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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7193 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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"Trump fires Bureau of Labor Statistics chief without evidence for political reasons" says the news radio I wake up to, then continues to say he removed the Democrat appointee "without concrete evidence." Since COVID-19 caused lockdowns, the BLS numbers have been revised downward from initial reports regularly, sometimes ridiculously so, which Axios says has justifiable reasons.

So why are the initial numbers even reported if we know the algorithm they use will be wildly inaccurate?

Reuters has a nice graph showing that large revisions have been made quite often, both downward and upward, for decades.

large revisions have been made quite often, both downward and upward, for decades.

I feel like you're burying some of Reuters own commentary there.

The combined downward revision for the two previous months - May and June - was larger than anything reported outside of the pandemic era. Indeed, the estimates for the two prior months combined have more often than not been revised higher. Since 1979, the median two-month combined estimate change was an upward revision of 10,000.

Yes, revisions have been made quite often, but this one is noteworthy and unusual. I'm not yet willing to ascribe it to malice, but we should acknowledge that it's peculiar.

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