My Thoughts on the firing of the BLS Commissioner
I spent over 6 years working for the Census Bureau, of which three and a half were spent in Statistical Methods Division
I would read again what I have said which clearly talks about possible problems with the numbers and/or their revisions. As for what Trump says or what the commissioner may have or may not have done is not where I'm coming from.
I think you need to get over your Trump hatred and reread exactly what I have written.
I read exactly what you wrote. I am responding to your claim that "Trump may be right," not your claim that you that you have identified other possible reasons why it might have been appropriate for the Commissioner to be fired. If I shoot a pizza delivery man because he rang my doorbell even though I didn't order a pizza, and it turns out that the pizza delivery man, unbeknownst to me, actually was planning to rob and kill me, it doesn't make my decision to shoot the pizza delivery man "correct." If you want to argue that it might have been appropriate to fire her for reasons other than the actual reason that Trump fired her, that's fine. In order to support your claim that "Trump may be right," you need to point to evidence that the Commissioner deliberately manipulated the numbers.
I'm not sure why you are resisting this point. You already acknowledged that I was "probably correct" that Trump fired the Commissioner for reasons that had nothing to do with whether the numbers were correct.
I think you need to get over your Trump hatred and reread exactly what I have written.
Rocco is one of the most collected posters here; he's certainly not a fan of Trump but it's a bit silly to allege that his "hatred of Trump" is blinding his judgement.
Rocco is one of the most collected posters here; he's certainly not a fan of Trump but it's a bit silly to allege that his "hatred of Trump" is blinding his judgement.
I honestly have no idea whether BLS processes are so ****ed up that we needed to fire the Commissioner. I tend to doubt it, but I don't know. What I do know is that Trump did not fire the Commissioner for reasons that had anything to do with a need to improve BLS processes.
I spent over 6 years working for the Census Bureau, of which three and a half were spent in Statistical Methods Division. So, I have some background in this stuff. On the one hand, clear procedures should be in place that produce these labor statistics (and the survey is probably done by Census and sponsored by the BLS.). On the other hand, with clear procedures in place, these
The entire premise of your original post hinges on your personal definition of "major revision".
If we reject the assumed premise that BLS is making "constant major revisions each month" then we aren't left with much to work with other than you are taking Trumps comments at face value
I honestly have no idea whether BLS processes are so ****ed up that we needed to fire the Commissioner. I tend to doubt it, but I don't know. What I do know is that Trump did not fire the Commissioner for reasons that had anything to do with a need to improve BLS processes.
They're not and there's a reason Mason is avoiding addressing the error rates. If he would address them he'd have to admit they are completely normal and therefore destroy his own argument that Trump ''may be right''. On top of that, admitting the labor market is softening rapidly is also admitting Trump's economic policies are bullshit and are not working.
No idea if Mason is pro-Trump but it sure seems he might be a bit biased.
statisticians have a pretty bad rep around here recently.
The entire premise of your original post hinges on your personal definition of "major revision".
If we reject the assumed premise that BLS is making "constant major revisions each month" then we aren't left with much to work with other than you are taking Trumps comments at face value
I wonder what slice of the pie he's allowing for trump being right that the numbers are wrong but the numbers are actually Way worse? Since we're not bringing any feelings into it 😀
My thoughts on the summary execution of every Democratic politician
while not completely clear to me, Trump's order to publicly execute every Democratic politician may be correct.
The problem is that the data which is released every month has to go through significant revisions. And when I use the word "significant" here I mean that the revisions affect the markets, and sometimes they affect them by a lot. That says to me that there is something inaccurate of the initial released statistics. Perhaps, the fix, as you imply, is to just wait until more data
Isn't this largely an illusion? The markets reacted to the revised figures but wouldn't they had reacted to these figures in much the same way if there had been no intital release to revise?
Mason what will have to happen for you to accept that you are wrong about literally everything? I’m genuinely curious your capacity for accountability on your own statements, your acceptance that you’re probably not as smart as you think you are, and, well, you know, the rest
Rocco is one of the most collected posters here; he's certainly not a fan of Trump but it's a bit silly to allege that his "hatred of Trump" is blinding his judgement.
