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07.21.2003

Figures and/or Facts

Usually, statistics is considered a rather boring occupation. In certain conditions statistics can prove to be just as exciting as an extreme sport. For instance, we can find about the Romanian economy once in a while amazing figures. Either official data, either extravagant political interpretation.

Thus, we could hear find out quite recently that the underground Romanian economy would be of approximately 18%. In other words, we would be at the same level with states like France and Germany, where this underground economy cota is representing that particular level of criminality and evasion no country can avoid and we are talking about countries in which the institutions are functioning clock like. So it would be a great miracle that us, with our institutions in which corruption is the only true regulation of internal order, to be at the same level. And, unfortunately, there is no miracle, because the real figure would be after the serious specialists' opinion somewhere around 40%.

The simple explication would be that, for the sake of propaganda in favor of the governing party, figures can be falsified. No effort was too big in order to "dress up" the reality of the Romanian economy: finally, the prime minister managed in forcing the resignation of the head of the National Statistics Institute. This had to be done. This one was affording to reveal the real figures that came up of measuring the economic reality and of interpreting basic data. So his place was immediately taken by a new director that started even from the next day of her installment to report bizarre figures about the Romanian economy.

The prime minister announced that the privatization of the great Romanian enterprises reached 93%. Obviously, he successfully "reported" upon this fact in England and not in Romania where he is not only undesirable, but unbelievable, too. The correct figure is 54%. The prime minister "forgot" in a convenient manner all state owned companies that are engulfing huge amounts of money from the budget. They come in different ways: both as subventions, either as tax free situations or either as inefficient and chronically corrupted they are affecting. Because, if a company like Petrom is making profit, this does not mean it is a success company and that it is not a problem for the Romanian economy.

The problem is that because of the corruption and the discretionary administration it is realizing benefits for especially for parasites that are living of it and, for the sake of the calm functioning of the spoliation and for the syndicates benefit. The profit reported by such a company is quite insignificant thinking of the colossal investments that were the public money which represented money that it gulped down, no matter of public money before or after 1989. These investments are ours, belong to all of us, and their efficiency should not be judged after the grid bring / bring not profit, but after how much they are approaching the profit they would make in the conditions of a correct and efficient administration.

Or, the state owned companies, even the most "profitable" ones are far from these performances. It is just because of this that the government members are feeling the need to cover the indefinite delaying reality of the privatization with deceitful figures. These are only covering the simple reality of the spoliation of the public money, just as the ridicule figure of 18% for the underground economy is covering the crass incapacity of the government to assure keeping the rules after a modern economy functions.

The statistic figures are, at their turn, public goods. We have the right to know them, because they are reflecting the reality in which we are living and otherwise are products of an administrative machine we are paying by taxes and fees. Thus we have not only the right to know them, like any other piece of information of public interest, but we have the right to objective figures, correct ones, found out using scientifically norms and not petty party interests. The image we have of the reality in which we are living is anyway sufficiently deformed on the interpretative level in the political discourses. This embellishing - by ingenious methods of calculation - of the economical raise or of the unemployment is not helping us at all.

When they are relatively correct and calculated in good faith the figures gathered not only with the help of statistics, but with the help of other poles can make us think. Thus, out of the last Opinion Barometer we can found out that one of the major frights of Romanian is unemployment, though this one, even if it's not similar to the "made-up one" of the propaganda machine of the government is still low. Likewise, we can found out that the support given by the governing party is stable at over 40% cottas, though the Romanians are unsatisfied in a 70 - 80 % by the accomplishment of the same government in most of the essential activity fields. Finally, perhaps the most strange and worrying result of this pole would be the one that is indicating the social ideal model preferred by most of the Romanians, respectively one in which many citizens are close to the top of the social pyramid and very little to the base, that is a reverse pyramid. This would make probably a generalized preference for privileges in spite of the equality principle.

That's why adjusting the figures with the reality does not involve only the making of some correct figures to reflect it faithfully, but to transform reality so that these figures become coherent and normal. For instance, by fighting the electoral inertia we should get into the situation in which the percentage of those deeply unsatisfied by the government summed up with the percentages of those that are voting for the government would not be more than 100 %, because this would be a failure of the whole democracy status. Or, by promoting equality as a fundamental value of a democratic society one might get to the understanding of the fact that one reversed pyramid can not serve as a realistic social model but only as one produced by hard feelings of all that are lacking privileges and who want to get into privileged positions without passing through the equality condition towards the others, through competition based on conditions of formal equality.

In any case, the brutal manipulation of the figures that are describing the reality in which we are living is a sign of the bad augury for us. Because they are keeping us from seeing the exact dimensions of the situation we are in, they are keeping us from fixing things that can be made objects and finding those efficient methods of reaching them.