Soundproof

A former manager of mine shared a post from one of their contacts on LinkedIn, which, in turn, was a reposting of another social media post. I was tempted to say that I would spare readers the details, but I'm not sure that it's a good idea. So, understanding that I take a risk of setting a bridge on fire, here is the original post.

Rule number one of social media, according to another person I used to work with, is that whenever a post outrages you, it's a bad idea to act on that. Which I think is good advice; outrage mining is a thing for a reason.

The table shown, helpfully labelled as Table B2, comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Productivity and Costs report, First Quarter 2023, Revised. The revisions in that particular table are what are called the R2 revisions, and are generally released around 130 or so days after the end of the Reference Quarter. In this, case, October through December of 2022. Contained in the full report is a link to a helpful explainer: "Revisions to BLS quarterly labor productivity estimates: How large are they?" That (quite long) article notes:

The R2 estimate is released at the same time as the prelim estimate of the following quarter, because the R1-to-R2 revisions are generally not large enough to warrant a separate news release. Subsequent revisions to the R2 estimates, such as those due to the BEA comprehensive revisions to the national income and product accounts, can be large and can occur long after the reference quarter. Thus, the estimates are never really “final.”

Faked data, indeed.

The easiest way to get someone to believe something that isn't true is to start with something that they believe is true, especially when they don't know much about the subject as a whole. In this case, that the media is somehow colluding with the Federal Reserve Bank to trick people into believing that interest rate hikes are necessary, when they actually are not, based on data that can be fairly arcane, and most people don't pay any attention to.

To be sure, I don't pretend to understand all of the data that the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes. After all, my day job doesn't require that I understand any of the data, and while I can be something of a data nerd, this lies outside the standard range of my hobbies.

But I have come to have something of a sense for hyperbole when I stumble across it. (Or, as I sometimes do, go looking for it.) The original post, from "Wall Street Silver" takes a single table from a government report, links it to perceived recollections of media reports from three or four months ago, and uses that to bolster a narrative of media complicity in government malpractice, for an audience that dislikes what they understand to be the media establishment, and views the current administration as hostile to the national (as in their) interests. And, like a lot of conspiratorial thinking, it offers an easy and simple answer to a difficult and complicated question.

When people speak of threats to American democracy, from both the Left and Right, this is the sort of thing that may not receive as much air time as perhaps it should. While I understand the focus on potential political violence, and hence the constant attention to the events of January 6th, 2021, the decline of social trust that lead to the demonstration, riot, insurrection or what-have-you is less attended-to. It's all fine and good to go on and on about echo chambers and the like. But without an understanding of why people come to see their echo chambers as welcoming and comforting places, it will continue to be difficult to coax people out of them.