isn't as "we are fucked" as you think - he's often reasonable when being interviewed.

[AllentownJake]

44. Depends what is going on

At the end of the day, Paul isn't fucked. He has a Nobel Prize and is at Princeton.

[HughMoran]

45. One successful geek

He really is a geek.

[AllentownJake]

22. I'll add

Not looking and fixing what caused this disaster, is the surest way to ensure, that it happens again, while we are trying to get ourselves out of it.

[HughMoran]

26. But

you just said above that one voice doesn't make any difference - why do you seem to be inflating what you're saying about the economic situation to levels of such grandeur? Nobody reads the shit you post anyway, right?

[AllentownJake]

30. I have an opinion

I like to express it. I like to read other people's opinions. I like people to challenge my opinion, I like to see if people agree with my opinion or have something to add to it.

Same reason people sit around playing bridge talking about what is going on in their town.

This interest me, and it isn't easy to find a whole bunch of people in the world, that want to talk about this type of stuff.

[HughMoran]

33. I agree, but...

I feel like you deliberately make your posts more attractive to a certain clientele that you know will behave in a certain manner - such as adding praise & recs. I think the need to appeal to a particular viewpoint/perspective makes one more susceptible to peer pressure. I've felt it at times over the years as I've occasionally been in that position. Fortunately, I'm more than capable of showing no loyalty at all to anybody, so I inevitably piss off anybody who gets carried away thinking we're of 'like mind' on everything.

[AllentownJake]

34. I don't think there is a person on this message board that hasn't gotten mad at me

At one point or another.

Hell some of the people who I've gotten into the biggest knockdown drag out fights with, are the people who I enjoy reading and enjoy reading me the most. Ask HavocMom or Saracat.

Both of them have kicked the shit out of me a few times.

[HughMoran]

36. Hmmm, I must be doing something right

I've been rewarded with 3 hearts just since this thread was started - thanks to whoever gave them to me!

[AllentownJake]

38. Arguing with me

Will get you hearts from some people...guaranteed. :rofl:

[HughMoran]

39. This is Hugh!

I think (I know) some people wonder why it is that I talk to you at all. What they don't realize is, I'll talk to anybody who can, after the initial banging of heads, engage in a reasonable exchange of ideas (sans the personal insults.) Insult me, you get inner city kid, stimulate my curiosity, you get engineer geek - lol.

[AllentownJake]

40. I bowl with a conservative every week

We argue for five minutes, laugh, and say they both are fucking us, you know that right? We agree and drink beers and bowl.

[HughMoran]

41. Uggh

I have no idea how this happens, but I often get into similar situations with conservatives. I will say, however, that I have no patience at all for the morans who repeat right-wing email chain bullshit to me. I'm at the "rip their heads off and ask questions later" stage with those clowns. The old-school fiscal conservatives who are often socially liberal don't bother me much at all. I do often wonder how they deal with the hypocrisy that is far more prevalent on the right - their wackos have altogether too much power.

[AllentownJake]

43. Yeah well the wealthy class in our party has way too much power

and their evangelical dominionist have way too much power.

30 years ago, the democrats reached out to the wealthy on social issues and the GOP reached out to the poor religious fundamentalist.

That is why it seems like you have one political party.

Before that, the socially liberal wealthy conservative had little power in the GOP and the poor socially conservative person had little power in the DNC.

It's also why you actually would have bipartisan bills.

[ProSense]

13. Now you're a martyr? Oh brother.

What does that have to do with belittling Obama's efforts?

[AllentownJake]

15. They haven't been much

I mean, who talks about Health Insurance when this shit is going on...seems a little silly and tone deaf.

[ProSense]

17. "who talks about Health Insurance when this shit is going on" What shit?

People suffering and dying for lack of coverage?

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kurovski]

7. K&R

Nice discussion within the thread, too.

[OldDem_63]

9. I've noticed that too. nt