Nathan Newman wrote:
> If there is a hole of absolute ambiguity in the
>stats,
-What's your point here? Social statistics are inherently flawed? -American social statistics are particularly flawed? The Real is That -about which we can say nothing? In all the thousands of words you've -generated on this topic, I can't really find a paraphrasable point.
Actually, I thought I was relatively clear. The lack of funding for collection of information by the government undermines out public discussion of the economy. As to why we underfund such data collection, I think the answer is that conservatives especially prefer not to have good information, since they would prefer private industry to be the main source of economic information for public debates.
But I was pretty clear that I think good data is a good thing. I just am skeptical that we are getting it.
> it means that we have to depend more on qualitative empirical
>studies-- inherently "softer"-- to talk about the economy, which doesn't
>play as well to your style.
-If you mean that my style isn't to dilate exuberantly without much -empirical grounding, that's true.
No, you assume that non-quantitative argument is less "real", which is fair because it can be more selective, so is even less trustworthy than statistics, but in some cases is more true to the complexity of what's going on. I'm sure you wouldn't exclude such information to support a statistical point, but you beat on the stats hard.
As I said, I like having good data as well. I'm just skeptical of the data the government is using.
nathan Newman