An interesting analysis of the changes in the way we measure the economy
over past 47 years and how the leadership in washington dc have mislead in
order to make themselves appear successful.
This is a link to an abridged article by Kevin Phillips. The original is in
Harper's Magazine, which requires a subscription:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2008/Pollyanna-Creep-Economy1may08.htm
John Kennedy, out-of-work Americans who had stopped looking for jobs - even
if this was because none could be found - were labeled "discouraged workers"
and then excluded from the ranks of the unemployed.
Lyndon Johnson orchestrated a "unified budget" that combined Social Security
with the rest of the federal outlays. This innovation allowed the surplus
receipts in Social Security to mask the emerging federal deficit.
Richard Nixon created a division between "core" inflation and headline
inflation. If the Consumer Price Index was calculated by tracking a bundle
of prices, so-called core inflation would simply exclude, because of
"volatility," categories that happened to be troublesome (and thus in the
"headlines"). At that time, it was food and energy (as it is now).
