exactly...statistics is a game that can be and is played depending on the agenda you wish to achieve...anyone who has taken statistics knows that when you change one element, it changes everything and you are not comparing apples to apples...trump truly does think low of his supporters and he might be right...

@thinktwice I used stat a little in my work, my son is an economist working in a think tank, so we do get some laughs about how stats will say exactly what you want. A major portion of his job is citing all the limiting factors in studies. The clients then decide whether to cite the actual study or gloss over the limfacs.

@glennlab As an accountant, I learned early that I can make numbers say whatever the client wants...yeah...economists and experts like your son are not valued in this administration unless they make him look good by tweaking numbers...use the raw data to come up with the real graphs and stats...

@thinktwice I was nominated for a pulitzer in the fiction category for one of the returns i did.

@glennlab so was trump...

When the economy was bad in Bush and Obama years, we complained. Now it is good, we complained. We must find something bad in every good. Is that it?

Economy does not work perfectly for every person. It is the truth. Capitalism also tilts the scale. The world admits the economy is good. Let us call good when it is good by most common standards.

@St-Sinner We have not had a good economy since the boom of the 50-60s, we have had passable periods, but in no period did the middle class grow and leisure time increase since then. The normal post war recovery after Vietnam was interrupted by Reagan supplu side economics and has remained in the shitter since then. In the 1950s and 60s, we had a majority of single earner families, and that was all that was needed, something that has never been true again. Trickle down has never worked, and this has been the longest it has ever been allowed to exist.

@glennlab So people who have been happy under the roaring economies under Clinton and Obama - Trump periods are wrong? The majority of people only measure the economy by one word. - Jobs.

What you are talking about is quality and the structure of the economy. That is a different discussion. There is controlled capitalism, there is capitalism on the loose, there is democratic capitalism. Republican capitalism is uncontrolled capitalism where you give all controls to job creators. I agree that it has not worked. But in every country in the world, every economy has critics - one way or another. No one has found a perfect economic philosophy.

Pete Buttigieg said the Chinese capitalism model is being touted around the world.