Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. The W
Speaker 1: stands for Wayne Dr Wayne Coyne. It gets you every time.
Speaker 1: I know, it's funny to be forty five years old
Speaker 1: and named after Wayne Coyne because he's like forty eight. Right, No,
Speaker 1: he's in the fifties too, But it would be weird.
Speaker 1: I would have been named after a very uh like
Speaker 1: kindergarten age Wayne coin A. Right. You know, maybe your
Speaker 1: parents were friends with his parents and they really thought
Speaker 1: a lot about him. Play he's a real achiever, right
Speaker 1: that Wayne Coyn going places? Okay, Uh, that's a weird
Speaker 1: side track. It was already out of the gate. Man.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling. I'm good. I got a lot
Speaker 1: on your plate, got a lot going on. Oh you
Speaker 1: know what today is? What? Dude? Today is the day
Speaker 1: that I leave this office and I go to a
Speaker 1: shop in Edmond Park and pick up four brand new
Speaker 1: last chance garage hats. Oh wow, it's a big day,
Speaker 1: very big day. So I have a couple of people
Speaker 1: would like to thank It's a bigger deal than it
Speaker 1: should be for a grown man in a hat. But
Speaker 1: we all understand, first of all, Katie, my custom patchmaker,
Speaker 1: this is really where it all came together. The patches
Speaker 1: isn't right, the hat's not right. Katie killed it. It
Speaker 1: looks identical and you can find her work at tulip
Speaker 1: cake dot com c U L I P. Cake. And
Speaker 1: I said, you know people might ask you to make
Speaker 1: you to make them last chance garage patches. Did you
Speaker 1: have her destroy the mold? And I said, I don't
Speaker 1: you know. It's on you. It's up to you legally.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying you might get requests. You should have
Speaker 1: been like Ivan the Terrible who blinded his architect, except
Speaker 1: that they built his pal Now, I don't care people.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see these things around and la mood
Speaker 1: big hats l A m o O d uh for
Speaker 1: big heads because part of the problem was finding uh
Speaker 1: big and tall hat. Yeah, man, like, uh the problem
Speaker 1: I have with hats these days. I don't look like
Speaker 1: I have a huge head, but they just fit so
Speaker 1: snugly and they don't go far down enough on my head.
Speaker 1: So I finally looked up oversized hats and found La
Speaker 1: mood hats and dude, they're exactly like the old hat
Speaker 1: except it doesn't stink. Oh yeah, like these are great.
Speaker 1: I got four brands, an improvement for sure. So are
Speaker 1: you gonna put one in like the seed Vault in Norway? Uh?
Speaker 1: Probably one there. Uh, there will be one in the
Speaker 1: nuclear suitcase, and um, I'll wear the other two at
Speaker 1: the same time at the same that's right. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: super excited. So it's pretty cool. Thank you to Katie
Speaker 1: and the mood Hats for allowing me to spend too
Speaker 1: much money getting four hats remade. And speaking of while
Speaker 1: we're thanking people, we we owe a long overdue thank
Speaker 1: you to a guy who um made us a really
Speaker 1: cool sign. Um. Oh you mean the sign this guy
Speaker 1: made for us like seven years ago. Yeah. His name's
Speaker 1: Matt Street. He's at fat Bison dot com. And it
Speaker 1: made a really cool woodcarved sign. It was in our
Speaker 1: TV show. It was like like the production company got
Speaker 1: clearance rights for it and all this stuff, and we
Speaker 1: love the sign, but we just forgot to ever thank Matt.
Speaker 1: So Matt, thank you so much for the sign. We
Speaker 1: love it. We have it hanging here in the studio.
Speaker 1: It is a work of art and we appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We're sorry for the oversight. Um. Is that all the
Speaker 1: thank you? So let's talk about the misery index high. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What a great transition, have you? Um? Had you heard
Speaker 1: of it before you came across this article? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: didn't know a lot about it though, And um, apparently
Speaker 1: it's going a little bit out of fashion lately from
Speaker 1: what I understand. Yeah, I think so, because well, well
Speaker 1: let's get into it. Okay. It turns out economics as
Speaker 1: a whole is in danger of going out of fashion.
Speaker 1: I've read this really interesting article on a on, which
Speaker 1: is maybe the greatest website on the planet a e
Speaker 1: O N dot It might be dot CEO because British
Speaker 1: about a lot of websites. I think I said about
Speaker 1: a on a lot and and it just seems like
Speaker 1: I'm talking about different ones. But there's this article by
Speaker 1: Allen J. Levinovitz and it's called the New Astrology, and
Speaker 1: he basically makes a parallel between economics and economists and
Speaker 1: economic theory when you take economics and try to apply
Speaker 1: it to future forecasting and the um the b CE
Speaker 1: Chinese astrologers that basically directed the way that the economy
Speaker 1: or the government was going to move based on the
Speaker 1: movements of the stars, you might as well just do that.
Speaker 1: He drew some pretty pretty interesting parallels between the two
Speaker 1: that that economics in and of itself is not necessarily flawed,
Speaker 1: but when it's used to forecast the future, then it
Speaker 1: becomes inherently flaw odd. Yeah, this this article really kind
Speaker 1: of kind yeah, a little bit. Yeah, to an extent.
