Wonkblog: Statistical Analysis Lacking a Frame of Reference

The middle class is poorer today than it was in 1989 … The fundamentals of the economy are, well, okay. It’s been slow and steady, but the recovery has chugged along enough to get us back to something close to normal. The economy has surpassed its pre-crisis peak, unemployment is at a six-year low, and stocks have more than tripled from their 2009 low. It’s not the best of times, but it’s certainly not the worst — which was a very real possibility after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy threatened to send us into a second Great Depression. – Washington Post
Dominant Social Theme: Things aren’t going well because of the greed of the one percent, but sooner or later they will get better. The economy is growing, after all.
Free-Market Analysis: This kind of article is a fairy tale organized around selected numerical evidence. It reminds us of the famous phrase, “lies, damned lies and statistics,” often attributed to Mark Twain.
The article is posted at the Washington Post and is actually penned by bloggers known in aggregate as Wonkblog. The idea seems to be to take statistical indicators and try to make them relevant by pointing out that they have a larger meaning.
Certainly this article deserves little in the way of applause. Here’s more:
If voters credited them with this economic turnaround, Obama and his party might have a better chance of holding the Senate this fall, an outcome that looks precarious … Unfortunately for Obama, though, voters have rewarded him for the upbeat economic news by starting to trust Republicans more on the economy.
What in the name of Phil Gramm is going on? Part of this mystery isn’t one at all: the economy simply isn’t as healthy as the headline numbers suggest. Unemployment has fallen, in part, because so many people have given up looking for work rather than finding it, and there are still millions of part-timers who want full-time jobs. But then there are deeper factors at work. The economy has gotten bigger, but much of that growth hasn’t reached the middle class.

This post was published at The Daily Bell on October 03, 2014.