By Invictus - December 27th, 2011, 8:00PM
As it relates to economics, stories about hyperinflation, sky-high interest rates, rampant government spending, expansionary austerity, an economic plan that will get the unemployment rate to 2.8%, etc., etc., have been making (or made) the rounds for the past few years. Yet the purveyors of these fictions lose no credibility and somehow maintain their status as experts, continuing to appear on business television shows and on op-ed pages nationwide. (Post-market on Friday, December 23, Bloomberg Television trotted out Harry “Roaring 2000′s” Dent, for example. How’d that call work out?) Paul Krugman has railed about all this countless times, most recently here, and he has a very valid point.
But Rush Limbaugh has now taken it all to a new level by demonstrating a mind-numbing cluelessness about one of the most fundamental of our employment statistics, the unemployment rate. Mr. Limbaugh did not just twist, distort, or massage statistics (though he most certainly did do those things), he displayed an abject ignorance of what the BLS measures and how it is measured.
In an error-laden, wince-inducing screed that was somewhat painful to read, Rush explains to his Dittoheads that the government manipulates its economic releases to make them administration-friendly. (Of course, that being the case, he does not tell us why, three years into the current administration, the unemployment rate is not a second-term-insuring 5 percent instead of 8.6, but never mind that.)
In the hope of maintaining my sanity, I’ll confine myself to the most egregious assertion in Rush’s comedy of errors (emphasis mine):
What was the number of jobs created [in November]? It’s 120,000 jobs. It’s 120, 126,000, whatever. That’s in the ballpark. That number of jobs created can lower unemployment rate 0.4%, almost one half of a percent? Creating 120,000 new jobs can do that? [...]
A mere 126,000 job increase drops unemployment rate almost one half of a percentage point.
If you’re thinking, “Hey, Invictus, the payroll number comes from
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/better-to-keep-your-mouth-shut-and-be-thought-a-fool/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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