Speaker 1: I mean, the misery index is a legitimate economic tool,
Speaker 1: and it's hit or miss in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one thing that hit home to me with
Speaker 1: researching this is it just seems impossible to say that
Speaker 1: there's one correct way of doing things right or that
Speaker 1: is absolute, and you're like, you know, if you do
Speaker 1: things this way, then there will be nothing but growth
Speaker 1: in jobs and the GDP s and g m P
Speaker 1: and uh, it just it just doesn't seem to work
Speaker 1: that way, right. I think the problem is is that
Speaker 1: if you listen to economists, they like to act like
Speaker 1: they do have a handle on that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But if you really look into economics, it's very politicized.
Speaker 1: There's liberal economics and there's conservative economics, and the fact
Speaker 1: that each one saying it's right kind of makes you
Speaker 1: think that maybe no one is, you know, but the
Speaker 1: misery index actually is is it started out from a
Speaker 1: guy who was pretty good at walking the line between
Speaker 1: conservative and liberal economics. UM, a guy uh what was
Speaker 1: his name Okin? Yeah, Arthur Oakin, and he uh he
Speaker 1: worked on Kennedy's staffs, Council of Economic Advisors, John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy that is, and he was, UM, I get the feeling,
Speaker 1: one of the main influences and talking Kennedy, who initially
Speaker 1: did not necessarily agree, but talking Kennedy into kind of
Speaker 1: trying to enact both conservative and liberal economic policies simultaneously.
Speaker 1: Right they were. The US was intercession when Kennedy took
Speaker 1: office in nine one, UM, and they talked him into
Speaker 1: not only increasing government spending like welfare programs. They raised
Speaker 1: the UM, the minimum wade and UM some other stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but they also cut taxes, which is, you
Speaker 1: do one or the other. You cut taxes and hope
Speaker 1: everything goes for the best because businesses will start investing
Speaker 1: and spending, or you start you start investing in welfare
Speaker 1: programs to help your ailing UM lower in middle classes. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't do both, and Kennedy did both and it
Speaker 1: was successful. Yeah. He well he at first he said,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this. I don't know about this author.
Speaker 1: Mike Kennedy sounds like a robot. My kinda did too.
Speaker 1: Actually this is fine, but Arthur mr Okun Okon, I
Speaker 1: think it's a weird name. Okay, you in uh. He
Speaker 1: talked him into it and said trust me, and things
Speaker 1: worked out in that case. Yeah. Well, and a lot
Speaker 1: of guys, including Oaken's names, were made by this advice
Speaker 1: that panned out like the US Center to Boom and
Speaker 1: um Okin ended up as being the head of the
Speaker 1: Council of Economic Advisors for Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and um one thing that economic economists economists love to
Speaker 1: do is um I mean, he loved the forecasts and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But it's all about data, man. They
Speaker 1: love to pour over data, like stuff that makes the
Speaker 1: average person their mind bleed from boredom. They just find
Speaker 1: it fascinating. That's what they do on Friday nights. Friday nights,
Speaker 1: they pour over data, historical data, trying to find you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the big puzzle and they're all trying to
Speaker 1: solve it, so they pour over this data. Oakland did,
Speaker 1: and um he said, you know what, I noticed something
Speaker 1: here between when we started recording some some decent unemployment rates,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know. I didn't know we started that.
Speaker 1: It seems like it would have gone back before then.
Speaker 1: But between sixty he said, you know what, I've noticed
Speaker 1: that the gross national product rises three for every percentage
Speaker 1: point that unemployment falls. With the caveat that unemployment has
Speaker 1: to be between three and seven point five percent, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty like, it's pretty bold statement to say
Speaker 1: I've noticed this is a definite trend. It is, and
Speaker 1: it came to be called Oakland's law because it was
Speaker 1: verified other people poured over the data and like, this
Speaker 1: guy is right, man, he just keeps coming up with hits,
Speaker 1: doesn't he. Um. And the reason you would want to
Speaker 1: know some arcane piece of data like that is that
Speaker 1: if you know that that's the case, then you can say, well,
Speaker 1: if we attack unemployment can get it down a couple
Speaker 1: of points. We can you know, raise g d P
Speaker 1: or g MP, you know, by three percent every time
Speaker 1: we drop it. So when we need to bulk g
Speaker 1: m P up, we just attack unemployment, right, easy, peasy,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and everyone said, thank you are Yeah. Things
Speaker 1: worked out pretty well for a while, but then the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies came along, and UM, if you what, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit about stagflation now. But if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard it, we have a two good episode
Speaker 1: I think. So it's called what is Stagflation? From February
Speaker 1: twenty four, two thousand. Um. Yeah, I think as far
Speaker 1: as our economics episodes, it was not bad. I went
Speaker 1: back and listened to a lot of it before I
Speaker 1: got bored out. Yeah, the first three minutes were great. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I go back and listen to that. But um,
Speaker 1: like he said, he served as chairman of the c
Speaker 1: e A for Johnson, and then in seventy three, a
Speaker 1: very unfortunate thing happened that kind of ended up rocking
Speaker 1: the world and the United States in particular with our economy. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna take a break and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: when we get back about the Middle East. All right,
Speaker 1: what happened in the old I am negative three? The
Speaker 1: arab oil embargo happened. Right, So, at the time, until
Speaker 1: very recently, the US was super dependent on foreign oil
Speaker 1: like like other countries. We wouldn't even sit down at
Speaker 1: the table with we were getting oil from right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing better now, yeah, with our dependency, But back then,
Speaker 1: very bad, very um. And it was it was a
Speaker 1: source of anxiety for a lot of people, and that
Speaker 1: anxiety actually panned out. So in Um nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: Egypt and Syria and a few other Arab nations invaded
Speaker 1: the Golden Heights and the Sinai Peninsula to attempt to
Speaker 1: take back land Um from the State of Israel. The
Speaker 1: US was found to be supply arms to Israel, So
Speaker 1: as far as the Arab States were concerned, the US
Speaker 1: had cast its lot on israel side, and they were
Speaker 1: fairly peeved about that. So they literally shut off the
Speaker 1: tap of oil flowing to the United States and other
Speaker 1: countries that were found considered to be on the side
Speaker 1: of Israel in this in this war Um huge deal.
