More News on the Economy
Let's see:

• US unemployment is at a very low 4.7%.


• Real GDP grew at a blistering anualized rate of 4.8% in the first quarter of 2006.


• Wages grew at a solid 3.8% in the trailing 12 months, the highest gain since 2001.


• Wage rates grew so much, that many fear inflation may be a problem. However, the CPI for the last twelve months is 3.4%. Since the CPI somewhat overestimates inflation, real inflation is likely closer to 1.4 to 2.4%.


• The stock market is approaching an all-time high. The Dow Jones is about 100 points shy of its record high in January 2001.

Is it just me? This is the economic equivalent of hitting the cycle. Why does the president receive no credit whatsoever for any of this?

Robert Samuelson has an interesting take in the Washington Post. I don't always agree with Samuelson, but he seems to have hit it on the head:

Ours is a post-affluent society. Because so much previous suffering and social conflict stemmed from poverty, the advent of widespread affluence suggested utopian possibilities. Up to a point, affluence succeeds. There is much less physical misery than before. People are better off. Unfortunately, affluence also creates new complaints and contradictions.

Advanced societies need economic growth to satisfy the multiplying wants -- public and private -- of their citizens. The social order depends on it. But the quest for growth unleashes new anxieties and economic conflicts that disturb the social order. Affluence liberates the individual, promising that everyone can choose a "unique way to self-fulfillment," writes historian Avner Offer. But the promise is so extravagant that it preordains many disappointments and sometimes inspires choices that have antisocial consequences, including family breakdown and obesity. Statistical indicators of happiness, Offer notes, have not risen with incomes.

- posted by Base10 @ 10:44 AM