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http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/07/15/...ami-wages/
Quote:We all have heard the phrase: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (for its origin, see the entry in Wikipedia). This phrase is a damned lie.
You cannot lie with statistics if they are properly done; that is, if you show both the data and the method you used to analyze the data. Only the innumerate can be lied to with statistics. “Innumeracy” is inability to deal with numbers and quantitative reasoning, just as “illiteracy” is the inability to read. Unfortunately, although only 30 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, a much, much higher percent are functionally innumerate. However, for important issues, you will always find numerate people on both sides, and thus when one side attempts to lie with statistics, the other side will point out the problems and perform alternative analyses. Numerate public, by spending a little effort to follow the logic of both sides, will immediately see who is right and who is wrong. And that’s why statistics are very different from “damned lies.”
Here’s a good example of how this works in practice, with me a numerate bystander in one very important debate: does massive immigration depress wages of native workers..
http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/07/15/...ami-wages/
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(07-15-2016, 10:20 PM)Dan Wrote: http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/07/15/...ami-wages/
Quote:We all have heard the phrase: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (for its origin, see the entry in Wikipedia). This phrase is a damned lie.
You cannot lie with statistics if they are properly done; that is, if you show both the data and the method you used to analyze the data. Only the innumerate can be lied to with statistics. “Innumeracy” is inability to deal with numbers and quantitative reasoning, just as “illiteracy” is the inability to read. Unfortunately, although only 30 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, a much, much higher percent are functionally innumerate. However, for important issues, you will always find numerate people on both sides, and thus when one side attempts to lie with statistics, the other side will point out the problems and perform alternative analyses. Numerate public, by spending a little effort to follow the logic of both sides, will immediately see who is right and who is wrong. And that’s why statistics are very different from “damned lies.”
Here’s a good example of how this works in practice, with me a numerate bystander in one very important debate: does massive immigration depress wages of native workers..
http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/07/15/...ami-wages/
Of course I would expect massive immigration of unskilled workers to depress the wages of native workers -- if the immigrants are low-skilled workers with no entrepreneurial tendencies.
But I will take it on. The Marielitos did enter the labor market of Greater Miami at a time in which real wages for unskilled workers were already in decline. Wages for unskilled workers in Greater Miami were already below the national average -- significantly below -- and those wages fell faster in Miami than in the USA as a whole. Around 1984 (four years after the boat-lift) the gap in wages between unskilled workers in Miami and the rest of the USA was at its greatest. But the gap shrank enough that the difference between Miami and the rest of America in wages for unskilled workers got much closer to the US norm.
The 1980s were a bad time in which to be a low-skilled worker. But some things can happen. Many unskilled workers leave unskilled work for other categories of work or even set up businesses. Second, many Marielitos went beyond Miami
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
