How to weaponize innumeracy

An image of Mark Twain and the quotation "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Protests work. They got a family home from Texas to Homan’s home district, and they got the DOGEcrats to back off their plan to shut down Social Security phone lines.

Along the way, Yale-educated elite novelist J.D. Vance made this false claim:

40% of calls are fraud

The actual statistic he is (deliberately? which is worse?) mangling here is that “40% of fraud are calls” and according to a contact of mine who knows these things, fraud is less than 1% of volume, so this lie is literally two order of magnitude off.

And that’s how you weaponize innumeracy.

Thank you for coming to my Fed Talk.

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