Nathan Newman wrote:
>As I said, I like having good data as well. I'm just skeptical of the
data
>the government is using.
-Why do I suspect that were there a Dem in the White House, you'd be -defending the public sector against cheap attacks by know-nothings?
Well, since I'm currently lobbying for legislation in New York City to expand data collection on one industry (as part of broader legislation) with a completely Democrat City Council, I can say with complete clarity that you're wrong. Aside from the problem of planning, the lack of data collection on industries is bad for a host of law enforcement reasons as well, since it cuts down on the ability to identify abuses through closer statistical analysis.
Seriously, I was trying to figure out how much retail workers make in sub-sectors of the industry and it's essentially impossible given the data collection methods done by the government. I'm sure the public sector statisticians would love to collect better data, but they don't have either the money or possibly the authority to get the data broken down into more useful detail.
Just look at the recent debate over the quality of recent jobs between EPI and the Annenberg Center (www.factcheck.org) at http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=228
They quote Brookings Institution economist Barry Bosworth, a former Carter administration official, arguing "We shouldn't be in the business of trying to compare the rates of jobs lost to those gained because we just don't have the information right now to do it. Trying to measure the gross flow of jobs is really futile."
As Annenberg argues, "No survey we know of even attempts to compare the specific jobs lost with the specific jobs added throughout the whole economy. Statistics solid enough to settle the question definitively just don't exist."
EPI has a good argument that there methodology for estimating the average job quality is better than Annenberg's methods, http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib200
Again, I'm not arguing that there isn't data for EPI to get the better of the argument, but if there were better statistics collected, it wouldn't be a methological debate. It's be a report of actual statistics collected.
nathan Newman