Truthful Perspective on the Economy: The Numbers Are Actually Very Good

Political analyst Michael Barone gives the realistic perspective:

By any historic standard, our economic numbers are good, though possibly headed in a negative direction. April's unemployment was 5 percent -- a figure that once upon a time was considered full employment. The Consumer Price Index was up 3.9 percent, largely due to price rises in energy and food. "Core inflation" was 2.3 percent. Productivity was up 2.2 percent.

Those are numbers that would have been taken as a sign of very good times when I was growing up. Then, we had recessions every four or five years and bad bouts of inflation in the 1940s, 1950s and 1970s, and unemployment sometimes surged to 10 percent nationally and to 15 percent in industrial states like Michigan. In contrast, we've had only two mild recessions since 1983, with a third now possible but not yet in view.

Source link (emphasis added).

A nation has been spoiled by a very high standard of living. Notice all the complaining about gas prices and, at the same time, notice how many unnecessarily gargantuan, monster-sized vehicles are on the road. In an era of smaller families, there is really no need at all for the hefty, gas-guzzling vehicles you see on the road. Yet, people making those bad choices want us to sympathize with their travails at the gas pump. As in other areas of life, the lust for perfectionism (that is, the lust for having every whim met) becomes the enemy of the good. We lack the humility that is thankful for the many, abundant blessings we do have. And so we overreach and whine. The rest of the world--by whose standards, almost every American is relatively "rich"-- must look on with amazement at our economic "problems."