On almost every level, we are making national economic policy on the basis of problematic data and inadequate models Government numbers are always estimates and always wrong – often dramatically, as when the 'non-partisan' Congressional Budget Office forecast a ten-year cost for Medicare which was utilized for legislation, then 're-calculated' at 33% higher – only another $200 billion. The real problem is ...that decisions to commit literally trillions of dollars are based on assumptions which are usually wrong and often irrelevant.