Speaker 1: It was an enormous deal. The the this foreign dependency
Speaker 1: in the the precarious situation that it placed the United
Speaker 1: States and came to pass, and the price of oil
Speaker 1: rose thirty seven. The long lines at the gas station
Speaker 1: were never seen before or since. Even after the financial
Speaker 1: crisis of two thousand eight. UM, it was just insane.
Speaker 1: There was gas rationing in the United States in nineteen
Speaker 1: because the UM the oil embargo, and after a while
Speaker 1: the taps were turned back on. But that shocked to
Speaker 1: the system, screwed the economy up for a decade. Inflation
Speaker 1: went out of control, and UM a very another unfortunately
Speaker 1: happened along the same timeline. Unemployment started to creep up.
Speaker 1: And these two things happening at the same time as devastating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and up to this point, so first of all, the
Speaker 1: US had never had a shock to the system like that.
Speaker 1: That was one thing. It wasn't a gradual thing. It
Speaker 1: was like yeah. But the other thing is when you
Speaker 1: have something that has never happened before, you can look
Speaker 1: at it and say, wow, what what happened, and new
Speaker 1: things that have never happened before come out of that.
Speaker 1: And one of the things was inflation and unemployment going up,
Speaker 1: because up to this point, economists just assumed that the
Speaker 1: two were mutually exclusive. If you're if you're UM. If
Speaker 1: inflation was up, prices were high, that meant that companies
Speaker 1: could go out and hire more people, so unemployment of
Speaker 1: course would be low. Yeah, it kind of made sense.
Speaker 1: Well not not after the oil embargo. The shock to
Speaker 1: the system led to, like you said, high unemployment rates
Speaker 1: and high inflation, and uh, it was a miserable time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was called stagflation. It also led to skateboarding,
Speaker 1: as we all know. Oh yeah, because of the pools, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they could and cal well actually that was the drought.
Speaker 1: But I think the drought was also tied into the economics. Sure,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't fill up swimm pools that they started
Speaker 1: skating in swimming pools. Well, yeah, if you have a drought,
Speaker 1: then you lose your crops. And if you lose your crops,
Speaker 1: you lose money, a significant sector of money exactly. So
Speaker 1: good news. We have half pipes now and quarter pipes
Speaker 1: and peralta they're still around, right, I think bad news
Speaker 1: is like you said, it had a devastating effect for many,
Speaker 1: many years on the United States. So Oakin starts to
Speaker 1: look around. He said, you know what, things are pretty
Speaker 1: bad here. One might even say miserable. I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: any acclaim for a while. Yeah, nothing's been named after
Speaker 1: me in a while. So let me create this new
Speaker 1: uh list, new method for looking at the economy. And
Speaker 1: it turns out to not be like a look over
Speaker 1: a period of time or anything, but just sort of
Speaker 1: like a polaroid of that day and not just that
Speaker 1: day for like the country as a whole, or um
Speaker 1: for the FED or anything like that. But what he
Speaker 1: did that was different was he looked into what the
Speaker 1: what it was like that day or that year for
Speaker 1: the average American in their daily life. And he called
Speaker 1: it the misery Index. Yeah, and it was very rudimentary
Speaker 1: at the time. It was just simple calculation of the
Speaker 1: yearly rate of inflation plus the unemployment rate. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you have like five percent inflation and two percent unemployment,
Speaker 1: you have a seven percent misery index. It's as simple
Speaker 1: as that. I don't know why it got so much,
Speaker 1: you know what. It was hailed as a big deal
Speaker 1: because I think Oakin had a a a knack for
Speaker 1: noticing things that seemed obvious in retrospect, but at the
Speaker 1: time no one had ever noticed before. I'll buy it.
Speaker 1: Thank why not? Alright, So now he has this index,
Speaker 1: and not only can he look at a snapshot of
Speaker 1: that day, he can go back because he was a
Speaker 1: a data walk sure he could look at data throughout history. Well,
Speaker 1: at least in nine, Yeah, which is when we started
Speaker 1: recording unemployment, like we said, which must have been frustrating
Speaker 1: for him because our um our inflation rates data goes
Speaker 1: back to nineteen fourteen. But that's only part of the equation. Well,
Speaker 1: it must have been like, oh, sure, and to be
Speaker 1: able to look at the Great Depression, you could have
Speaker 1: learned a lot, you know. Uh. So he went and
Speaker 1: he looked back, and he says, here is what we've noticed,
Speaker 1: and this is so obvious to me, uh, that that
Speaker 1: presidents and political parties are brought in and out of
Speaker 1: office largely depending on how the economy is doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they kind of proved it, but not even just
Speaker 1: how the economy is doing. Like he he was saying,
Speaker 1: like the misery index you can use to predict whether
Speaker 1: the the presidency's going to change hands politically. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, Uh, misery index is six point five three,
Speaker 1: which is great. That's during like, yeah, very low, Mr Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: President Eisenhower, and he got reelected because things were pretty good,
Speaker 1: right as far as the misery index goes. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody was pretty happy, even though they didn't really know
Speaker 1: what the misery index was because it wasn't invented yet.
