Friday, September 17, 2010

Non sequitur of the month: One of the most bizarre attempts at argument I've seen

It's due to Magda Figurska, a Polish blogger I've written about once before. She commented on a blog post whose author quoted a statistic which says that in the second quarter of 2010, annualized GDP growth in Poland was 3.4%. Figurska wrote: "What you're writing is just like communist propaganda. You write about GDP growth of 3.5% in the second quarter but forget to mention that, in the same quarter, inflation was 3%." So far so bad. Figurska is unaware that the 3.4% annualized GDP growth statistic is already adjusted for inflation (in fact, published GDP statistics always are). That's stunning ignorance, but it isn't a non sequitur just yet. Inevitably, another commenter pointed her mistake out to her, to which she replied: "Really? Then look here. Inflation in Germany 0.00%." (The link she gave was simply a table with a bunch of economic statistics for the second quarter of 2010 for a bunch of countries.)

In other words, the fact that Germany experienced no inflation in April, May and June of 2010 somehow proves that GDP growth statistics are not adjusted for inflation. Other commenters in that thread asked Figurska to elaborate on this rather peculiar inference but she ignored them. So what we're left with is a truly stunning non sequitur.

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