James K. Glassman explains the Misery Index:
The global economy is roaring. “For the first time since 1969,” reports a newsletter I rely on, Bridgewater Daily Observations, “not a single country in the world has had negative year-over-year growth.”Overall, the world economy is rising at a 4.4 percent rate, after inflation. At that pace, Gross Domestic Product doubles in 17 years, quadruples in less than a generation and rises by a factor of about 30 in a lifetime. Imagine the average nation being 30 times richer than it is today!
It’s no secret why this is happening. Nearly half the world’s population — China, India, the former Soviet Union and its satellites — has moved within 20 years from an anachronistic economic system that doesn’t work, like autarky or communism — toward a free-market system that does. Certainly, these nations haven’t fully embraced an open, competitive system with limited government involvement yet — but, then again, neither has Europe, or the United States for that matter. The vector, however, is clear, and a growing world economy is very, very good for us.
U.S. growth for 2005 was 3.5 percent — slower than the world as a whole but still quite brisk and much brisker than Europe — and the consensus of economists is predicting roughly the same for the year ahead. The numbers are staggering. In the past year, including modest inflation, America’s output of goods and services has increased by nearly $1 trillion — or about $10,000 for every family. In the last five months alone, the U.S. has created 1 million net new jobs.
But if the U.S. economy is doing so well, why aren’t Americans happier about it?
One explanation:
[D]ata show consistently that Americans who identify with the party in power “are more positive about the way things are going in the country.” In other words, it’s not reality but partisanship or ideology that determines one’s view of the economic situation.