At some point it is also okay to utterly despise a politician who is incompetent, corrupt, negligent, criminal and lies so brazenly and pathetically that watching him speak makes you feel awkward on behalf of humankind.
Many of the major economic needles in the US is currently pointing down and the shift in direction coincides with shift in presidential administration. This is likely in part due to economic policy and in part due to how incompetently said policy is carried out.
Now more than ever you need people who report these indicators with enough integrity to make them trustworthy. When headed for a cliff you really need to know in which direction to steer.
My thought on the firing of the BLS commissioner are that it was the first time in 2 trump terms i actually do agree with Rococo and others , that Trump is behaving like a third world dictator (and a dumb one at that).
That's not because he doesn't have the power to fire the commissioner (he does, and exercising it isn't per se dictatorial at all), but because the rationale laid out for the firing is exactly what a dumb third world dictator would have used, except it's moronic to do that in a free society that can actually openly discuss those events.
In a closed society the dictator has a chance to be able to convince the people the numbers were in fact cooked by the fired person.
But in the USA , the workings of BLS are very transparent and known in detail by all economists and all market participants who trade on data release.
The claim that BLS made up good numbers for Biden only to revise them after the election is objectively false (the revisions showing the Biden economy was far worse than previously thought were in august 2024, 800k jobs "disappeared" then).
The claim the mistakes in BLS estimates are mostly in one direction is false as well (revisions are fairly symmetrical in both directions historically).
BLS estimate process has problems (not very different from the problems pollsters have recently) because answer rates to surveys are too low, there is no easy fix and it is not political no matter how much of a political effect downward revisions can have (which shouldn't be much). I really don't understand what trump and cronies thought would have happened if the bad job numbers had been the first estimates instead of the revision.
Anyway, the most dumb thing of all is that Trump is FINALLY getting some hard data that justifies his request for the fed to lower rates, and he whines about them claiming they are fake lol.
Lutnick Disbanded Statistical Task Force Working to Improve Survey Response Rates
This happened when Trump first took office.
My thought on the firing of the BLS commissioner are that it was the first time in 2 trump terms i actually do agree with Rococo and others , that Trump is behaving like a third world dictator (and a dumb one at that).
I don't know how you concluded that this is the first time Trump has done something like this.
Question for Mason - now that Trump is calling for an emergency Census, would you be willing to dust off your slide rule and join the cause?
Question for Mason - now that Trump is calling for an emergency Census, would you be willing to dust off your slide rule and join the cause?
I never used a slide rule.
We learned in college in 1989 as sort of an lol thing. Actually, it was more like our old man professor yelling at clouds. "You young whippersnappers with your calculators. We built rockets that went to the moon with slide rules and that provided enough precision."
Calculator=Rock
"sword"= at that size basically half a pair of wooden/plastic scissors
I'll let you figure out the rest from there 😀
Well looks like these issues have been fixed!
Trump just on da TV, showing “all new numbers.” Couldn’t see what the graph was actually labeled as, but it was definitely a big ole hockey stick showing something shooting up the last couple months!
Well looks like these issues have been fixed! Trump just on da TV, showing “all new numbers.” Couldn’t see what the graph was actually labeled as, but it was definitely a big ole hockey stick showing something shooting up the last couple months!
This is deeply unfair. We should all trust the guy who falsified a weather map with a sharpie because he couldn't admit he had been wrong about a hurricane's trajectory, and then used the power of the presidency to force government agencies to write a unsigned statement agreeing with him... and then years later had the people who investigated this statement removed from their jobs.
Anything else is just blind hatred.
You can speculate lots of reasons, and there may be a chance that you're right.
However, I'm looking at this stuff as a statistician who actually has experience in this area, something that I think no one else on this website has. If you don't like what I'm saying because it includes the possibility that Trump may be right, that's your issue, not mine.
You haven't made a single argument that I can evaluate as a mathematician. You can speculate why Trump was correct but it doesn't have any value beyond anyone else's speculation and based on your history, I'd argue less.
