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