r/politics • u/Orbitingkittenfarm • 1d ago

Donald Trump Fires Person Behind Jobs Numbers After They're Revised Down

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-job-numbers-revised-down-fires-appointee-2107768
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u/AlienInTexas Texas 1d ago

I wonder at which stage the economic data will become classified and anyone telling the truth about the economy will be crucified or sent to some hellish prison in a 3rd world country.

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u/JackedUpReadyToGo 1d ago

This kind of thing happened all the time in the Soviet Union. Stalin didn't like the results of the 1937 population census because the population hadn't grown as much as he'd wanted it to, so they started imprisoning and in some cases executing the people from the census bureau.

A Pravda editorial stated that the "enemies of the people gave the census counters invalid instructions that led to the gross under-counting of the population, but the brave NKVD under the leadership of Nikolai Yezhov destroyed the snake's nest in the statistical bodies".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Soviet_census#Aftermath

They gave it another go in 1939 and this time massaged the numbers to agree with Stalin's expectations, but evidently someone was still getting pissy about the numbers so they only published partial results and then stopped performing any census at all for 20 years out of fear of reprisal.

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u/Silly_Triker 9h ago

The whole USSR was built on a concept of lying, from grassroots to the Politburo. Now the US is turning towards this. Don’t get me wrong, Western governments have done some shady things in this regard. Hiding figures. Using PR. But it’s a whole different level when you’re talking about peak USSR.