As someone famously said, economics is the only discipline in which two scholars can share a Nobel prize for stating precisely opposite things. The interpretation of economic statistics is another source of endless debates, particularly between the two categories of the supporters of half-full or half-empty glasses

I was bemused, however, when during Tuesday night’s episode of Ballaro’, a Rai Tre talk show, a pollster presented the results to the following question. “Do you share the view that the Berlusconi government has cut taxes?”. The majority of the sample did not share this view, but almost 40% seemed to agree that there had been tax cuts.

The reason for my bemusement is that taxation levels are a matter of fact, not of opinion. The question a pollster should ask is whether one thinks that tax have been cut enough, but not whether they have been cut or not.  

However, the fact the sample was split suggests that the public is indeed confused over facts. This  is symptomatic of a tendency by Italian politicians to make up statistics without much control. The lack of understanding of economic concepts by the general public and the weakness of Italian journalists seem to me to be two obvious causes of this tendency, which is extremely hard to fight.

One attempt in this direction is the one by the website www.lavoce.info, a website which was inspired  by a number of academics mainly centred around  Bocconi University in Milan and which aims to provide high-quality but accessible commentaries on economic affairs. The website runs a rather amusing section called “Vero o Falso”, where they simply state whether the statements made by a number of politicians on economic affaires are factually true or false.

One of their latest battle involves Mickey Mouse, but there are some other equally interesting and amusing ones. The contribution by lavoce.info shows how occasionally tyranny (the one of numbers) can surely pave the way to democracy.