Editing Blog/2025-11-22/Wage Compression (section)

== Politics Is The Real World ==

This decoupling of outcomes from rhetoric is fairly common in Internet conversation. Arguments that "jobs that can't pay better shouldn't exist" abound, but things do change when wages shift. For many people, political statements seem to be entirely decoupled from the real world. 


I've recently stopped using Twitter very much, but my friend Ben posts interesting things there often and I don't yet have an effective means of mirroring them elsewhere to read. On one such occasion, I came across the following tweet and an associated reply to it that illustrated these things.

{{Tweet
| name = PoIiMath
| username = politicalmath
| text = Can't we just...
(rubs temples) 
Can't we just divide the number of unemployed workers by the work force population? Isn't that the unemployment rate?
BREAKING: The White House announces that the October jobs report will be released WITHOUT an unemployment rate.
| date = Nov 13, 2025
| ID = 1989115197148262687
| ref-name = Tweet_1989115197148262687
| block = true
}}

{{Tweet
| name = Matt Darling 
| username = besttrousers
| replyto = politicalmath
| text = That is what they do!

But you need to COUNT IT.

every month they sample a random selection of the population and survey them - this is the Current Population Survey.
| date = Nov 14, 2025
| ID = 1989418011548385421
| ref-name = Tweet_1989418011548385421
| block = true
}}

This seems to me to betray a belief that there is the "political sphere" and the "real sphere" and that the things that happen in the former are sort of like what happens in a WWE ring, and the things that happen in the latter are what we experience. The truth is, of course, not quite like that. Matt here is right: when we stop funding the BLS, the things the BLS did don't get done. And you need to collect data to do things with data.

And when you raise the cost of doing jobs, some jobs won't get done and others will be moved to robots. Some jobs just aren't productive enough, and people can go do other things instead. This means that some things you came to expect will no longer be present. The McDonald's table will no longer be as clean, even if you find yourself paying more. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.