Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

The Sweet Smell of Partial Failure: A HFPST Project

Here's how the new project goes: something starts at a certain level in January 2001. The indicator then significantly deteriorates over the next couple of years. At the last minute, the indicator improves somewhat to be a little less shitty than it was during its nadir. This is cited as proof positive that a turned has corner or that the Administration's policies and programs are working. Areas where I've seen this used include:

(1) Level of violence / troop deaths in Iraq.
(2) Electricity production in Iraq.
(3) Job levels (i.e. "if you re-elect us, by 2006 we'll have just as many jobs as we did when we first took office!:)
(4) Deficit projections / deficit or national debt as a percentage of GNP.
(5) Percentage of persons with health insurance.
(6) Oil / gas prices.

Since I prefer to be barely competent to opine in a number of areas, I'm not much of a single-issue expert. Therefore, I'm not completely aware of specific examples in other areas like the environment, other labor conditions, education, homeland security indicia, etc. I'm sure that there are a number of indicators that are headed south and not returning any time soon, but we'll just call those the "I hit the trifecta" or the "9/11 changed everything" statistics.

Assuming that people out there wants to do some additional research (for additional links and policy areas), I'll be happy to credit you (and your site, where applicable) in a subsequent post should this group project actually work.

Posted by Norbizness at August 20, 2004 12:14 AM