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Comment by unimployed | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure you are being sarcastic or you are not all that experienced.

Talk at length with most economic professionals on /r/economics and you will find the repeatedly stated and unstated views that “the CPI is the most studied economic measurement in the world” and “you are welcome to perform your own study covering the inadequacies of the CPI.” I paraphrased slightly but from memory those quotes are highly accurate, as well as the general dismissiveness and institutionalism/bias pertaining to official economic data. Also for a professional economist to question the accuracy of official economic data is career suicide. Why you rarely see that topic discussed by a professional economist or in a published study.

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I've seen this pattern in academic settings myself.

There's simply a lot of tunnel vision. Although, as a parent comment pointed out (a bit rudely) there's acknowledgement of various shortcomings of measures such as CPI, there's also a tendency to assume these models are accurate in policy-setting institutions.

I'd say they're maybe as accurate as predicting weather in the Great Lakes Region.

Also: r/economics should not be representative of economists, as a group. (Although they do parrot a lot of bank and government economist views.) Most posters there strike me as undergrads, who are mostly clueless to the fuzzy subtleties of the study (and life in general.)

Mod of r/economics here.

If you want informed people on economics on reddit, go to r/badeconomics which is the more tightly knit hangout for professional economists and grad students.

Otherwise, go to the economics cluster on twitter. r/economics is like r/news with an econ twist. It's too large to effectively moderate.

r/badeconomics is great place to lurk for a layman who wants to learn.

The problem for layman like me interested in economics is that you have absorbed so much wrong views and explanations from the news and political commentary that you must work hard to unlearn them before you can start learning.

My experience is from bureau members and long time members I’m able to identify as professionals. I’m well aware of the population of undergrad and econ101 members that are fairly easy to identify as well.

If you know of any sources that are well known references that acknowledge the shortcomings of BLS methodologies I would be interested in reading up on them. I have not seen those kind of discussions frequently in publications.

“the CPI is the most studied economic measurement in the world” and it being fallible are not exclusive.

I had a great Econ 101 professor. He spend quite a few lectures breaking down how much these key stat suck. Then we spent the rest of the time using them for study because that’s what we have.

The key message he drilled into me was that 1) don’t be so certain of your results (or at least don’t sound like an asshole making pronouncements on things) 2) data are expensive to gather and there aren’t many alternatives; don’t ignore them because they have flaws

I agree, but generally the assumptions being made by authors and known issues with the data are unstated rather than stated. Further, when highlighting such issues, the reactions can often be negative and dismissive. Obviously people don’t like their work being criticized for reasons that they have little control over (it sucks but that’s the best data we have). My point is the topic doesn’t get discussed enough to improve—outside of some corners of academics.

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