Misery

Now as far as I'm concerned, the only legitimate index is the Berg Consumer Confidence Index, which jumped from a 12 well into the seventies last year when I finally got a job after four months' unemployment and five months of miserable underemployment. Self-centered? You bet.

Isn't that how all people look at world events? Reagan said "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you're out of work. A recovery is when Jimmy Carter is out of work". Extend that; the war on terror wasn't a war until we - all of us - saw the planes ramming into the towers.

I suppose it's natural that John Kerry's miserable "Misery Index" is no less self-serving; he's trying to get elected.

Proboem is, it's a fraud, as Trunk from Powerline shows us in citing a recent "Political Fact Check" article:

The Kerry index is, to put it mildly, selective. Rather than use all consumer prices, the Kerry index cherry-picks three items that have gone up faster than the overall rate of inflation: college tuition (at public four-year universities only), gasoline, and health care.

Read the whole thing - and remember, King from SCSU Scholars promises an even more thorough debunking shortly.

Posted by Mitch at April 14, 2004 06:51 AM