Speaker 1: They just had a general sense. Well, yeah, they didn't
Speaker 1: call it that at a time. No, They're just like,
Speaker 1: seems fine to me. You're miserable. We like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not miserable, are you. So in Johnson came to the
Speaker 1: end of his term and the misery index was up
Speaker 1: to eight point one three, and then he had his
Speaker 1: Democratic successor, Hubert Humphrey in line, and because the thing
Speaker 1: had crept up, people a little more miserable and they said, no,
Speaker 1: get out of here, I want Mr Nixon in office, right,
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm not. I'm not sure about this.
Speaker 1: So I don't understand why Johnson was replaced by Humphrey
Speaker 1: by the Democrats and in this article, and it seems
Speaker 1: to be because of this misery index that it would
Speaker 1: have predicted that. But he was the incumbent president, so
Speaker 1: let's see, so he was he would have should know this. No,
Speaker 1: he yeah, he was a one term or technically one
Speaker 1: in a third or one in a quarter because he
Speaker 1: took over after Kennedy's assassination. But if his term was
Speaker 1: up in sixty eight, then he would have won the
Speaker 1: sixty four election. So he technically I think would have
Speaker 1: been able to have been president. Again, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: we could have found this out too sure, but I'll
Speaker 1: bet there's somebody out there who can explain it to us,
Speaker 1: and so email us, will you? Uh? At any rate,
Speaker 1: Nixon gets elected and um, the misery index shot up
Speaker 1: to eleven point six seven during the first term, but
Speaker 1: then started to this decline enough that he did get
Speaker 1: re elected. Um. But then uh in n with Watergate,
Speaker 1: the misery index leapt all the way up to seventeen
Speaker 1: point oh one. That's not good. Now, that's that is
Speaker 1: the all time high at the time from what I understand. UM,
Speaker 1: and that happened around nineteen seventy four, which meant that
Speaker 1: when Watergate broke, some people who really subscribed to the
Speaker 1: misery index say Watergate might not have been quite as
Speaker 1: big a deal. If um, the misery index have been
Speaker 1: low at the time, he might have been able to
Speaker 1: squeak by without resigning or being forced out of office.
Speaker 1: I think everyone has more leeway if things are great,
Speaker 1: you know. But he his his his his currency had
Speaker 1: been spent. Man. I watched all the president's men a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. Again, you ever seen that great, great movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always meant to really really good and just sort
Speaker 1: of like, they don't make a lot of movies like
Speaker 1: that anymore. Spotlight reminded me of all it's good. It's
Speaker 1: just I call it movies for adults. You know. There's
Speaker 1: no chase scenes or anything remarkable. It's just good dramatic
Speaker 1: movie making. Yeah, good stuff anyway. Wait, what's wrong with
Speaker 1: the chasing? Uh? What's wrong with chase? No, there's nothing
Speaker 1: inherently wrong with this, but I know what you mean,
Speaker 1: just for the sake of a chasing, which we see
Speaker 1: a lot of these days, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like Mark Ruffalo is chasing a priest in a car
Speaker 1: and spotlight. Yeah, um, where were we? Okay, we're with Nixon. Um, well,
Speaker 1: not with Nixon, you know what I mean. Ford comes
Speaker 1: in office for a short time, and he actually managed
Speaker 1: to get the misery indext year down. Well. I think
Speaker 1: just the fact that Nixon was out. I think that
Speaker 1: probably helped um you know and inspire like consumer confidence
Speaker 1: in the like. So it crept back down to twelve
Speaker 1: point six six, but not enough to keep um, the
Speaker 1: Democrats and Jimmy Carter from coming into office and Carter
Speaker 1: actually cited the misery Index. It was relatively new at
Speaker 1: the time. He talked too much about it, but it
Speaker 1: was it was a g whiz thing that you could
Speaker 1: really just point to, like this post this, This is
Speaker 1: the misery index. Can you can you hear me? That's
Speaker 1: my car? But that was his amous quote, can you
Speaker 1: hear me? It came back to haunt him though, to
Speaker 1: say the least, because he talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: misery Index, and then in his term the it reached
Speaker 1: an all time high of twenty one. Yeah, which, man,
Speaker 1: I really think that shock to the system under the
Speaker 1: oil embargo, um and plenty of other stuff. This stuff
Speaker 1: gets laid at Carter's feet, I think unfairly in a
Speaker 1: lot of respects. Well, I mean, I would love for
Speaker 1: someone to really that really knows their stuff to explain
Speaker 1: to me exactly how much a president's influence has on
Speaker 1: the economy and how long it takes for that to
Speaker 1: bear fruit. Yeah, I would love to know that too.
Speaker 1: I think though, Uh, the guy who came after Carter, Reagan,
Speaker 1: is a pretty sterling, unassailable example of an impact a
Speaker 1: president can have on the economy, whether you agree with
Speaker 1: his politics or his economic policies are not. He most
Speaker 1: decidedly had an effect on the economy. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: remember hearing one time. I need to look this up,
Speaker 1: but somebody told me once that that the economic impact
Speaker 1: of the presidential a four year term is felt the
Speaker 1: most like eight years later or something. Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. Economies don't move on a dime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I don't know if that's talking lumbering things.
