Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as Senator from New York for 24 years, once said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Various figures have tossed this quote around quite a bit, usually to bash someone or other with whom they disagree. As simple as the saying seems, it is important to remember that like many such obvious truths, it is not entirely true.           

For one thing, it is entirely possible for people to come to differing opinions of an issue not only using different sets of facts, but also using identical ones. This is especially true with regard to varying political views of big issues such as taxes, global trade or pay equity. This brings me to one of the great scourges of our times – statistics.           

I have already addressed some of the unknown facts regarding the history of our tax policies, as I have exposed some of the hidden truths of the war on drugs, but there are two statistics that are often cited that masquerade as facts because they are technically true, but do not reveal the whole story of their respective issues.           

The first is the oft-mentioned “fact” that because of the huge drop in the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S., it is clear that we do not make anything here anymore. I have seen this belief repeated in car commercials, have heard it bandied about on political chat shows and now it has made its way onto the floor of Congress. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby notes in the Globe’s Oct. 6 issue that there is a trade war brewing between the U.S. and China. Jacoby examines a tariff bill under debate in Congress and decries the protectionist impulses it represents.           

Jacoby highlights the fact that part of the argument is based on the shrinking U.S. manufacturing sector, but that while the number of people employed in manufacturing has decreased by something like 33 percent or more since the 1970s, actual manufacturing output has risen by at least 250 percent. The truth is that a far greater portion of the drop in American manufacturing employment results from the huge increase in our productivity rather than the massive outsourcing of jobs decried by so many anti-capitalist and anti-free trade voices. While many new factories and the jobs that go with them have opened in China to make inexpensive goods for our markets, it is disingenuous to claim that all of America’s manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. We have simply gotten hugely better at producing even more goods using fewer workers by relying on robotics and other technologies. Based on that, I would be more concerned about SkyNet and the Terminators taking power over humanity than I would be about China stealing all our jobs.           

The other statistical “fact” I would like to address is the gap in pay between women and men in America. In an April 2007 posting to Reason.com, Steve Chapman comments on this gap and notes that the Democrats’ presidential candidates had all endorsed legislation to fix the problem. But the problem may not even exist. This is not to say that there is not inequality between men and women, or that gender equity is not an issue that we still need to grapple with as a society, it simply means that the widely-quoted fact that “women make only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men” is true only to a very small degree.           

In his 2008 book, “Economic Facts and Fallacies,” award-winning author and scholar Thomas Sowell tackles the issue of the pay gap and details why it is so misleading. The statistic is used to criticize the difference in pay between all women and men without factoring in the very different life choices that individuals make. Sowell disapproves of this generic approach and concludes that among “college-educated, never-married individuals with no children who worked full-time and were from 40 to 64 years old … men averaged $40,000 a year … while women averaged $47,000.” In other words, when you compare women apples to men apples, as opposed to all working women to all working men, the women come out $7,000 ahead.           

Mark Twain once said that “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable,” and this is clearly more true today than ever. The two examples I have given are a cautionary tale in that they show that even when they are literally true, statistics can lie. Whenever someone starts throwing a bunch of statistics at you in support of an argument and I include myself in this, make sure you understand where they got their information from. It is all well and good to remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s adage, but always keep in mind that Twain went there first and his warning is just as true, if not a little bit more.           

Ben Rudnick is a Collegian Columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].