Experts warn about the 'crumbling infrastructure' of federal government data

Destroying agencies that collect statistics is a "feature", not a bug.

Why deal with unemployment, declining GDP, etc when you can just shut down the agency figuring out how many people are unemployed and where the GDP is going?

Better yet, outsource it to the guy who gave you $10M in campaign donations or bought your crypto coins and then wink-nodded at you, and give him a $50M contract to do something the feds were doing for $20M - and he lies to make you look better. Win-win-win...

This might be true for air pollution and preventable diseases, but these quick losses in real wealth are immediately apparent.

Plenty of authoritarian countries cook the books successfully.

The story of Yeltsin visiting an American grocery store comes to mind:

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...

"He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution.""

Given how woefully behind American healthcare and education and retirement is, it's quite remarkable Americans don't understand how poor they are.