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The White House posted a blog on its website<\/a> earlier this week announcing \u201cNEW DATA: Lower Prices, Bigger Paychecks.\u201d The announcement was based entirely on a report<\/a> from food delivery app DoorDash titled \u201cState of Local Commerce,\u201d and the White House drew some pretty stunning conclusions. \u201c…inflation has been tamed, everyday prices are beginning to drop, and wages are growing,\u201d the post states. Sounds great! But is that what the report actually says? And what does it say about this government that they\u2019re relying on a private company\u2019s data in lieu of actual statistics of its own? <\/p>\n For context, the DoorDash report<\/a> focuses on three main indicators; the Cheeseburger Index, which measures the average cost of a cheeseburger, soda, and fries; the Breakfast Basics Index, measuring the cost of three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel, and an avocado; and Everyday Essentials, accounting for the cost of basic household items like toothpaste, diapers and laundry detergent. The White House post cites the Breakfast Basics and Everyday Essentials numbers reported by DoorDash as evidence that Trump has \u201ctamed inflation.\u201d <\/p>\n I reached out to DoorDash on Wednesday to better understand the actual meaning of the report and whether the company agrees with the White House\u2019s interpretation, and I connected with a spokesperson by phone.\u00a0 <\/p>\n \u201cI guess to zoom out a little bit, this report is not about politics, it’s about data, right?\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe wanted to give people timely and transparent insights to better understand what’s happening in their communities\u2026We’re really just putting out meaningful trends and not offering up an interpretation of what those trends say one way or the other vis a vis the White House.\u201d <\/p>\n I asked the DoorDash spokesperson if the company would agree with this characterization that inflation has been tamed. He said \u201cthat’s not something that we wrote in the report.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n There is, of course, such a thing as subtext. So I pressed further, asking if the company feels a responsibility to clarify what this report does say and if \u201cinflation has been tamed\u201d is a conclusion one should take from this report? \u201cThe White House can use the language that they are using on that. I’m not gonna speculate on that,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cBut, you know, we put everything that we feel is relevant in the report.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s notable that DoorDash seems reluctant to wade into politics when the company made the single-largest donation<\/a> to an Andrew Cuomo Super PAC during his Democratic mayoral primary bid this past spring. Despite donating to Democrats<\/a> in the past, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu was a vocal supporter<\/a> of Trump\u2019s budget this past summer. But when it comes to criticizing the White House at this moment, they don\u2019t want to go there. <\/p>\n The White House\u2019s celebration of the DoorDash report comes at an interesting time. On Wednesday they announced that the October labor statistics report would be missing key data\u2014such as inflation\u2014and that the October jobs report may not be released at all. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats [Editor\u2019s note: Citations needed] may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system, with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released, and all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said<\/a> on Wednesday.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The absence of data is due to the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which compiles the relevant data and generates the economic reports, was mostly inactive during the government shutdown. The bureau has also fallen prey to Trump\u2019s capricious hiring and firing, with his Heritage Foundation<\/a> nominee to head the agency withdrawn in late September for unknown reasons. If you look at the BLS senior staff page<\/a>, you\u2019ll find many top positions listed as vacant.\u00a0 <\/p>\n As someone who is most certainly not an economist, I thought it would be prudent to speak to someone who is. So I reached out to Daniel S. Hamermesh, emeritus professor of economics at Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Texas at Austin (plus a litany of other impressive superlatives.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n When we spoke by phone Thursday, Hamermesh told me receiving my email about this story \u201cwas the humorous moment of my day.\u201d He explained of the White House relying on the DoorDash report for meaningful data is \u201cso absurd. If anybody would believe this says anything about the average person, it’s just nuts.\u201d <\/p>\n Hamermesh explained that the DoorDash report is \u201chardly representative of what the average person buys each month,\u201d and was flabbergasted that the White House would extrapolate larger meaning from it. \u201cI’m quite sure as long as we don’t have the national information, these guys will cherry-pick information that makes them look good,\u201d Hamermesh said. \u201cAnd there’s always something that makes you look good\u2014even in a recession.\u201d <\/p>\n Hamermesh said the real question is when the actual BLS data will come out. The September jobs report still hasn\u2019t been released despite being gathered before the shutdown, and there\u2019s no October data to speak of because the collection process didn\u2019t take place. According to Hamermesh, it\u2019s still possible to collect for November, but with the government just reopening today, it\u2019s hard to say if that will happen. He pointed out that withholding reliable data is a tool dictatorships use to keep people in the dark. <\/p>\n \u201cUntil we have real data, people making policy haven’t got a clue what to rely on,\u201d Hamermesh told me. \u201cThey grasp at straws.\u201d Though, he added, \u201cThis is one of the most outlandish straws that one could grasp at.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White House posted a blog on its website earlier this week announcing \u201cNEW DATA: Lower Prices, Bigger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,1761,10815,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-290092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-feminism","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}