EVEN THE BAD TIMES ARE BETTER:

Democrats Launch 'Prosperity Index' (Dale Russakoff, October 17, 2002, Washington Post)

[D]emocrats, eager to turn economic anxiety into electoral gain Nov. 5, will unveil a new economic indicator today: the Prosperity Index.

The Prosperity Index combines the growth rate of the gross domestic product, the unemployment rate and, here's the catch, the size of the federal budget deficit or surplus.

The Democrats' findings? Like so many other measures, the Prosperity Index has taken a huge dive from its perch in the go-go 1990s, but all in all, it's not that bad.

By the new measure, U.S. prosperity reached an index score of 6.2 in 2000, a 34-year high, then plummeted to -1.2 this year, the lowest rate since 1993. At 5.6 percent, the unemployment rate is below the 6.3 percent average since 1970. GDP growth, expected to be about 2.3 percent this year, is anemic but not recessionary. The big hit was the sudden turn in the government's fortunes, from a $127 billion surplus in 2001 to a deficit of about $160 billion for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Even with that fiscal cataclysm, the current -1.2 Prosperity Index score beats out much of the 1970s and nearly all of the 1980s. Indeed, the Democrats' tailor-made index appears to ratify precisely the point made by pollsters that Democrats hoped to refute: Voters have reason to be anxious about rapidly changing circumstances, but anyone with a memory that goes past the boom years might not be feeling panicky yet.

Believe us, if you lived through the 70s and early 80s, and were reasonably aware of what was going on, you couldn't mistake today's economic doldrums for a real recession and you don't want to find out what one is like. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 18, 2002 8:36 PM