Speaker 1: They aren't fully understood by anybody. Yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me now more than ever before though, because remember economics
Speaker 1: used to I know, I was really really surprised when
Speaker 1: you suggested this one. It's slightly more interesting to me. Oh,
Speaker 1: just wondering things like that, and during an election season,
Speaker 1: like are the decisions we make now gonna affect us
Speaker 1: in one year or two years? Eight years? Uh? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: if there's any economists who are still listening after that
Speaker 1: initial remark about the new astrology, we'd love to to
Speaker 1: get a primer on how long it takes for a
Speaker 1: president to impact an economy, if they do at all.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a arrange, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: starting it eight years and really, honestly was Carter that
Speaker 1: band or was he a victim of cross stars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you can make a case where a lot
Speaker 1: of bills of presidencies not being directly at their feet.
Speaker 1: But you remember that, uh Simpsons where they unveil a
Speaker 1: statue of Jimmy Carter in Springfield and on the pedestal
Speaker 1: it says Malaise Forever, and somebody goes, Jimmy Carter, He's
Speaker 1: history's greatest monster Carter. So, like we said, it came
Speaker 1: back to haunt Carter because he talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the index. It rose a lot. Then Reagan came in
Speaker 1: was like, well, let's talk about that misery index that
Speaker 1: you like to talk about so much. That's in an
Speaker 1: all time high. Reagan got in there, um knocked it
Speaker 1: down to nine point five five by the end of
Speaker 1: his term, enough to get Bush Senior in Um, it
Speaker 1: inched up some then Clinton was able to Uh, it
Speaker 1: didn't go up that much though. And I read an
Speaker 1: interesting article to day on whether or not ross Pero
Speaker 1: really got Clinton elected, because that's sort of the popular
Speaker 1: thought he was a spoiler. Yeah, I could see that,
Speaker 1: but um, he was definitely more in line with um
Speaker 1: Bush seniors policies and Clinton's well at the time, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would think, but I read, uh, I read one
Speaker 1: article that said that it was kind of a myth
Speaker 1: that basically that Clinton won by six million votes and
Speaker 1: it would have taken of Paros supporters to have uh
Speaker 1: been aligned with UM with Bush m hm, and supposedly
Speaker 1: exit polls showed showed it more like thirty And so
Speaker 1: they're saying it's sort of a myth that Pero swung
Speaker 1: the election to Clinton. I see, but I mean that
Speaker 1: was one person's opinion to who knows. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been reading a lot about you know that we that
Speaker 1: that suspicion you can't quite kick that there's really no
Speaker 1: difference between Republicans and Democrats these days, that they're really
Speaker 1: just kind of all in the same little club. I
Speaker 1: think people feel that way sometimes. I've been reading a
Speaker 1: lot about that, and apparently it's all based on neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: That's like the key and um, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of If you look into Neil liberalism and the policies
Speaker 1: of neoliberalism, you realize we're like living in the thick
Speaker 1: of it. But no one everyone's kind of blind to
Speaker 1: the idea that it's just a single thing that basically
Speaker 1: everybody in power subscribes to and that it has a
Speaker 1: triple down effect of screwing over everybody below the top. Um.
Speaker 1: But just the name itself seems totally fine, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's uh, it's it's interesting. Yeah. I researched that
Speaker 1: a little bit lately too. Yeah, there's been some good article.
Speaker 1: We totally should let's do it, agreed. Man, we're gonna
Speaker 1: get some emails for that one from billionaires. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's just finish out this quick little recap. Clinton
Speaker 1: brought it down to seven point three five. Things were great,
Speaker 1: Bush Junior gets elected. Um, despite the fact that Clinton
Speaker 1: had a low index. Well, it depends on how you
Speaker 1: look at the two thousand election. We should do one
Speaker 1: on that one too. But this is the this is
Speaker 1: that's considered one of those rare instances where the misery
Speaker 1: index didn't indicate where it was going to go. But
Speaker 1: you could also say it might have had things gone
Speaker 1: slightly differently. In the Supreme Court George W. Bush, the
Speaker 1: index rose from seven point three five to eleven point four,
Speaker 1: and then Obama came in it went down to seven
Speaker 1: point eight seven. But another weird flaw in the system
Speaker 1: is exposed there because, um, despite the fact that the
Speaker 1: misery index was lower, things were not good. The stock
Speaker 1: market had crashed, unemployment was rising at a rapid rate,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know this. It basically was another
Speaker 1: example of like, look, this misery index isn't all it's
Speaker 1: cracked up to be right, so let's work on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people said this is too simplistic.
