Who Do You Trust?
I do not trust anything that appears on Fox News or comes out of our President’s mouth. I make it a point to stay off of social media and only view You Tube for classic music performances and some comedy so those are not sources of misinformation. While newspaper articles will contain all sorts of bias in the language used, I think they generally get the facts right. Local and national news usually get the facts right to the extent they are known, but have the same editorial bias both in how those facts are presented or in what gets covered and does not get covered.
Which leaves blogs like this one and it is no surprise I tend to read those with a more liberal bias. The question I am left with is how accurate are the facts or conclusions on these sites. The impetus for this inquiry is not the flooding tragedy in Texas. For the record, I do not think climate change or the DOGE cuts to the NWS helped, but despite what appears on some blogs, it seems that the tragedy could only have been averted with a more timely and robust response from local public safety officials or people not sleeping that close to the river. Rather, it was a comment made in an article about economic management that appeared in the blog Independent Australia.
Independent Australia is self described as a progressive journal focusing on politics, democracy the environment and Australian history and identity. Since 2007 it has published an annual listing of nations’ economic outcomes to rate those nations’ economic management. The factors examined are national income per capita, GDP growth, median wealth per adult ,jobs, inflation, taxation rates, budget balances and government. The primary source for this data is the IMF which collects it from individual counties.
The 2025 report ranks Denmark as the world’s top performing economy based on the above factors, followed by Norway, United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg. The United States ranked 24th down from 19th in 2024 based on slower economic growth, deeper debt and declining per capita income. Canada came in 17th, Vietnam was 14th and South Korea was 12th. Great Britain, Germany, and Japan were not in the top 20.
While the methodology can be questioned as well as the rankings, the money quote was “that data published by USA is no longer accurate”. The report pointed to the routine lying by senior personnel in the Trump Administration and scepticism about employment and inflation figures. The report suggested that it now viewed economic data from the United States the same way it viewed data from Russia, Turkey and North Korea.
I agree that everyone in both Trump Administrations lies a lot although none more than Trump himself. I also know that Trump accused Biden of cooking the books and he is nothing if not projection, but I really do not know whether there has been a drop in the accuracy of the government’s reporting of economic data. If this had been reported by a newspaper of substance or a national news outlet, I would take it to the bank, but not from a “progressive” blog in Australia.
Obviously, the accuracy of the government data is of critical importance because it drives the stock market, the Federal Reserve, individual personal and business decisions, social security COLA adjustments as well as executive and legislative policy decisions. If you can not trust the government data what can you trust?
Which leaves blogs like this one and it is no surprise I tend to read those with a more liberal bias. The question I am left with is how accurate are the facts or conclusions on these sites. The impetus for this inquiry is not the flooding tragedy in Texas. For the record, I do not think climate change or the DOGE cuts to the NWS helped, but despite what appears on some blogs, it seems that the tragedy could only have been averted with a more timely and robust response from local public safety officials or people not sleeping that close to the river. Rather, it was a comment made in an article about economic management that appeared in the blog Independent Australia.
Independent Australia is self described as a progressive journal focusing on politics, democracy the environment and Australian history and identity. Since 2007 it has published an annual listing of nations’ economic outcomes to rate those nations’ economic management. The factors examined are national income per capita, GDP growth, median wealth per adult ,jobs, inflation, taxation rates, budget balances and government. The primary source for this data is the IMF which collects it from individual counties.
The 2025 report ranks Denmark as the world’s top performing economy based on the above factors, followed by Norway, United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg. The United States ranked 24th down from 19th in 2024 based on slower economic growth, deeper debt and declining per capita income. Canada came in 17th, Vietnam was 14th and South Korea was 12th. Great Britain, Germany, and Japan were not in the top 20.
While the methodology can be questioned as well as the rankings, the money quote was “that data published by USA is no longer accurate”. The report pointed to the routine lying by senior personnel in the Trump Administration and scepticism about employment and inflation figures. The report suggested that it now viewed economic data from the United States the same way it viewed data from Russia, Turkey and North Korea.
I agree that everyone in both Trump Administrations lies a lot although none more than Trump himself. I also know that Trump accused Biden of cooking the books and he is nothing if not projection, but I really do not know whether there has been a drop in the accuracy of the government’s reporting of economic data. If this had been reported by a newspaper of substance or a national news outlet, I would take it to the bank, but not from a “progressive” blog in Australia.
Obviously, the accuracy of the government data is of critical importance because it drives the stock market, the Federal Reserve, individual personal and business decisions, social security COLA adjustments as well as executive and legislative policy decisions. If you can not trust the government data what can you trust?