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Below, Gene Ludwig shares five key insights from his new book, The Mismeasurement of America: How Outdated Government Statistics Mask the Economic Struggle of Everyday Americans. Gene is the former Comptroller of the Currency and founder of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering the truths that official statistics too often obscure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, The Financial Times, and TIME. Whats the big idea? Americans keep hearing that the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. Wages are rising. Growth is steady. But for millions of families, those headlines feel like a cruel joke. The cost of rent, groceries, and healthcare keep climbing while steady, well-paid work remains out of reach. The disconnect isnt just perceptionits baked into the way we measure economic success. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Gene himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. We are at an economic tipping point Throughout history, when governments fail to fully appreciate the realities faced by their people, it leads to crisis. The United States may be on the brink of such economic and societal unrest. The unrest that led to the French Revolution and the economic imbalances preceding the Great Depression are both cases in point. In the late eighteenth century, the oppressive economic situation facing the French people went unacknowledged by the royal family for decades. The French ruling class considered the truth about the nations fiscal crisis to be nefariousa threat to their power. Marie Antoinette, when told the peasants had no bread, replied, Let them eat cake! Whether or not the remark is literal or legend, it captures the ruling classs indifference. Soon after, the Revolution erupted, bringing turmoil and suffering to French citizens of every rank and station. The same narrative arc applied a century and a half later when the Great Depression loomed. In both instances, economic data that could have set off alarm bells was availablemore accurate figures that would have revealed the risks emergingand this perspective might have prompted action that could have softened the blow, if not avoided the crises altogether. But the data was either confusing, confounded with other contrary data, or affirmatively hidden. The effects were catastrophic. 2. A quarter of Americans are functionally unemployed The unemployment statistics our government releases monthly are misleading. If someone is looking for full-time employment but finds nothing except a single hour of work in a week, they are considered employed in the eyes of the government. For purposes of official government statistics, this one-hour employee is in the same category as someone secure in a full-time job. This logic extends to wages. Someone who works full- or part-time for a salary that falls below the poverty line (around $25,000 a year for a three-person household) is classified the same way as someone earning $1 million every month. The United States may be on the brink of such economic and societal unrest. LISEPs research team and I consider anyone in the previous two situations to be functionally unemployed. The governments most recent unemployment rate is 4.3 percent, but our research finds that 24.7 percent of American workers are functionally unemployed. 3. Pay statistics ignore part-time and unemployed job seekers The government reports on median wages every quarter. The idea behind their metric is simple and straightforward: If you line up all full-time employees in order of their weekly earnings, the person directly in the middle earns the median wage. But this statistic only considers the wages of people who are currently employed full-time, overlooking millions of part-time workers and unemployed job seekers. So, the moment a low-wage factory worker receives a pink slip, her salary is deleted from the sample altogether. The moment a farm workers seasonal employment ends, his salary is similarly deleted. What this means is the official earnings measure shows an overstated wage that doesnt reflect the reality for many low- and middle-income Americans. It can even appear to improve during economic downturns because low-wage workers are disproportionately affected by layoffs. When the economy went into near freefall during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, government-reported median earnings rose seven percent. During that same period, the percentage of functionally unemployed Americans rose from 25.7 percent to 32.8 percent. 4. Yes, your groceries are more expensive When people talk about inflation, theyre usually referring to changes in the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. The CPI tracks the prices of some 80,000 goods and services, from apples to apartments, baby formula to boats, and much more. The idea is that it gives us a single figure to measure the changing cost of a basket of all consumer products. CPI obscures the true cost of living for working-class Americans. This basket is so wide-ranging that it doesnt reflect how ordinary consumers experience cost-of-living changes, as most Americans are not buying 80,000 things. If the costs of second homes tripled while everything else in the basket stayed flat, the average American household wouldnt feel a thingthe price hike would get averaged in, but it wouldnt impact their life. But the opposite is true. Over the past two decades, the price of jewelry has risen by about 39 percent, while essential goods like bread are up by 112 percent and ground beef by 155 percent. When these items are measured alongside each other in the CPI, the relative stability of luxury items masks the inflation faced by Americans of more modest means. From 2001 to 2023, the CPI points to a 72 percent rise in living costs, yet our analysis of essential expenseshousing, food, transportation, healthcare, and other basicsshows those costs climbed 97 percent. CPI obscures the true cost of living for working-class Americans. 