Speaker 1: You can't rely on this. But we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the additional factors that people have worked into the
Speaker 1: misery index after this. All right, Chuck, so the misery
Speaker 1: index open. Everybody's happy with him. They're like, this is
Speaker 1: just too simple, especially in what's called the post stag
Speaker 1: inflation era after the oil embargo. Um. And so some
Speaker 1: people have said, okay, you can there's certainly there's other
Speaker 1: things you can add in to give a genuine, true
Speaker 1: snapshot of what the conditions are like on the ground,
Speaker 1: as it were. Right, Well, yeah, not only what the
Speaker 1: conditions are, but whether or not performance over a period
Speaker 1: of time is getting better getting worse. Yes, And you know,
Speaker 1: rather than say, oh, under under this president, the misery
Speaker 1: index was this, you know, and it gives you a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea this with this one guy UM named
Speaker 1: Robert Barrow. He wrote a book called Getting It Right,
Speaker 1: Markets and Choices in a Free Society, and in it
Speaker 1: he takes the misery index Oakin's Misery Index, and he says,
Speaker 1: we can add some stuff to this to to make
Speaker 1: it an even clearer picture, not just of the conditions
Speaker 1: on the ground, but you can take it and apply
Speaker 1: it genuinely to a president's entire term to see just
Speaker 1: how good their economic policies were or weren't for the
Speaker 1: health of the economy. And he added some other stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he added four main new measurements. Uh. Took the inflation
Speaker 1: rate during the last year of the president's term, compared
Speaker 1: it to the average inflation rate over the entire course
Speaker 1: of the subsequent presidents, which is based on what you
Speaker 1: were saying that like the a four year term, the
Speaker 1: effects are felt like years down the road. So I
Speaker 1: think that's what he was doing there, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. Did the same thing with the rate of unemployment.
Speaker 1: That was number two. Uh. He added in changes for
Speaker 1: the thirty year government bond yield over a presidency. And
Speaker 1: then finally he said, um, I need to look at
Speaker 1: the difference between the long term GDP growth the real
Speaker 1: rate of growth. Compare all these things along with the
Speaker 1: original Uh, this plus this equals this, right, and with
Speaker 1: the real growth rate. Um, that's where you take the
Speaker 1: actual change either the shrinking or the growth of the
Speaker 1: economy the g d P year over year. Right. And
Speaker 1: he took that for year after year over the course
Speaker 1: of the presidency and averaged it out. I guess that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he came up with what's called the Barrow Misery Index.
Speaker 1: And UM, a lot of people think that that's where
Speaker 1: the misery Index started, when in fact it was Oakin
Speaker 1: who came up with it about twenty years before Barrow
Speaker 1: took it up and improved it. So under Barrow's Misery Index, UM,
Speaker 1: Clinton and Reagan, that's Bill. Clinton of course came out
Speaker 1: on top. And then it got named Steve Hankey about
Speaker 1: ten years later. This was originally in and then Hankey
Speaker 1: came along in two thousand six and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we need to add even more things. And this all
Speaker 1: just makes sense. You need to if you want a
Speaker 1: more detailed picture, then add more detail to the data
Speaker 1: going in, you know. So he said, we need more
Speaker 1: detail Uh, why don't we do this. Let's um, let's
Speaker 1: measure inflation and unemployment like we're doing, and then let's
Speaker 1: now add interest rates and subtract annual percentages from the
Speaker 1: GDP to get a more accurate picture. And he said,
Speaker 1: you can use this anywhere, you can use it all
Speaker 1: over the world. Well, that's what he did, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of what made his his version of it pretty famous.
Speaker 1: He figured out how to apply it to other countries,
Speaker 1: even countries that used UM price controls to keep inflation
Speaker 1: in check, which means price inflation is held back artificially.
Speaker 1: So Hanky looked into other things like UM the exchange
Speaker 1: rate in the black market, and then given country that
Speaker 1: kind of thing UM, and he figured out real inflation rates,
Speaker 1: and he applied it around the world to find out
Speaker 1: what country is the most miserable in what country is
Speaker 1: the least miserable. And what he found in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen was that the most miserable country in the world
Speaker 1: was Venezuela, which had a Hanky misery index of seventy
Speaker 1: nine point four. It's pretty high, very high. And then
Speaker 1: Japan had the lowest misery at five point four one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the US came in at about nineteen, correct, I think eleven? Yeah? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: eleven was our Oh I'm sorry. Nineteenth yeah, yeah, ranked
Speaker 1: nineteen within eleven. I didn't hear that, yeah, because my
Speaker 1: tooth is still gone. You think it'd be. It would
Speaker 1: be more pronounced if they were nineteen. I would have
Speaker 1: heard it clearly as about August can't get here soon enough.
Speaker 1: So um, there are critics of this one too, though,
Speaker 1: there's critics all these indexes. Well, yeah, the the A
Speaker 1: lot of them say, no, still too elementary. Some people
Speaker 1: say this is all just try like you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't use this stuff to to make any real predictions.
