Justin Wolfers

So that means if something comes out of the president's mouth, it's almost certainly untrue.

If it comes out of the Treasury Secretary's mouth, it may well be untrue.

If it comes out of the Commerce Secretary's mouth, just go and run away and stop listening to him.

If it comes out of the Press Secretary's mouth, she's a relentless liar.

So anyone inside the White House, just forget it.

separately there's our economic statistics our economic statistics are compiled by independent or independent-ish agencies the bureau of labor statistics bureau of economic analysis and census bureau these are totally serious statisticians who are doing the best they can with the resources they can nothing that comes out of those organizations is a lie still okay and i think it's really important as much as we might worry about the statistics none of it's a political lie having said that

that doesn't mean they're always the truth, which is to say any statistic is an estimate.

It's a best guess using a specific methodology.

And at different times and places, those methodologies can be stronger or weaker.

We never know the truth because in order to know, for instance, the truth of total income earned in America, we'd have to talk to every American and find out how much income they've earned.

We don't do that, right?

We have to ask people, did we ask the right subset?

Did they tell the truth?

Were they thinking about pre-tax or post-tax?

All sorts of things go on.

Statistical sausage is really quite complex.

So even though these numbers are the truth,

they are open to critique.

Now, here's where I really want to be careful.

They're almost always, because we're blessed by extraordinarily good statisticians in the United States, they're almost always the best possible guess.