#misused data

For years people have regarded statistics as infallible. When one sees it in a newspaper or a magazine, it is often believed without any question. When the words “experts say so and so are this probable” or “statistics done by such and such universities or such bureaus” are headed without question. True, statistics don’t lie, and though there are some that fabricate the data to suit their agenda like the infamous Greens, most of the time, the statistics coincide with the parameters of the research being done.

And exactly there lies the problem: rarely does anyone look up the parameters of a statistic, especially to research that can change the entire course of a policy that will continue to effect our futures. The parameters are the very things that determine whether a statistic’s validity should be taken seriously or not. If the parameter of a statistic on child molestation included children that cried or felt uncomfortable when their uncle or grandfather touched them on the arm or leg, then that statistic would be an over-exaggeration of the truth of what is going on.

The biggest and most famous example would be the top 1% statistic that protesters in Wall Street bring up over and over again. This statistic states that the top 1% of Americans make millions of dollars, and to get to the nitty gritty of it, only 3% make more than $250,000. The fallacy with this statistic is that it treats this class of top earners as a stable group. But this group is anything but static; it is one of the most mobile groups in the United States. Many of the people that are int he top 1% this year will not be in the top 1% next year, nor will they even be in he top 3% some years later. Further still, rarely any of them would stay in the top bracket at all, and would be sent back to the top middle, or even sometimes the lower class.

The same goes for those in the middle and poor class. Most that are there do not stay there for the rest of their lives, let alone their children generations later. The economic mobility in the United States is much higher than any other nation than in the world, past and present. Compared to eras, the economic mobility in the U.S. was much higher early 20th century than it is now. The only difference? The markets were not as regulated then, unlike their disposition now.

Another famous study is one that says the income gap between the middle class and the rich class is wider in the United States than it ever was anywhere else in history. Never, though, has it been mentioned that very few in the world, at so little points in human history, had a middle class that was more than 10% of the population ever existed. In fact, for most of the world, there was an average of 3-4% of the middle class that was there, while the rest of the multitudes lived in abject poverty, while those on top lived lavish lifestyles as a result of exploitation. It has never been looked upon that in the United States the well being of those who are poor and middle class are better off than they ever were anywhere in the thousand years of humanity. Using these statistics, bombasts in Congress, mostly made up of the Left, constantly chooses policies that promotes the poor be brought to a lower standard of living just as long as the rich are not richer.

But that is not the way to make wealth in a nation. That is not a way to provide for the economic and social ascendancy of a people from out of the pits of poverty to the streets paved by wealth and innovation.