A Boost to GDP?
"Certainly, only by statistics, can the federal government make even a fitful attempt to plan, regulate, control or reform various industries – or impose central planning...on the entire economic system. If the government received no railroad statistics, for example, how in the world could it even start to regulate railroad rates, finances and other affairs? How could the government impose price controls if it didn't even know what goods have been sold on the market, and what prices were prevailing?"
"Is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded...registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished...drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed...repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored."
"As always in the wonderful world of statistics, especially politically potent ones, it depends on what you measure...Everyone who digs beneath the headline numbers of employment/unemployment soon discovers a number of jarring anomalies in what the media presents as 'factual statistics'."
"State unemployment offices tabulate the number of unemployment claims received and processed. These are real numbers, not guesses like the BLS estimates."These numbers indicate unemployment not at 11%...but a depression-level 21%:"The BLS reported that the US employed workforce stood at about 152 million in February. With 32 million claiming unemployment, that's an unemployment rate of 21%."How then do government data torturers give us an 11% rate – Not a 21% rate?"[They] ignore the 14.3 million contract/gig workers who are currently drawing emergency Federal unemployment via Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), and the 936,000 in the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program."