5. We need better statistics The headline statistics we currently employ to understand Americas economy are profoundly misleading and, unfortunately, drive policy. The CPI is pivotal in determining Social Security Benefits, as well as who qualifies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Head Start, and Pell Grants. At least twelve states and Washington, D.C., used the CPI to determine minimum wage. Our failure to produce statistics that accurately reflect the nations economic reality makes it much harder to shape highly effective policy responsesand harder to identify the tipping point of economic and social unrest. Simply put, when you aim at the wrong target, you miss. Human naturefavors expeditious, rosy analysis rather than the rigor required to glean accuracy. Flaws in widely accepted economic statistics impede important decision-making. In many cases, those who accept economic misrepresentations do so for benign reasons: The data is too difficult to collect with sufficient regularity or precision, or the samples arent sufficiently comprehensive. Human nature favors expeditious, rosy analysis rather than the rigor required to glean accuracy, particularly when accurate numbers may be gloomy. At LISEP, weve developed alternatives to these imperfect statistics. Our True Rate of Unemployment metric includes the functionally unemployed, and our True Weekly Earnings measure includes the entire workforce. Our True Living Cost index narrows the basket of indexed consumer goods to those truly essential to the average American, while our Minimal Quality of Life index measures what it costs to not just get by but to actually have an opportunity to climb the economic ladder. Finally, our Shared Economic Prosperity measure tracks how the countrys economic growth translates into opportunity for all. For decades, policymakers and leaders have judged success or failure by distorted standards, and ordinary Americans have paid the price. Unless we change the headline statistics to reflect the reality Americans actually feel, we will keep steering down the wrong paths. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions. So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 was a little-known office from Ireland with no completed projects to its name and only three people on staff. [Photo: Iwan Baan] Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects was virtually unknown when its concept was chosen, unanimously, out of more than 1,500 submissions as the winning design. “We hadn’t built any buildings,” says Róisín Heneghan, the firm’s cofounder. “We had one project just starting on site when we won the competition.” A lot has changed since then. The museum had an initial target opening date set for 2007, but several delays caused by the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the COVID pandemic kept stretching the timeline. Heneghan Peng Architects’ design is now fully built and, as of November 1, open to the public. [Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum] Thousands of years of history The Grand Egyptian Museum’s design is a sprawling spread of airplane hangar-sized concourses, sculpted landscapes, conservation workshops, and a network of underground storage facilities. The museum building itself is a cavernous space with 12 main galleries and direct views of the pyramids of Giza. A vast entrance hall sits under a tall sawtooth roof that doubles as an open-air pavilion, shading a ticketing area accented by a 30-foot-tall statue of Ramses II that’s more than 3,000 years old. On the facade, throughout the landscape, and even within the building’s structure, pyramid shapes abound. [Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum] Central to the design, according to Heneghan, is not so much the main building but the placement of the museum itself. “People were saying to us, ugh, you Westerners, you all are so fascinated by the desert, but Egypt is about the Nile,” she says. That led the architects to think first about how the museum should fit into that dichotomy. With a site selected near the famous pyramids in Giza, just on the fringe of Cairo’s urban footprint, it was clear that the museum would sit in the middle space between the desert and the Nile valley, a space that has been carved away by millennia of river flow. “There’s a 50-meter difference in level between one side of the site and the other, because that’s where the desert and the Nile met,” Heneghan says. “When you’re coming out of the city, you see the pyramids on the plateau. So what we decided was that the museum should never go above the plateau level, but that it should exist between the plateau and the Nile Valley.” [Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects Despite grand ceilings capable of holding towering statues, the building sits low to the ground, with a fair amount of its bulk sunk into the landscape. The design of the Grand Egyptian Museum utilizes large walkways and views within the museum to give visitors a zoomed-out experience of the sprawling history represented in the galleries. [Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum] The first part of the museum visitors see after they enter is a long staircase bordered by thousands of artifacts, sarcophagi, and statuary that tracks the entire 4,000 year span of Egypt’s pharaonic history. It’s a walking crash course for the mostly international