The Real Debate

The spin from some of the wonks was that President Obama may have lost the first debate on style, but he was the man of substance, while Governor Romney was ‘flashier’ or ‘more aggressive’ but his substance doesn’t hold together.  In the second debate President Obama was ‘more aggressive’ and won on points, or some such thing.  As with much that passes for news reporting these days, the stories could have been written days before and only marginally ‘tweaked’ after the debates.

So, here’s a simple thought about the ‘debates,’ politicians, like CEOs, baseball players, cab drivers, doctors, lawyers and everyone else should be judged on their performance.  As an old dead Roman guy said: Deeds not Words.

But performance can be misleading if someone ‘plays with the numbers;’ it can be difficult to compare one number with another because there is no consistency between the statistics.

Despite the oft mis-quoted remark that ‘consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’* politicians must be judged on their performance, and held up against certain standards.  Some of those standards are nothing more than some basic facts, such as the economy.

Sports fans are well familiar with this problem, as they try to compare the performance of players of different eras: how does A-Rod compare to Aaron or Mays or Ruth given differences in the ball, in how pitchers were used, the length of the season (to include post season), changes in the ball-parks, etc.  Every sport has similar questions.  But every sport also provides some touchstones that speak to standards that translate through the years, a consistent ‘thread’ that helps ground the comparison: a football field is still 100 yards long, bases are 90 feet apart, the net is 10 feet up, and 3 feet high at the center in tennis, etc.  Because of this consistency we can begin to compare numbers and thus understand performance, we can begin to compare Don Budge to Roger Federer.  Though he last played football more than 40 years ago, we can look at the late Alex Karras (RIP) and review his stats, and watch a game film and appreciate just how great a player he was.

That is what consistency provides us.

Which leads us to the unemployment rate – and the Unemployment Rate.

We all know that the Unemployment Rate is now down below 8% (7.8%).  I believe it will fall further in the next month, probably to 7.6%.  This is because the folks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) like their jobs and don’t want to be among the millions with no jobs. One web site asserted that the rate was:

Unemployment Rate = Number of Unemployed / Total Labor Force

But, in fact, most assuredly, that is not how the BLS is computing the ‘Unemployment Rate.’  And that is why I capitalized Unemployment Rate, because it is now a specific thing, not the actual percentage of adults in the US without jobs, but a weird, and heavily manipulated number that is created by the BLS, like reading sports statistics and trying to determine a quarterback’s rating.  It isn’t a real number, it is made up.  The significant difference is that we can find out how the quarterback rating is created, but the Unemployment Rate is some sort of State Secret.

If we really wanted to know how many people had jobs – against the number of people who want jobs (and against the people who need jobs – not the same number), we would need to go ask everyone in the US. 

That is hard, expensive and takes a long time.  So, the number that is generated is based on asking 60,000 US families and 160,000 US business about their employment status.  That would be okay as well, if we all then knew precisely what happened next.  But we don’t.  Because then, the BLS adjusts ‘those’ numbers to reflect other data, to include variations between the 50 states, month of the year and season (annual plantings and harvest affect job numbers in many states), the start and stop of the school year, and a number of other factors.  But, here’s the trick: each one of these variables is adjusted based upon standards that are known to only a select group of people within the BLS.  Certain numbers are routinely excluded.  For example, if you don’t have a job, and you are – within the definition of the BLS – no longer looking for a job (if you have been unemployed for more than 6 months and do not collect any type of compensation, for example, and are living with your brother or sister or mom and dad) you are invisible, you no longer are counted.

After all this churning of data the BLS produces a number.  I suppose it is possible that the folks who work at BLS never thought about making their big boss happy, that the numbers simply ‘fall out’ of the formula and they publish them, month in, month out.  But, given that they have now admitted that they ‘somehow’ failed to include the data from California – the most populous state in the Union – and one that has been particularly hard hit by the recession and state government incompetence, do the numbers still seem credible?

The point is simply this: 45 months after taking office our real unemployment rate remains above 8%.  If you add in all the people who do not have jobs and have been – literally and figuratively - ‘discounted’ by the BLS, the total number of people who don’t have jobs but would like one is on the order 15 million (as opposed to the roughly 12 million represented by the number 7.8%) and an additional 8 to 10 million people who have part time jobs that want full time jobs.  Of course, there are even more people out there who would be willing to work if there were additional jobs (there are roughly 85 million Americans old enough to be in the work force and a significant portion of them would be willing to consider some sort of work if it were available).

The long and short of it is that the President has had nearly 4 years to work on the economy, and there is no better number to indicate progress – or lack of it – then the number of folks who have jobs and the number who want jobs.  The President’s performance – not in the debates but in His Job has been abysmal.

The results of the debates aren’t important, those are just words.  Let’s look at deeds.

* Emerson really said ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’ foolish being an important qualifier, and was speaking to the idea that many people – those with little minds - fail to recognize the differences between one situation and another and thus fail to recognize that when someone says one thing on day one and another thing on day two there can be a reason for that difference.