Opinion | Trump isn’t the first leader to be paranoid about economic data
From the Soviet Union to Greece, statisticians have been punished for bad news while in colonial Hong Kong, a dearth of data exacted a price
Who before this month had ever heard of Erika McEntarfer, the career statistician who toiled quietly and uncontroversially at the heart of the US data-gathering machine, for 20 years at the Census Bureau and more recently as head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics?
The answer is that Trump is far from alone in his paranoia over statistics. Many before him have done the same thing – flailing out at messengers who report inconvenient numbers at inconvenient political moments. And their statistical allergies have often resulted in harmful unintended consequences, undermining domestic and international confidence in their economic narratives.
On balance, McEntarfer is lucky to have been scapegoated in the era of Trump. When top Soviet Union statistician Olimpiy Kvitkin produced disappointing numbers in the 1937 census, Joseph Stalin had him shot.
Economic data has much bigger political importance than the dull statistical sciences would imply, in particular on jobs, inflation or gross domestic product growth. Politically “inconvenient” data has a habit of being embarrassing – or worse – for authoritarian political leaders anxious to develop narratives allowing them credit for positive and visionary progress.