So basically…pull a China.
Just don’t have any reports.
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The old “no test, no cases” play.
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He won’t be able to hide it though, since ADP and other companies produce their own reports.
#FAKENEWS
only official Trump Approved Numbers are to be believed!
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I give it a month before Trump threatens to punish those companies unless they fire whoever produces those reports.
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Antoni has frequently called Social Security a Ponzi scheme that needs to be ended. Now he’ll be in charge of the report that determines the annual COLA for SS benefits.
Chances it’s zero or negative for his tenure?
I know that I’m an academic snob, but I would argue that if you can’t get into a top 50 program, you probably shouldn’t get a Ph.D. I’d be willing to listen to arguments that it should be top 100, but going to a school outside the top 150 is not a sign of a brilliant mind. Antoni got his Ph.D. from such a school. And conservative economists who are more qualified than me to judge him think his a moron.
Antoni’s “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the same partisan direction,” Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told Axios’ Courtenay Brown and Emily Peck.
Dave Hebert, an economist at the conservative American Institute for Economic Research, wrote in a post on X that he’s worked with Antoni before and implored the Senate to block the nomination.
“I’ve been on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone MAGA,” Hebert said.
Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, showed an instance of Antoni citing the rising number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force without accounting for the role of the aging population.
“This is one of the many elementary errors that show me Mr Antoni is unqualified for the labor market data collection and analysis role he was nominated to,” Di Martino wrote on X.
Jessica Riedl, a senior Manhattan Institute fellow, shared another example from X, in which Antoni appeared not to know that the BLS’ measure of import prices did not account for the impact of tariffs.
“The articles and tweets I’ve seen him publish are probably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right now,” she wrote. “I hope we see better at BLS.”
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This is the damning part.
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What we are seeing play out is the Revenge of the Incompetents.
Trump prefers these sort of people around his orbit as they will do what they are told.
And the incompetents know full well they would never ascend to such a position under normal circumstances, which generally means that they will fully buy into the Trump MO.
None of this bodes well for the US.
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Not surprising, but Antoni was a participant at the 1/6 insurrection which was likely a much more important factor in his selection than his questionable academic record
He also has a giant honking picture of the Bismarck in his office because he’s a “history buff”
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Well the goods news is that the Senate has to confirm him. And since he’s a total nutjob I’m sure they’ll do the right thing and vote no to his confirmation.
…right?
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I’m not sure what goes into the minds of such people but I guess that they have massive self-confidence issues such that they have so little belief that getting better at the things they suck at would actually pay off. So they invest more in skills that would pay off in a low-trust environment over skills that would pay off in a high-trust environment.
Perhaps when they were a kid, they tried making a cake, and then someone stomped on it or something, so they stopped baking.
Then they use that worldview to restructure the bureaucracy to make it a reality.
I’ve seen it at work, I take one look at the people who are more into politics and all I see in their eyes is resentment. “How can this person thrive on their own skill whereas I have to lie, cheat, and steal?”
It reaches absurd heights when I see such people spending more effort to cheat than it would take to just do the right thing.
I guess the next chance I get maybe I oughtta just say, relax, it doesn’t have to be that way. Just study a little…just believe in yourself! It’ll work!
For you, perhaps. For others, they do what they know.
Or, maybe they couldn’t get into one of the top 50 econ programs, or even one of the top 100. So their lack of self-confidence is rooted in a pretty obvious fact.
If I had more free time today, I’d figure out how to get AI to generate an image of John Thune with a cheetle-covered nose for use in a response.
I also find that pathological liars overestimate the negative consequence of telling the truth or taking responsibility for something. Like they’re so scared of an imagined negative scenario that they find the need to lie.
And I’m like, ok kiddo I know you spilled the milk, it’s on the floor and I see it, you don’t have to make up some bullshit story, just pick up a towel and…
There are over 500 economic programs in this country. That’s a lot of people who will lack self confidence.
Sorry JD, but you are not welcome…
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