Speaker 1: You could use it to look back at the past,
Speaker 1: but to use it for the future, probably not. But
Speaker 1: some people do believe in the idea that if you
Speaker 1: have enough data and the right kind of data, you
Speaker 1: can get a clear picture of misery. And again that's
Speaker 1: what we're after here, Like, the whole point of the
Speaker 1: misery index is to figure out how unhappy and and
Speaker 1: just low the average person in a country is feeling
Speaker 1: at that moment, right, so um, HuffPo actually came up
Speaker 1: with a pretty good one. HuffPo boo in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: HuffPo came up with what they called the Real Misery Index, right,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people cite the the use
Speaker 1: of what's called YOU three unemployment statistics, which when you
Speaker 1: hear unemployment numbers in the news, that till you're hearing
Speaker 1: that's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues as the
Speaker 1: official unemployment numbers. Right, yeah, And that's the very first
Speaker 1: thing that people will say if they want to poopoo
Speaker 1: the unemployment numbers, that that these are these are just
Speaker 1: false numbers. Yeah. If someone says, hey, man, look how
Speaker 1: great ex president is doing. Look at the unemployment rate,
Speaker 1: right man, they're just using the U three. They need
Speaker 1: to use the U six. Wake up, pal up in
Speaker 1: your eyes, which you know is valid. Well yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: the BLS has six measurements of unemployment you one through
Speaker 1: U six, and YOU six is the broadest. It includes
Speaker 1: people who are so discouraged with the state of the
Speaker 1: job market that they've given up looking for work and
Speaker 1: they're just like, have given themselves over entirely to judge
Speaker 1: Alex right, and then um. It also includes people who
Speaker 1: are working part time but wish they could work full time,
Speaker 1: but there's no full time work available. I'm a graphic designer,
Speaker 1: but I work at Starbucks. So that's the U six
Speaker 1: measurement that and that's considered the the broadest snapshot of unemployment,
Speaker 1: the real m vision of unemployment. Yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: mostly they use you three, I guess because it's in
Speaker 1: the middle. I mean you one. They would never use
Speaker 1: you two. Everybody used to like, but not anymore. I
Speaker 1: still like you too, get yeah, you know, not like
Speaker 1: I used to. I'm not anything, but I did see
Speaker 1: that concert they did on the HBO, and I have
Speaker 1: to hand it to him. My big problem with you
Speaker 1: two for years was that they just got so out
Speaker 1: of control with those live shows like these giant spider
Speaker 1: spaceships and things. And I was always of the belief that, man,
Speaker 1: you need to go back to basics and just get
Speaker 1: up on stage and play again. And that's what they
Speaker 1: did with this new tour. I mean, there was a
Speaker 1: cool visual element, but the stage set up in the
Speaker 1: way they did it was very much back to basics
Speaker 1: in it. I think they really connected with fans again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of help. Yeah, because you can only when
Speaker 1: the when the interactions between you and the fans rather
Speaker 1: than the fans and giant spiders. Yeah, you just you
Speaker 1: can only go so far in that direction. I think
Speaker 1: they realize that. Sure, anyway, where do you go, Youtuo,
Speaker 1: I'll defend those guys. Um, even though I know everyone
Speaker 1: in the world generally wants to punch Bono in the face,
Speaker 1: I'm not one of them. It's kind of feel weird
Speaker 1: like them. Yeah, I'm on record. I know if you're listening, well,
Speaker 1: if you're Jared indicators, any any predictor Bonno is going
Speaker 1: to come out to be canonized one day. What oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you're like, there's something about Jared. I don't
Speaker 1: like him, and you know, we found out about Jared
Speaker 1: and then um, you're saying something's good, like they're gonna
Speaker 1: find a cure for cancer and a saliva or something.
Speaker 1: You never know. Um, so did we even mention what
Speaker 1: the HuffPo what kind of outrageous numbers they came up with? No, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't mention everything they used. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the use six measurement. HuffPo used that measurement the most
Speaker 1: extreme of unemployment numbers. They also used other things like, um,
Speaker 1: the inflation rate of food and drink and fuel and
Speaker 1: healthcare because other The misery index just uses the consumer
Speaker 1: price index, which is inflation as a whole. HuffPo used, um,
Speaker 1: the the inflation of some really essential things that people
Speaker 1: can't do without and where you're gonna immediately feel the
Speaker 1: pinch when prices go up. With those two factors, right. Um.
Speaker 1: They also included the rate of credit card delinquency, the
Speaker 1: cost of housing, how many people are using food stamps
Speaker 1: that seems like a smart move home, equity loan deficiencies,
Speaker 1: I guess, people who are laid on their payments. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they took the average of those seven numbers
Speaker 1: and added it to the U six unemployment numbers, which
Speaker 1: here you can step back and say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how would you how are you adding this together? How
Speaker 1: does this make any sense? You can't just keep adding things, right,
Speaker 1: And really you can take that all the way back
Speaker 1: to the initial misery index, Like what you're just adding
Speaker 1: unemployment percentage and inflation, and all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have a magic number that doesn't make any sense. This
Speaker 1: HuffPo metric really points out the inherent flaw in it.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, because in two thousand eight, the Oakland
Speaker 1: Misery index was eight point one, but huff po's Real
Speaker 1: Misery Index a k A. You think things are bad,
Speaker 1: here's how bad they really are index was twenty nine
Speaker 1: point nine compared to the eight point one, right, and
Speaker 1: some people are like, oh, well, that just shows how
Speaker 1: off the oaken misery index is. Who knows. I know
Speaker 1: they quit doing the real Misery Index at HuffPo like
Speaker 1: five years ago. I think it was a am I
Speaker 1: going to call it a stunt. It was a bit
Speaker 1: of a stunt maybe, but I'm sure really what happened
Speaker 1: was the writer who was contributing it for free, like
Speaker 1: left for a paying job. That's probably what U into
Speaker 1: the huff Real Misery and day Yeah. Um, I was
Speaker 1: reading this guy, Tim McMahon. He has a site, or
Speaker 1: he writes first site, I'm not sure it's his. Are
Speaker 1: not called inflation data dot com. Jim McMahon, Tim his brother,
Speaker 1: not the Super Bowl Shuffle, No, his brother. Um. So
Speaker 1: he mentioned this two thousand one paper that concluded that
Speaker 1: unemployment causes one point seven times more misery than inflation.
