Dear John: I am a fairly avid reader of yours. I’m not from New York City; I’m from the other side of New York.
I’m of the other ideology. I’m pro-Obama, kinda. Obama is much more in the center than anyone realizes.
I wish you’d stop pretending he’s making up jobs [numbers]. I’m not saying he’s not. He’s just not doing anything different than anyone else has since these statistics started from the Bureau [of Labor Statistics].
I don’t like The Post in general for its ridiculous slant to the right. Anonymous Caller.
Dear Anonymous Caller: I just don’t know where to start.
If you are a “fairly avid reader” of my column, you already understand that I’ve been following statistical misrepresentation for years. That includes during both Bush administrations, Clinton and Obama. Hell, if I were older, I would have given Truman, Ike, and Kennedy a shot or two. I would have enjoyed Nixon tremendously.
So there is no political slant in my column.
But you are correct in that politicians try to put the best spin on economic reports. They lie. They are scum.
But only Richard Nixon is said to have told the Bureau of Labor Statistics to outright change a jobs report he didn’t like. The rest of the fabrication has been a lot more subtle and, once the changes are made, they carry over from administration to administration, party to party.
If a deception is good enough for the Democrats, then it will work just as well for the Republicans when they are in office.
Case in point: In 1993, the Clinton administration decided that people really weren’t unemployed if they had stopped looking for work for a year. Are these “discouraged workers” still unemployed? Of course they are. But it was a convenient way to make a harmful fact disappear.
That helped Clinton because it made unemployment look lower when “it’s the economy, stupid” was the theme.
But President Bush and now President Obama have also benefited from that change in definition.
And the Birth/Death Model — which assumes jobs are being created by newly formed companies when they might not be — goes back at least 30 years. Go through your list of presidents who are grateful for that sleight of hand.
Is it snowing yet in “the other side of New York”?
Dear John: Would you answer a question or two for a longtime reader? Does Goldman make its own monthly jobs guess? And where can one look up what the experts are expecting as far as growth is concerned? J.A.
Dear J.A.: Everyone has a projection for the monthly jobs report. I’m sure the shoeshine guy on my corner thinks he knows the number. And there’s probably a psychic on Long Island who’ll get her own show because someday she’ll come within 10,000 of the actual figure.
So, yes, Goldman Sachs would have a guess — just like everyone else on Wall Street and in the media.
You’ve heard the phrase “intellectual property.” Well, in this case nobody has any because there is nothing intelligent about any of these guesses. I rely on Yahoo when I need some uninformed estimates on all economic numbers. The address is biz.yahoo.com/c/e/html.
Send your questions to Dear John, The NY Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, NY, NY 10036, or john.crudele@nypost.com.