visitors to the museum before reaching the top where more discrete sections of Egypt’s ancient history are explored in more depth. Its main galleries cover themes like kings and queens, religious belief systems, and ancient Egyptian society, and the museum features an extensive collection of artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The museum’s layout allows each of these galleries to stand on its own, but with visual connections to the others in order to tie them into a broader arc of history. [Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects “The galleries are themed, but at the same time from different points you can see across, so you can make connections across the whole timescale,” Heneghan says. “That helped organize it. If we had tried to make it human-scaled, I think we would have found it more difficult.” [Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum] A engineering feat The architects also had to grapple with the realities of designing such a massive structure in the desert heat of Egypt. Partly out of consideration for the operational costs of running such a space, they designed the galleries to pull in daylight from lateral angles that’s dappled through metal shading structures and overhangs. This approach also works with the collections on display. “It’s quite a lot of stone,” Heneghan says. “And stone works well with natural daylight.” To handle the sheer weight of the statues on display, the building has incredibly thick concrete floors, which also serve to regulate the building’s climate, absorbing the cool night temperatures and slowly releasing it during the heat of the day. “What we were trying to do is make a really heavy structure, like a church,” Heneghan says. [Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects Though Heneghan Peng Architects are the design architects of the Grand Egyptian Museum, they had plenty of help bringing the concept to fruition. Even at the competition stage, once they were named one of several finalists, they called in extra assistance from the engineering firms Arup and Buro Happold. Cairo-based Raafat Miller Consulting is credited alongside Heneghan Peng Architects as the project’s architect. Given the many delays that have hampered the project, Heneghan says her firm has essentially had very little to do with the design since it was largely finalized around 2009. “Once it went into construction, we weren’t really involved,” she says. The project has evolved since then, with new structural, technological, and material changes that have necessarily altered the overall design. Heneghan says the facade of the building is a departure from a more reserved approach in the initial design, but she accepts that some tweaks were inevitable. “You know, 16 years is a really long time,” she says. But there are also parts of the final museum that were among the architect’s initial thinking about what this museum could be, way back in 2002. Heneghan seems gratified that certain major elements like the grand staircase leading up to the main galleries and the direct views of the pyramids made it through after all these years. “Some things are very much what was envisaged,” she says.
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E-Commerce
Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views. In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. Thats right, Gamerhood is fully owned by State Farm, and it’s a key part of the brands marketing strategy. State Farms head of marketing Alyson Griffin says that despite the unpredictability of creators and reality TV, the reward is worth any perceived brand risk. We believe in them, she says. We don’t script them. They say the things they want to say, they can do the things they want to do. And we’re in the risk business! Nobody does that in insurance, right? We’re excited about extending the reach of that for an even bigger audience. Some brands make funny ads. Some brands invest in entertainment IP. Some brands go deep into major sports sponsorships. State Farm utilizes all of these and Jake of courseto firmly embed the brand in culture. It’s a flywheel of culturally relevant content across many different audiences, which has helped the company boost its net worth to $145.2 billion in 2024, up from $134.8 billion in 2023. There’s a sea of sameness in insurance or financial services in general, says Griffin. We are meticulous about creating conditions over time, with a longer view, that allow us to capture lightning-in-a-bottle moments when they make themselves available. Heres how State Farm does it. In this premium piece, youll learn: Where Gamerhood fits into State Farms growing brand entertainment strategy State Farm’s head of marketing on the secret sauce that makes a boring company break through The balance stake State Farm strikes between mainstream advertising, celebrities, sports sponsorships, and original IP Why embracing risk with creators is so important to brands in 2025 State Farm Gamerhood Season 4 hosts and contestants (from left): Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez, Jake from State Farm, JasonTheWeen, Ludwig, CouRage, Cinna, Mark Phillips, Berleezy, Sydeon, LuluLuvely, Barbara Dunkelman. [Photo: State Farm] Nobody cares, now what? In Spike Lees newest Apple TV film Highest 2 Lowest, the characters David (Denzel Washington) and his chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright) are in the car. Paul pulls out a gun to deal with their situation. What is that? David asks, as Paul cocks it. Insurance, says Paul. Thats Jake from State Farm. This is what marketers call cultural relevance. When Paul says the line, its a joke everyone gets. It even made it to the trailer. Theres no brand