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Originally posted by: marcrQuote
Originally posted by: billryan
Your figures agree with my statement. Unemployment was much much higher three years after Reagan took office than it was under his predecessor. You folks kill Obama for this, but worship at the feet of Reagan.
The socalled Misery Index was a nonsensical campaign gimmick put out by Reagans campaign advisors. I can't believe you are still trying to foist it about thirty years later. I guess you really can't teach an old dog new tricks, even when the olds ones have been discredited for a generation.
Ummmm, not even close. The misery index was developed by Yale economics professor Arthur Okun in the late 60s. Mr Okun was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors 1968-69 under President Johnson.
https://www.miseryindex.us/
As to use by politicians it was first really used by President Carter in his run for the Presidency in 1976. This extracted from Wikipedia but is a fair summary:
During the Presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter made frequent references to the Misery Index, which by the summer of 1976 was at 13.57%. Carter stated that no man responsible for giving a country a misery index that high had a right to even ask to be President. Carter won the 1976 election. However, by 1980, when President Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the Misery Index had reached an all-time high of 21.98%. Carter lost the election to Reagan.
I was off the mark, but not far off. It was Jimmy Carters campaign advisors that first used it, not Reagans.
What confused me was in the fall of 1976, I had a economic professor who picked it apart as to why it was an utterly useless stat, and four years later that same professor ripped Reagans trickle down economics nonsense to shreds. Remember that Nixon and Ford resorted to wage and price freezes to keep inflation down, Carter let the sacred free market decide.
I could only imagine the outrage here and elsewhere if the Obama administration declared a wage freeze and announced that a Federal panel would decide your salary for the next four years. You'd think JC would at least get some credit for stopping that monumental disaster.
National unemployment numbers were simply complied by adding state numbers and in the Jim Crow south, were completely unreliable.
