President Trump’s nomination of economist E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has triggered those infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s too bad, because Antoni has some exceptional ideas to modernize economic data collection and reporting.
Regardless of this latest TDS outbreak, it is time for the Bureau to modernize data collection and use available technology to get markets the most accurate and comprehensive information possible.
I’m no economist. I changed majors from economics to English before my junior year. But I can still hear my late father every month complaining about two things – the inflation report and the jobs report. My dad lived in the markets. CNBC burned like a log fire in our house. And those damn inflation and job reports were always flawed to my dad.
Inflation reports underreported some things and overreported others. The jobs report also has flaws. The current methodology at the Bureau already is flawed. Antoni knows exactly why, and could make them better.
The reports, for example, downplay inflation by underemphasizing things we all consume.
The jobs report is also often a snow job. Goldman Sachs estimates that upcoming revisions to the Bureau’s 2024 jobs data may show a drop of up to one million jobs..
Antoni notes that the Bureau fails to differentiate between full-time and part-time jobs.
This methodological failure has masked labor market weakness. After COVID, many Americans began piecing together multiple gigs. America met J.D. Vance’s grandmother Mamaw in Hillbilly Elegy. She worked multiple part time jobs to get by.
Yet the status quo at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is to count the part time jobs as full time jobs.
Changing this flawed methodology, as Antoni, suggests seems sound.
Antoni has been pushing for refinements to the system from his perch at the Heritage Foundation where he is the chief economist.
Did I say Heritage Foundation? Indeed, and thus we arrive at another triggering event for the hatred of Antoni. He comes from the premiere conservative think tank, not the halls of Harvard.
To sink Antoni’s nomination, his foes have turned to a ninety-year-old ship.
Full disclosure. When I was a child, I built plastic model airplanes. My models included the ME-109, the iconic fighter in the Luftwaffe as well as the RAF Spitfire. These two planes dueled over the skies of southern England to decide the fate of western civilization. I even built models of the stubby ridiculous looking ME-163 Komet. You could buy the plastic model kits at the mall toy store for about $5. I don’t remember if they included the authentic swastika decals or if I threw them out. Even more damaging for my career, I displayed the models on my bookcase!
What does this have to do with Antoni, a naval history enthusiast?
Apparently everything to the Times of Israel, which suggested Antoni is a Nazi sympathizer because a Zoom interview featured the battleship Bismarck in the background. Friends say he frequently rotates paintings and photos of historic ships—American and otherwise—behind his desk for media appearances. His social media features the U.S.S. Texas and other historic ships. And it hardly gets more historic than the Bismarck.
Let’s remember this the next time someone on campus sports Che wear or Amazon sells Stalin t-shirts for $13.99. That price in dollars is about 9,999,986 less than the number of people Stalin had murdered.
The next target for Antoni’s foes is his Catholic faith.
Enter the reliably caustic Daily Beast with a grave warning: “On Antoni’s desk sits a Pieta — a sculpture depicting the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus — and possibly a rosary.”
It gets more ridiculous. Antoni, like many others, discerned the priesthood, but wasn’t ordained. For non-Catholics, that’s what discernment is. You contemplate your vocation and decide whether the priesthood is your calling. But at the Philadelphia Inquirer it raises questions about Antoni’s character and suitability. Shame on Fallon Roth and the editors at the Inquirer and shame on anyone who thinks this is a strike against Antoni. It is the opposite.
Antoni offends other talismans on the Left – like whether Roosevelt was tough enough against Uncle Joe Stalin. News flash: He wasn’t. Ask any elderly Pole or Hungarian about the crap they grew up with. But that’s another article for another day.
Naturally the Washington Post also wants to disappear Antoni. The writers (who still have jobs there) were outraged that Antoni once called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
Second news flash: it is. The program is financially unsustainable without reform, and younger Americans are footing the bill for retirees when they may never collect benefits themselves. This puts Antoni right in line with conventional conservative wisdom regularly found on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, which brings us to our final stop.
I have enormous respect for the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, and have appeared there myself.
Yet editorial board has roughed up Antoni and urged him to “take off his MAGA hat” and commit to non-partisan, data-driven work. Fair enough, and he has built a career on improved data accuracy. He is chided for his support for Trump and his role at the Heritage Foundation.
Gift cards for the entire editorial board if they can recall one single criticism levied against a Democrat nominee for hailing from Brookings or the corrupted halls of Ivy League academia.
Antoni will soon appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. This will determine whether his nomination proceeds. Every Republican vote will be crucial.
Committee approval of Antoni will mean modernizing data collection and reporting. Approval will mean the Left’s smear tactics will have failed, again. And maybe it means my dad can finally rest in peace without the jobs and inflation numbers being cooked by bureaucrats every month.
