Suspicions of Doctored Trump Economic Numbers


Trump's outright dismissal of a bureaucrat who published economic data may be just the tip of a terrible and destructive iceberg. It is that Trump loyalists, or critics who are scared, have already began altering economic data to make the economy look good when it is not. According to a well known academic blogger, Heather Cox Richardson, researchers who follow government data closely think numbers from the past 12 months have understated unemployment and overstated economic growth. This would be consistent with Trump's refusal to accept the election results of 2020.

Trump's mind seems to block out as wrong any information he does not like. I think that for a long time he really believed he had won in 2020. It may well be that he was convinced raising tariffs would flood the government with money from countries paying the tariffs lowering taxes in the U.S. and driving up prosperity. When it did not happen, and the opposite happened, his mind simply had no ability to believe this could have been the outcome. The bureaucrat had to have wrongfully doctored the numbers. I'm suspicious others have been pushing the numbers up since the whole tariff thing began. 

I don't have to tell readers here how important good data is on many topics. Think of health statistics and how much we all want to know what is a serious risk and what is not. There is data on traveling to areas around the world. We need to know weather trends. 

Since forever, we have attributed data that is propaganda to communist and fascist governments. The famous book 1984 was about the government false information that gave the government power over everyone. How could it be our own U.S.A. is doing what the fictitious government in 1984 did?

At least we know Trump is altering economic data and we can find more truthful sources to determine what is going on.


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