Misery Index: Bidenflation Remains Sky-High, And Americans Aren't Fooled
By Gwendolyn Sims 10:57 PM on September 23, 2022
In spite of Joe Biden’s continued delusional pronouncements that “the economy is just fine, man,” most Americans are feeling the detrimental effects of his economic policies with every purchase from the gas pump to the grocery store and beyond.
Each month since the 1970s, economists have used the newly released and updated Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) data to quantify the economic health of the country. To do so, they add the current U.S. unemployment rate, which is a semi-stagnant 3.7%, to August’s worse-than-expected rate of U.S. inflation, which is a harsh 8.26%. Originally coined by intellectual powerhouse and policy economist Arthur M. Okun in the 1970s as the “discomfort index,” the sum of these two rates is now known simply as the U.S. Misery Index.
The current U.S. Misery Index stands at a crippling 11.96%.
So what exactly does the Misery Index tell us? First, we know that the higher the inflation rate is, the higher the cost of living is as well. Second, as the unemployment numbers rise, more and more people fall into poverty. The Misery Index acts as a kind of snapshot in time that measures the health of the economy as a whole.
Both unemployment and inflation significantly impact the average American wage earner’s spending power, so the Misery Index also gauges the negative impact Bidenflation has on the quality of American life. With inflation at still-record-high levels, it follows that as the Misery Index climbs, the quality of American life declines.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2022/09/23/misery-index-bidenflation-remains-sky-high-and-americans-arent-fooled-n1629309
