Hello and Happy New Year!

I’m still working on tweaking the Part 3 installment of the Meaning of Everything series (I know you have been unable to function out of anticipation…) but I came across a nice example of something I always latch on to – comparisons.

Comparisons are great because they allow us to make a determination of similarities/differences between two or more…well, things. Currently I am in the process of comparing multiple cars for a future purchase – and you can imagine my excitement at the ability to compare the cargo space with seat folded down in cubic feet across multiple vehicles! But I digress. Comparisons, when done properly, also allow us to make sense of the world around us. The previous post (Get Outta My Basement You Millennial) provided a comparison between current college students and college students of previous generations and their ability pay for college via summer jobs. The goal of this comparison was to allow us to look at a few scenarios and determine 1) how are they different and 2) what those differences mean for our understanding of this phenomenon.

But comparisons can be tricky. When we are trying to simply compare “A” and “B”, “C” through “Z” may still matter greatly. A simple example could be comparing the average cost of a house from one location to another. I could find that houses in City A are $70,000 less than City B. Before I decide to move to City A (and save a ton on housing) I should look at my “C-Z” factors. Think of this problem with the old “comparing apples to oranges” adage in mind. Are cities A and B different in any other way? For example, what is the average income of City A vs City B? What is the average square footage of houses in City A vs City B? What is the cost of living in City A vs City B? Suffice it to say, if City A was exactly like City B with the exception of housing prices, everyone from City B would form a farewell conga-line to City A.

Additionally, comparisons can allow us to understand the scale of an issue. For example, if in 1980 20% of the U.S. Population were afflicted with Disease X and in 2010 50% of the U.S. Population were afflicted with Disease X, the comparison allows me to see that something is going on with Disease X. If I wanted to know the scale of the Disease X problem (or whether or not Disease X was increasing), I have an answer. Obviously there could be numerous reasons to explain the increase (which should be investigated), but I would make the comparison as a way to present an argument that Disease X incidence rates in the U.S. are increasing.

Economists, psychologists, and other scientific folks are (should be) well versed in these traps when making comparative statements. It would be silly to simply say City A has more robberies than City B (specifically just looking at counts), so I find a way to make an adjustment and say City A has more robberies per capita than City B. This makes my comparison a little more like “apples to apples” because at least I know that I am making my comparison based on the number of people who live in City A vs City B. Namely, I would expect there to be more crime in an area with more people – so knowing City A had 1,000 robberies and City B had 700 robberies means little if I don’t know how many people live in those cities (for more on baselines and metrics, check out the Meaning of Everything Part 1 and Part 2).

Okay, so now that we have a better understanding of why comparisons are useful let’s get to the impetus of this post – an odd, if not poor, comparison. Now I want to begin with a very important preface – the goal of this post is not to say whether any side is “right” or “wrong”. There are many ideological differences in our country and in this world, but the purpose of this blog is not to share mine with you. The purpose is to get us (and yes, that includes me) to really think about the arguments, numbers, and data we see around us and ask illuminating questions – which sometimes leads us to realize that those arguments, numbers, and data may need to be considered differently – or they are so suspect that they should be called out as entirely misleading.

I came across the following tweet a few weeks ago (https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1070678221581156353):

Now this is what I want you to do – forget about Republicans, forget about Democrats, forget about Jim Jordan, forget about your feelings around the Farm Bill, and forget about your feelings around SNAP and work requirements. I know it is tough but I’ll give you a few seconds…
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Great, now that you’ve made your mind a political tabula rasa let’s look at the comparison:

More Americans on Food Stamps than the entire population of Canada…

So that is the comparison. It definitely has an intent – to tell/persuade us that the number of Americans on Food Stamps is large. How large? More than the entire population of Canada. It is easy to look at the tweet and think that is a lot of people. But is it? Or better yet, does the comparison really tell us it is so?

The Canadian Population as of October 1, 2018 was 37,242,571.¹ The latest keydata report from the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service lists the number of SNAP recipients in September of 2018 at 38,577,141.² Thus, the notion that there are more U.S. SNAP participants than there are people in Canada is technically true. But what does that really tell us? Remember our desire to ditch our City B lifestyle and head to City A? Let’s look at some other information.

The U.S. population as of January 3, 2019 is 328,240,558.³ Some quick math tells us that the entire Canadian population is just over 1/10th of the U.S. Population (11.3%). Another interesting fact, if we are comparing populations, the population of California is about 39,550,000.³ Thus, the state of California also has a population larger than the population of Canada. It is also interesting to note that there are more boat owners in California (810,008) than there are in Massachusetts (141,959), Maine (111,873), and New Mexico (37,340) combined (a hint of snark purposefully thrown in)!⁴  But what might be more interesting to know with this boating information is that: 1) California is the most populous state,³ 2) Maine actually has more boats per capita (8.4% vs 2.2%),⁴ 3) Massachusetts and California actually have the same boats per capita percentage (2.2% vs. 2.2%),⁴ and 4) New Mexico has the smallest percent of area that is water (0.20%).⁵ The state with the most boats per capita? Minnesota (15.5%) – land of a thousand lakes, duh!

So why the nautical rant you might ask? Simply put, the comparison from the tweet is quite odd and, in my opinion, purposefully misleading. What would have been more informative, if the goal was to show something about the number of SNAP recipients, would have been to compare the number of SNAP recipients to a number that was more appropriate. Does Canada have something similar to SNAP? If so, I think that comparison would have been interesting (i.e. comparing the proportions of each countries’ population on a SNAP-like program). To be honest, I don’t even know if the number of SNAP recipients in the U.S. is considered large or small (roughly 11.7%). The point here is that the number of SNAP recipients in the U.S. is larger than the populations of another 196 countries (as captured by www.worldmeters.info).⁶ But why would I care if we have more SNAP participants than Canada’s population, or Australia for that matter. To be frank, it’s not apples to apples or even apples to oranges. It’s apples to pineapples. They are both fruit, they both have apples in the name, but the comparison feels…prickly.

1 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/181220/dq181220c-eng.htm?HPA=1&indid=4098-1&indgeo=0
2 https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/datastatistics/keydata-september-2018_0.pdf
3 https://www.census.gov/popclock/
4 https://www.tripsavvy.com/arizona-boats-per-capita-2682271
5 https://www.geolounge.com/which-states-have-the-highest-percentage-of-water-area/
6 http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/