Nearly 24 hours have passed since I posted yesterday's critique of the Census Bureau's rosy view of household median income (HMI). The huge, historic leap (5.2%) in HMI was simply not credible on the face of it. There had to be something going on. In fact, it turned out there were several interacting factors which inflated the headline HMI number.
(Also, see this important New York Times article from August, 2016, which I incorporated into yesterday's post. That article describes the Sentier results I discussed yesterday.)
If you do the right Google searches, you will find only two reports critiquing the Census report—mine and the New York Post article I cited. If you do a Google News search, you will find only the New York Post article because Google doesn't consider DOTE to be a news source.
Today you will find one uncritical discussion after another celebrating the Good News. The dubious Census report was swallowed hook, line and sinker without debate.
It doesn't matter that all measurements of things like median household income are bound to be flawed, not least because humans with hidden agendas are doing the measuring.
What matters is that the historically standard measurement was modified to make the results look better than they would have been under the previous standard. Moreover, extraordinary factors (e.g., very low energy prices leading to very low inflation) further distorted the Census results, given their standard method for accounting for inflation (see yesterday's post).
Importantly, those extraordinary factors went unacknowledged by the Census Bureau and those in the media evaluating its household median income results.
With those caveats in mind, let's call previous, undistorted standard measurements "reality" (even if it is relative, as it always is).
Let's ask a simple question — how can we explain this astonishing disparity between reality and human perceptions of it?
Well, it's not that we haven't seen this kind of thing before. That's what Flatland is all about. But let's be specific—
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Humans love good news. More than anything, humans want to believe that they're not fucking up. You can throw out the old adage which says if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't. If the news is good, human credulity is unbounded. If the news is good, humans will believe anything.
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For those with a vested interest in the status quo, or those with a particular political bias, confirmation bias makes it self-evident that the good news must be true, no matter how implausible the news is on the face of it.
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Humans automatically (unconsciously) submit or defer to authority. The modern incarnation of authority is expertise. The sacred Census Bureau represents authority in this context.
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Anyone rejecting the good news, or questioning it, risks social ostracism or marginalization. Doing so poses a subtle existential threat to the existing social order. So it doesn't happen very often. Regarding marginalization, skeptical voices will simply be ignored (filtered). Under this interpretation, me and the New York Post guy are invisible.
This list is not complete, but that's what I've got for you today.
I see your deconstruction was picked up by zerohedge. Get ready. ;)
Posted by: Starstruck | 09/15/2016 at 11:52 AM