… is page 115 of Robert Higgs’ Insight Summer 1998. Independent evaluation essay”Official economic statistics: The emperor’s clothes are dirty” As this essay was reprinted in 2004 in a collection of some of Bob’s essays, On Leviathan (footnote deleted)
Because they are conceptually ill-defined, many official economic statistics fail to capture what they purport to measure. For example, the figures on “poverty” are prominent in this regard. Is poverty absolute or relative? If the latter, what is the correct benchmark? Clearly, the living conditions of many Americans below the “poverty line” must seem affluent to the billions of Third World waterbodies. In addition to international comparisons, many Americans who are now classified as poor say that it looked like a good job to their grandparents. Above a certain absolute income, “poverty” becomes less of a precise condition than a staging ground from which redistributive armies launch attacks on high-income earners.