partnership or product deal, just an acknowledgement of the place in pop culture that State Farm has carved out over many, many years including Super Bowl ads, major sponsorships, and celebrity ad campaigns across the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball. This isnt the first time State Farm has been involved with Apples entertainment. While this one was unexpected, its hilarious take on the hit show Severance was very much part of the plan. Griffin says the goal of the brands full court press on pop culture is relevance. First of all, nobody cares about insurance, she says. Nobody’s thinking about it unless something happens and they need it. They also aren’t going to statefarm.com to just casually see what their insurance carrier has to say on a random Tuesday. It’s not happening. Nobody cares. You have to break through. This is why we get Megan Trainor trying to be an NFL trainer for Patrick Mahomes, Jason Bateman rivaling Batman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger turning the tagline into Like a good neighbaaaaaa! for the Super Bowl. Its also how we get Travis Scott teaming with Jake from State Farm to create custom varsity jackets at Coachella. That mix of names alone illustrates the various ways the brand is aiming at a variety of audiences. When you break through and you’re relevant, you get earned media, talk value, and social engagement, says Griffin. I have to use the right talnt to break through, so when you see the ad, it’s actually better, more creative, and more interesting. But its the less high-profile names that have Griffin most excited right now, and the strategy around it she says is a key to the future. Creators are key State Farms budget for Gamerhood wasnt a big departure from what they were already spending to advertise in gaming. Griffin says it was just a matter of shifting spend from other investments that were essentially getting them a static logo on a game screen. I just thought I could get more engagement with it than just a passive logo, she says. The secret is investing in, and trusting, creators to do what they do best. Griffin says it can be nerve-wracking for any marketer to cede control of their brand, but so far, it has been worth it. Griffin says that the key to a successful partnership with creators is to be prepared to give up some control. Brand leaders must do their due diligence and vet any potential partner, but then they must let them cook. If you know you have the right person, because you vetted them to your brand needs, let them be them,” says Griffin. “Let them create because then it looks and is authentic. Cenat is one of the most popular creators and streamers on the planet. He ran a month-long Twitch stream in September that peaked at more than one million concurrent viewers and 82.5 million hours watched. Hes also one of the stars of the newest season of Gamerhood. But State Farms work with Cenat goes beyond the stream. Cenat also starred in the brands Super Bowl turned March Madness spot with Jason Bateman. Griffin says that Cenats help in explaining the situation of delaying the Super Bowl ad, due to sensitivity about the severity of the Los Angeles wildfires, came from trust built over time. He worked with the brand to get on Jimmy Fallon to explain why State Farm delayed the ad spot’s rollout. That was not what we intended to do with that spot, that’s not what he signed up for, says Griffin. He signed up to be in the Super Bowl, and he could have been mad about it. Instead, he helped us think strategically about how to make that transition and make it work. Measuring success Looking at all the various ways State Farm is getting its brand out into the world and into culture, it can be tough to decipher how it defines success with its advertising and marketing investments. Griffin says that State Farms marketing is split across three areas: current demand, future demand, and retention. Current demand is work aimed at people who are actually in the market for insurance. Every dollar that the current demand team spends is measured against a bound policy, so you better be effective and efficient, she says. These are deals and promos that really show people why State Farm is a good choice for them right now. The bigger swings in brand building are more closely tied to the other two buckets. Future demand is about starting to build a relationship with people outside of their specific insurance needs, so when they do shift over to the current demand category, they have State Farm in mind. Not $1 that we spend in future demand is measured against the bound insurance policy, says Griffin. It is about paving the way, firing synapses, dopamine, serotonin, attention, reach, engagement, talk, value, PR, and earned media. Retention is a mix of the first two, making sure the brand work makes them feel good about the company, while still offering them deals and upgrades to keep their business. For Gamerhood, the measurement for success is more specific. Just before the third seasons launch in August 2024, gamer Ludwig posted a TikTok clip of himself, dancing with fellow gamers Berleezy, Mark Phillips, and Kyedae. There was no State Farm or Gamerhood branding, and among the more than 2,000 comments, fans were trying to figure out why their favorite gamers were together like this. Among them was, This gotta be State Farm Gamerhood. @ludwig slay #jojosiwa Karma – JoJo Siwa For Griffin, that was the proof she needed. I knew it right then, she says. Unaided with no identifying marks, the target market is anticipating why those people are together and what they’re doing. And I was like, Well, we just, we won IP right there.
Category:
E-Commerce
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