[narski]

>Looking at the numbers

I'm reminded of this excerpt from 1984:

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

---

Of course, I'm sure none of that would ever apply to our numbers, only to those of our opponents.

[comicjk]

What are the actual numbers you think are fantasy? Most of the time when I see someone claiming economic statistics are fake, it's a misunderstanding or lack of context. For instance, people will say the US unemployment rate is fake because it doesn't include people who have given up on looking for work... but the U-4 unemployment metric, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics alongside the main U-3 metric, does include these people.

[giantg2]

I think the jobs numbers are somewhat fake. There are so many evergreen postings and stuff like outright fake postings.

[Foobar8568]

For one, look at the evolution of the number of submissions in the threads who is hiring/wants to be hired.

While it's a local biaised, as a Swiss resident, I feel the same about the evolution of the IT job market here.

[no_wizard]

I think you may have a point.

Nobody wants to believe they’re living in a peak, and it is hard to predicate. People claiming economic downturns are near are a dime a dozen.

That said, there are possible indicators. Yes, unemployment is low, but what form is employment taking? Is it generally trending toward fulfillment, growth and/or rewarding or is it trending toward mundane, unfulfilling and/or unrewarding?

Is everyone benefitting from the official economic growth? Or are the gains statistically lopsided?

Let’s take a common mentioned stat about wage growth. Yes since 2020 wages finally raised. But if you look at it overall since 1970[0], it still behind productivity gains. Wages are not keeping up with overall productivity growth and people are still going to notice that in some form. Everyone talks about since 2020, but that misses the broader story. (As an aside, I suspect by the end of 2025 wages will significantly stagnant again. Growth won’t continue on the best take of the current trajectory)

Then there’s inflation. Regardless of cause, an entire generation+ of people have never experienced such rapid prices rising, particularly with groceries. People aren’t going to forget this, no matter what the official line is. This also eats away at wage growth which as noted above, has not kept paced with productivity gains.

The official sources though say everything is great, or heading toward it. Maybe, especially if you’re seeing the benefits, but if you’re locked out of the majority of gains, what if any you do get will feel meaningless. This shouldn’t be discounted.

It is entirely possible that wealth inequality combined with the world political climate is starting to show more cracks in the system and this might be peak. We may be seeing the warning signs of a big changes, whether it manifests itself as mostly political or economic is anyways guess I suppose

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff...

[fransje26]

> All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.

In the theme of the day: "Your coverage has been denied, due to [insert nonsense]", while profiteering from record profits in the billions.

Immense economical value has been "produced", benefiting no-one but the very few.

From the New-York Times [1]:

    The company’s profits rose on his watch, jumping to more than $16 billion last year from $12 billion in 2021.  But amid the growth, the company and its parent also attracted scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators who accused them of systematically refusing to authorize health care procedures and treatments.

[1] https://archive.is/cD5vT#selection-877.135-881.197

[eli_gottlieb]

What would make you think the economy was doing well?

[autoexec]

In my case, it'd be growing numbers of people being easily able to afford housing and medical care, with most people putting more of their money into savings. Right now we have soaring numbers of homeless people and record amounts of household debt so I don't think we're doing very well.

[ikiris]

One good indicator could be how much worse it’s doing in a year after the likely trade war.

[goatlover]

We don't live inside a 1984 society. The closest to that currently would be North Korea. Brave New World was always more apt for modern western societies. But any such comparison is flawed, since those are just the writings of one author about a fictional dystopia were things were taken to the logical extreme for whatever critique the author is making.