> Can’t we use electronic paycheck data to get a pretty accurate number for all those who are getting paychecks?

Y'all do that, then we orange pill every mf that is on a payroll. So I strongly recommend to do this and make the dystopian shithole even shittier.

optimism

Admitting it would require acknowledging that libertarians are right about something.

coffeebadger

yep... better yet, you have _countless_ academics, policy influencers and gov committee investigate something for A DECADE... only to have the statistics agency go "um, actually, oops... this is all just a statistical mirage"

https://stacker.news/items/1575536

denlillaapan

 if you were in a class and were told billions of dollars would be made or lost on a number that even the people looking at the number don’t believe, you’d shake your head in 

, that this really was going on. Not just for a month or two, but for years and years!

Can’t we use electronic paycheck data to get a pretty accurate number for all those who are getting paychecks? Wouldn’t that cover a big part of the economy. Wouldn’t knowing, with a high degree of exactness, how that part of the workforce (those who receive at least one check in a month) is evolving over time be useful? We could attempt to get the rest, but something that covered a vast swath of the economy, and was reasonably likely to be accurate and real-time, would seem a good goal.

econ

>  **Seriously,** if you were in a class and were told billions of dollars would be made or lost on a number that even the people looking at the number don’t believe, you’d shake your head in **incredibility**, that this really was going on. Not just for a month or two, but for years and years!


>  Can’t we use electronic paycheck data to get a pretty accurate number for all those who are getting paychecks? Wouldn’t that cover a big part of the economy. Wouldn’t knowing, with a high degree of exactness, how that part of the workforce (those who receive at least one check in a month) is evolving over time be useful? We could attempt to get the rest, but something that covered a vast swath of the economy, and was reasonably likely to be accurate and real-time, would seem a good goal.