[lbo-talk] bourgeois stats: a maker speaks

[Max B. Sawicky]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Someone who works at one of the USG's statistical mills asked me to 
> forward this anonymously.]
> 
> I can't pass for disinterested, but the major statistics have a de
> facto system of checks and balances. The Federal Reserve is never shy
> about calling, and their calls are answered. The private analysts who
> consume the data--who build their careers upon the data--are neither
> passive consumers nor without an audience for their challenges to the
> official stats. The policy factories such as Brookings can act in a
> similar way. Major academics, such as Robert Gordon of _After the New
> Economy_ fame, have seats on the advisory committees. Believe it or
> not, there is a fair amount of accountability.
> 
> None of which will compel the numbers to "speak for themselves." They
> can't, and they won't. The disputes over their significance owes more
> to the interests at stake than to perfidious geeks. That the map is
> not the territory doesn't make a liar of the cartographer.
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> 

I have been interacting with the numbers gnomes intermittently for 20 
years or so
and I agree with this statement.  There is an elaborate review and 
vetting process
for this stuff.  It's done as well as it's possible to do, given what 
they are mandated
to produce.

An exception was the Boskin price index power play some years ago.  I 
suspect
this had some impact though I'm not certain.  Dean Baker did a book on 
the brouhaha
for EPI one of his early masterpieces.