0 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 17 Oct \ on: What happened in 1971? Nothing, just a common year people choose to mismeasure econ
I don't really understand the criticism. Just because one graph doesn't show a big divergence doesn't mean the other graphs are wrong.
I re-checked https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ and it doesn't look like they actually produced most of their own charts. They were mostly taken from other websites... so either everyone was being incompetent or had an agenda, or at least there was some kind of divergence in the early 1970s depending on what data you're measuring.
I'm not saying I believe everything in that website, some of it clearly is put there with an agenda or the axes are manipulated to make the divergence look bigger than it is.
I'm just saying that I don't really understand what the twitter thread is trying to claim.
I'd also argue that I'm pretty skeptical of productivity numbers in general. An econ professor I know likes to say "Does your job create surplus or do you just move it around?" Problem is, people whose job it is to move surplus around still get counted in productivity metrics.
Not to mention, if there's a lot of growth among top earners but stagnation and divergence for low earners, the growth among the top earners will swamp what's going on with low earners due to how we calculate averages.
I re-checked https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ and it doesn't look like they actually produced most of their own charts. They were mostly taken from other websites... so either everyone was being incompetent or had an agenda,
It's called cherry picking. You could pick 1970 or 1969 or 1985 instead and find lots of graphs just as well.
or at least there was some kind of divergence in the early 1970s depending on what data you're measuring.
Yes. Exactly. "early 1970s". Not exactly flipping a switch in one year and in one year only.
I'm just saying that I don't really understand what the twitter thread is trying to claim.
Maybe you missunderstood that the claim is a bigger argument than it is. The argument is only that nothing happened in 1971 specifically.
It's long term trends that span many years and multiple decades. Time moves. Time moves every year. Not just in 1971. Time moved in 1972 as well. And in 1973 too.
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But I mean, something did happen in 1971 specifically. And just because divergences can be measured from other starting points, it doesn't mean what happened in 1971 didn't also contribute or exacerbate some of these trends. And it seems pretty clear to me that there was a divergence of some kind in the 1970s. Whether or not that's due to taking off the gold standard is up for debate. (I'm not well versed enough in this to say anything definitively.)
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