Lil White Lies: De-Ranged

Lawyer’s question at deposition: What is your date of birth?
Response: July 15.
Lawyer’s question: What year?
Response: Every year.

There’s been one major theory on this blog about how my conservative counterpart (Bryan White) often works his blog’s “Grading PolitiFact” series: his leading modus operandi is to mischaracterize PolitiFact’s underlying argument in the case of Republicans, to something other than what their ideological agenda might be, something that “sounds good” and then assert in the most outrageous way he can that PolitiFact deliberately missed it, most likely due to PolitiFact’s bias. This ruling on Robert Reich is a classic case on the Liberal side. In his PBS piece, Robert Reich defined a period of time, set the bounds of it, using Commerce Department statistics. He could just as well have used “since 1929” as he could have “just before the Great Depression.” But my conservative counterpart thinks it’s all about the Great Depression, when the article suggests otherwise. The article was about American workers “whose jobs and wages are under assault” getting “the worst deal they’ve had since before Labor Day was invented” because, after all, he was writing this around Labor Day weekend.

Let’s talk about his “just before the Great Depression” assertions, anyway. Wikipedia, and most “lay people”, consider the Great Depression to have started in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed. But the stock market, as I just noted in a recent post, is a leading economic indicator. The actual downturn of the economy does not follow for two to three quarters. In the spring of 1930 the stock market actually turned up again briefly before the economy fell. So to say there was no data for the period before the Great Depression is actually a misnomer. Reich probably knew this as well when he made his comparison, as a political economist, and because there was actually a bit of data available for before the Great Depression. This, along with the Commerce Department data, explains why Reich used the word “just” as in “just before the Great Depression.”

Bryan White also argued it out with another commenter at the PolitiFact Facebook page, and the rival commenter, Aaron Speca, pointed out the same issue with Bryan’s criticism:

It seems to me he was just stating a time frame for his comparison. And the numbers bear out his assertion. And yes, I did read his whole column. It wasn't "hey look how much higher the ratio is since the Great Depression, and it was high then." It was "Look at all the data since the Great Depression, the ratio is higher now than it was during that entire period." And he's right.

Maybe he actually did his research and knew that the numbers only went back to 1929 and thus, made that qualifying statement to bound his assertion. If the numbers only went back to 1961, he might have said "The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than at any time since the first year of JFK's presidency." Does that mean that in that particular year the numbers were excessively high? No, it just means that's the data he was using.

This is how Bryan decides to create his mischaracterization in his blog:

…Reich doesn't argue trends. Trends are irrelevant to his argument. He's asserting a problem now regardless of trends and trying to emphasize the severity of the problem by using the comparison to numbers preceding the Great Depression.”

This is misleading, because the crucial words Bryan is willfully ignoring in Reich’s statement are “at any time since.” Reich only has (Commerce Department) data for “any time since”—that’s the range he’s talking about, which he alluded to at the start of his piece. Bryan knows this, but goes into word play mode anyway. He comments on the Facebook page that “PolitiFact failed to put adequate focus on Reich's misleading historical comparison.” But this was not an historical comparison to the Great Depression. He was defining the starting bounds of the range of time from just before the Great Depression to the year 2010, the last year for which statistics are available.

Even though Bryan’s summarily dismissed these 81 years in his main argument, he still wants to make another argument about the four exceptions writer Lou Jacobson found in the range of numbers.

Only four exceptions to Reich's claim using that method? That certainly sounds like trouble for Reich even if he gets a pass on "just before."

I’ve previously examined numbers claims at PolitiFact, and a True ruling, as a general rule of thumb, must be within zero to 7 percent off. So, if we consider this period of time from 1929 through 2010 as 81 years, the percent of exceptions is less than 5 percent (4/81), qualifying it for True. So yes, to respond to Bryan’s Facebook comment, this is as good as True. The other matter is that three of the years were during World War 2 (1941, 42 and 43), which makes them a bit of an anomaly. This was a time of “rapid growth of labor unions” putting pressure on wages.  There were also price controls, which would have acted to reduce corporate profits. It is no wonder that the ratio of wages exceeded profits at that time.

Here’s another “quick review” of  Bryan’s summary bullet list, with my response in italics:

Ignore a big part of Reich's claim ("just before the Great Depression")—False, not a big part, used only to specify the starting point for which Reich had statistics available.

Ignore the context of the claim—mischaracterized as the Great Depression as well.

Ignore the underlying message Reich was trying to make—according to Bryan, Reich was implying was there needed to be more “business and government action.” This one is true but not required to prove the statement Reich made. Bryan is “moving the goalposts.”

Ignore four exemptions to Reich's claim under one of the methods PolitiFact used to test the claim—less than 5% of total period of time of 81 years, so still “True” consistent with PolitiFact’s criteria in numbers claims.

Ignore "burden of proof" criterion—only according to Bryan’s faulty interpretation.

To use one of Bryan’s Facebook comments on this ruling again, his review of this fact-check “stinks.” PolitiFact never changed the claim, Bryan changed it to suit his purpose. Like the first lines of my post where I place, as a matter of humor, a genuine answer given to an attorney in a deposition, the person answering the attorney obfuscates what he is asking, even though he’s technically answered the question. Bryan obfuscates this one in reverse.  PolitiFact answers correctly with the year—by “paying attention to the specific wording,” but Bryan says no, it’s wrong because it should be “every year.”  Talk about "bankrupt thinking."