Speaker 1: And so if you're doing any kind of misery index
Speaker 1: that uses those two, you need to first multiply the
Speaker 1: unemployment number by one point seven before adding it to
Speaker 1: UM the inflation number to to properly wait it, and like,
Speaker 1: how did they come up with that? So I looked
Speaker 1: at the paper. It was actually pretty clever. There's like
Speaker 1: twenty three years of this survey of life satisfaction and
Speaker 1: happiness that these researchers looked at back in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and they found that UM economically based or just like
Speaker 1: how happy are you? Know, here's the thing, it was,
Speaker 1: how happy are you? It was like a single question
Speaker 1: like would you say, based on how you're feeling right now,
Speaker 1: that you are fairly satisfied, unsatisfied, very satisfied with your
Speaker 1: life right now right? And then they took that that
Speaker 1: measurement for that that country as a whole, and you
Speaker 1: can do this for any country that participated in the survey.
Speaker 1: And then they looked at inflation, and then they looked
Speaker 1: at UM unemployment for those years and they could figure
Speaker 1: out the the variation between or the interplay between unemployment
Speaker 1: and inflation and satisfaction, and they found that uh, that
Speaker 1: UM that unemployment was one time one point seven times
Speaker 1: more miserable than inflation in regards to life satisfaction, as
Speaker 1: that survey. Guess it's pretty clever. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: hocus pocus, but it's I thought it was pretty clever
Speaker 1: how they did it. That makes sense to me because
Speaker 1: to be without work, like if you have a job
Speaker 1: and things inflation is happening, you still have your job, sure,
Speaker 1: and you're like, man, this sucks to pay this much more,
Speaker 1: but you can still conceivably pay for Yeah, I'll cut
Speaker 1: back here or there if you if you're unemployed, then
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of hope. Yeah, one, the number
Speaker 1: might be conservative here. Yeah, I agree with you. Very
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. So that's uh, that's it, man, that's the
Speaker 1: misery Index. You got anything else? No, but I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to hearing from economists that me too, like in
Speaker 1: an unbiased way to try to explain things. Me too.
Speaker 1: If you if you send just you know, these crazy
Speaker 1: political emails and they're they're gonna fall in deaf years
Speaker 1: because everyone yells at each other that they're right. I
Speaker 1: just want to hear some real numbers, do it, chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the misery Index,
Speaker 1: you can type those words in the search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar,
Speaker 1: just play an old search bar. It's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh, follow up on
Speaker 1: vocal pride once again. Um. Regarding vocal pride, guys, Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys were offended because someone said local pride was repulsive.
Speaker 1: But there is another side of this, dudes. I suffer
Speaker 1: from a neurological disorder known as miss aphonia, which we
Speaker 1: totally should do a show in this. It's a condition
Speaker 1: where a person has extreme emotional response commonly occurring sounds,
Speaker 1: and I remember hearing a lot of times it's like
Speaker 1: people chewing noises or gum or whatever. Um he said.
Speaker 1: In my case, my trigger noise is the high pitched
Speaker 1: s sound when some people speak. Uh. It feels like
Speaker 1: my brain is cringing, as if an allergic reaction is
Speaker 1: taking place. Cannot stress enough. This is not a mere annoyance,
Speaker 1: as a legitimate mental disorder that can vary great and
Speaker 1: greatly in severity. I don't visibly freak out when I
Speaker 1: hear my trigger noise, but it really kills me inside,
Speaker 1: gives me an instant headache. And that's why, which is
Speaker 1: why I will get away from the noise if at
Speaker 1: all possible. Um, I believe in avoiding complaining in life
Speaker 1: and playing the victim. But this disorder really has made
Speaker 1: my life like a subtle hell. It's been especially toxic
Speaker 1: to my emily relationships and my ability to learn in school. Um.
Speaker 1: I felt compelled to email you guys, because you definitely
Speaker 1: appreciate interesting medical conditions. I think would be a great
Speaker 1: topic for a show someday. I was a documentary about
Speaker 1: it called Quiet Please. If you watch the trailer, you
Speaker 1: might be inspired to watch it to learn what the
Speaker 1: condition is. Huge. Thanks to everyone of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You make a mundane parts of my life interesting and educational. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna anonymize this from Texas because I didn't hear
Speaker 1: back from him from text. Yeah, text PS was in
Speaker 1: disbelief when Chuck said he had not seen Billy Madison
Speaker 1: or Happy Gilmore. That's a good PS. I believe it.
Speaker 1: It's a good PostScript and post PPS right, not p
Speaker 1: s S. I think it's post PostScript. Yeah, but people
Speaker 1: who often put PSS what doesn't mean? Do you think
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know could ever become a television show? Well?
Speaker 1: Text never we actually did that. We we found out
Speaker 1: the hard way that it came Yeah, we did a
Speaker 1: TV show on the Science Channel and it ran for
Speaker 1: one full season that played out over the course of
Speaker 1: several days, which we'll always have. We'll always have that
Speaker 1: season of television we did once. It lasted nine or
Speaker 1: ten days. Yea, let's just show them all at once,
Speaker 1: out of order. But you never know, we might get
Speaker 1: another shot at stardom. But we're not looking to it. No.
Speaker 1: I like it in this room where no one's looking
Speaker 1: at us. Jerry be there looking away in discuss That's right,
Speaker 1: good idea about the mesophonia. I think we mentioned that before,
Speaker 1: Like that was I really like that vocal fry episode.
Speaker 1: And that was the one thing that I wish we
Speaker 1: would have mentioned because it's a legitimate thing that it
Speaker 1: does affect some people. Um, but yeah, look for a
Speaker 1: mesophonia episode at some point in the future. Text. If
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