The CPSC is so underfunded that they can only afford one full-time toy tester, and his impact test area is located in the swing area behind the door to his cramped office, NYT reports.
The current administration has cut back the agency’s budget during the past seven years, down to $62 million last year.
When Suzanne Barone, the CPSC former poison prevention head, quit in frustration, she said, “Buyer beware, — that is all I have to say.”
Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Changes [NYT]
(Photo: Damon Winter)
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@killavanilla: Huh? Let’s go back to that 1945 war budget.
Now, presuming your numbers are right, the 83 billion 1945 dollars had the same amount of spending power as 1 trillion 2007 dollars. Sure, the number of “dollars” may be different — but if 83 billion 1945 dollars buys the same number of ounces of gold (or hours of labor, or meals on the table, or what-have-you) as 1 trillian 2007 dollars, those two amounts are obviously the same bloody thing, and distinguishing them simply misleads.
(In short, I think Kryndis is very much at fault for backing down; failing to account for currency fluctuation in trying to compare spending is simply wrong — every bit as much so as saying that the average resident of Zimbabwe is far better off than the average American, because the average Zimbabwean makes over ZWD 70,000,000 per year while the median American household has a net worth of about USD 100,000 and annual income far below that; the numbers just don’t mean the same thing, and so attempts to compare them without appropriate conversion simply aren’t meaningful).
Unrelated comment:
Caption Contest: This train wreck describes this agency perfectly.
Why does one person in a small office need a $62 million budget? Sounds like there’s a tremendous amount of waste going on if all the people are getting for all those tax dollars is one toy-tester.
@vladthepaler: The CPSC employs 431 other employees besides this gentleman.
@Charles Duffy:
I think you are missing the point.
The article is misleading in that it forces the reader to accept their figures as true and accurate, even though we don’t know how they arrived at them.
Hence, it would be much more truthful if they were to give the ACTUAL dollars and not just a mish-mosh figure based on inflation dollars.
I understand that what I am asking for is truthful and journalistic, which isn’t something the NYT is particularly interested.
By only providing their calculated inflation dollar amounts and completely omitting the actual dollar amounts, it makes Bush look like spending is down even though in all likelihood, the amounts have varied.
Simply put:
If I hire you today at a salary of $60,000 per year and hire a similar person 20 years from now at $100,000, it’s pretty clear that I’m paying more dollars for the same worker. Sure, that $100k may be equal to the $60k after inflationary calculations are made, but without that information, it seems the story sounds much different. Using the NYT as a style guide, the headline would read “Workers paid the same amount as 20 years ago” and would include references to the salaries being the same, when adjusted for inflation.
The truth is, I would be paying $40k more per year. The insinuation is there, which is why it becomes problematic for me.
Are they underfunded? Perhaps. but in terms of transparent and truthful reporting, we aren’t given the opportunity to verify anything because no hard data is included in the article. So are we to trust the NYT inflation calculator?
Maybe it’s a minor thing to you. Maybe its a minor thing period.
To me, it sends a red flag.
@killavanilla:This isn’t about politics, it’s about math — more specifically, about doing proper unit conversion when trying to compare values of unlike types.
Yes, but what does “$40K more per year” mean?
Would you let me pay you $100K ZWD instead of $60K USD because it’s “$40K more”? If not, how can you with a straight face say that USD_2007 $60K is actually “$40K” less than USD_2027 $100K? For all intents and purposes they’re completely different currencies!
Answer me one of these questions (assuming $60K USD_2007 is equivalent to $100K USD_2027 after adjusting for inflation), and I might appreciate the distinction you’re trying to make a little better:
– That “$40K” difference: Is it $40K USD_2007, or $40K USD_2027?
– How many ounces of gold will the difference between $60K USD_2007 and $100K USD_2027 buy?
If you can’t truthfully answer either of those questions in a way which establishes that there is a difference in absolute value (aka. purchasing power) between $60K USD_2007 and $100K USD_2027, how is it not deceptive to paint them as being different numbers?
There’s a canonical source for data on inflation: The Consumer Price Index, as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You’re not trusting the New York Times to pull numbers out of their ass; you’re trusting the New York Times to use the same numbers from the same canonical source everyone else does. That’s pretty well-placed trust, since they would get pretty much thoroughly reamed if they were discovered to be doing anything else.