When the Roman Empire fell around 410 AD, some ancient Roman leaders tried to scapegoat Christianity. “This never happened when the ancient gods were honored!” they cried. These leaders freely admitted the ancient gods were false, but they still argued the state must not fail and the gods must be restored to shore up the empire’s power. “There are many things that are true which it is not useful for the common people to know, and many also which, even if false, it is expedient for the populace to think true.” Such was the opinion of the Roman Varro.
The African bishop St. Augustine has been called the first modern man. His autobiography, that of a loose-living young man turned saint, is still on bookstore shelves. His response to this specious argument was, “The malignant demons take great delight in this deception, for it means they have both the deceivers and the deceived in their possession.”
The Biden-Harris White House and their allies in the administrative state and the media have essentially adopted the position of those ancient Romans. There is desperation as they face a collapse of the eternal welfare-warfare state and its policy that no oligarch be left behind. They, too, have decided to hide from the public what they should not know and tell them only what they are deemed fit to think, even if it is false.
Enter the most recent jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed great numbers — 3.4% unemployment — even as some predict a payroll tax shortfall. How many remember that before the midterm election, growth numbers were reported? Fewer remember when those numbers were revised downward after the election. In fact, job growth numbers have been revised downward several times during the Biden administration. Conclusion: Job numbers headlines are unreliable. When data is released in unfinished form, it can create a rosy scenario helpful to politicians. Of course, this may all be just a coincidence. Democrat toast may just naturally fall jelly side up.
Unless you are an economist who can drill down and fix the errors in these reports, common sense says that when data is prone to be misleading, the average layman should toss it out. Perhaps it may have some marginal value if you are trying to find a way to bet against the herd in the stock market.
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Prosperity’s report, which among other things discounts employment numbers that are below the minimum wage when annualized, such as part-time jobs that pay less than $20,000 a year, sees the employment market differently. They estimate the current unemployment rate is 22.9%. This may explain why President Biden can simultaneously crow about his low unemployment numbers while bragging about how he is expanding the welfare state. If the job growth were significant, the welfare state and programs like Medicaid should shrink, not expand, as Biden claims. Workers who earn good wages would be earning too much to qualify.
Related: The U.S. Misery Index and Bidenflation’s Impact on Everyday Americans
It is often clear when people at the Department of Justice and the FBI make things up for political reasons. Or when 51 intelligence experts lie to help trick the public into voting Democrat in a close election. So why doesn’t the public treat government statistics on the economy with the grain of salt they often deserve? Even those once venerable census numbers turned out to be false in the last go-round. The fake numbers were only corrected after congressional seats were re-apportioned to favor Democrats. In other words, bureaucrat-generated numbers were used to disenfranchise Republicans.
Federal power is the god bureaucrats and liberals cannot bear to see fail. As in ancient Rome’s decline and fall, they can hide information they believe the common people should not know and publish data “which, even if false, it is expedient for the populace to think true.” But will it be enough to turn back the barbarians at the gates? Or will people begin to see that not everything the government reports is accurate and true?
Billions of “classified” pages attest to the role secrecy can play in hiding information from the public, and juiced-up economic reports can promote facts that aren’t strictly factual to influence public opinion. So keep your skepticism up and remember another ancient Roman saying: Cavaet Emptor — Buyer Beware!
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