| By Bill Haley 8 billion people are making hundreds of choices every day. That is over one trillion economic decisions every day of every year. No study can even approach collecting 1% of the needed data to properly analyze economic activity. Economics is the study of knowledge, time, work, relationships, resources, among other issues with changing circumstances. Trillions of circumstances change daily. |  |
 | Any one person does not even come close to approaching 1% of all knowledge. Relationships change. People constantly move to different stages of their lives. Work is a constant competition to serve others, and others are trying to offer their services to who you are currently serving. Businesses continually assess every aspect of their production for quality improvements, cost-effectiveness, and productivity. |
| People are constantly evaluating whether they should forgo, do it themselves, or trade for a product and service. People determine whether their time is better spent on recreation and rest or work. The demand and supply of resources are in constant flux. |  |
 | The best-funded economic studies are extremely limited in that they collect a small fraction of the data necessary. It might be the best data we can collect; however, we need to be humble and state the margin of error on most studies are high double digits. The number of significant factors involved is in the hundreds, and there are thousands of less significant factors. Data collection is hard, costly, and often highly insufficient. One of the most frequently used; however, one of the worst ways to collect data is to ask people. Many studies are laughable in their premise, their data collection, their analysis, their biases, and their high level of certainty. Humbleness needs a stronger showing. |
