The Wonk Room blog from the liberal Center for American Progress happily tosses out this little factoid:
By one measure—the "Misery Index" made famous by Jimmy Carter—the economy is in its worst shape since mid-1991. The Misery Index is simply the combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It reached 11.3 percent in July. While still well below its heights in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Misery Index is now at its highest level since the first George Bush was president according to data from www.miseryindex.us.
FYI: The MI's low point in the past 40 years was 6.05 percent in 1998. The highest point ever was 20.76 percent in 1980. And what did we do after that horrific year? Cut taxes, continued to cut regulation, eviscerated inflation with tight money and progrowth economics. Not a bad formula. Check out a history of the Misery Index below:
The US Misery Index - 1948 to 2007
Misery Index = Unemployment rate + Inflation rate
1948 11.49 Truman 1949 5.10 1950 6.30 1951 11.16 1952 5.32 1953 3.74 Eisenhower 1954 5.91 1955 4.09 1956 5.64 1957 7.64 1958 9.57 1959 6.46 1960 7.00 1961 7.76 Kennedy 1962 6.77 1963 6.88 Johnson 1964 6.44 1965 6.10 1966 6.80 1967 6.62 1968 7.83 1969 8.95 Nixon 1970 10.82 1971 10.25 1972 8.87 1973 11.02 1974 16.67 Ford 1975 17.68 1976 13.45 1977 13.55 Carter 1978 13.69 1979 17.07 1980 20.76 1981 17.97 Reagan 1982 15.87 1983 12.82 1984 11.81 1985 10.74 1986 8.91 1987 9.84 1988 9.57 1989 10.09 Bush, G.H.W. 1990 11.01 1991 11.10 1992 10.52 1993 9.87 Clinton 1994 8.71 1995 8.40 1996 8.34 1997 7.28 1998 6.05 1999 6.41 2000 7.35 2001 7.59 Bush, G.W. 2002 7.37 2003 8.26 2004 8.21 2005 8.48 2006 7.87 2007 7.46
Note: The blue part of the bar represents the Unemployment Rate and the red part represents the Inflation Rate.
Chris of AZ @ Aug 18, 2008 12:27:35 PM