Not if the statistical measures used by our government continue to be bent to make direct comparison impossible. From the Libertarian Ayn Rand, we got Objectivism, which I prefer to call ‘Capitalism Gone Wild.’ Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by using a Misery Index Carter himself had highlighted in 1976, which measured inflation and unemployment, combined.

The table below comes from Wikipedia, showing how presidents have fared in these economic metrics, but the ratings (based on their index average) are simply, wrong.

Why are they wrong? Because, as the Wikipedia entry noted “The data for the misery index is obtained from unemployment data obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor and Inflation Rate from Financial Trend Forecaster. The exact methods used for measuring unemployment and inflation have changed over time.”

More accurately, the measurements have been changed - purportedly to advance accuracy - yet in practical terms, it’s helped to hide the bad news. For example, longterm unemployed people no longer get calculated into the unemployment statistic. As a result, these changes, most of them occurring from Reagan on, can’t be compared directly to the older numbers. This is consistent with the basic Reagan philosophy of Feelgoodism. In application, it means that if we pat each other on the back and say “Everything’s great” enough times, we’ll feel better, despite the fact that things are getting economically suckier.

Don’t misunderstand: the economic advances of the 1990s were real, compared to other presidential terms from 1980 to the present. But they weren’t as great as many thought. They represent only the first period since about 1972 when wages slightly exceeded inflation, using the pre-1980 measurements.

A big part of the misery highs Ford and Carter experienced came from the impact of the recently ended Vietnam War plus the creation of OPEC. Energy costs - not labor - have been the major driver of inflation since. And the most effective control on those costs was the Carter decision to sell AWACs to Saudi Arabia. By improving their defense systems, a strengthened alliance was created and the Saudis have responded by being the major moderating influence on global oil prices since.

9-11 changed that, even more than the global demand for oil driven by the growth of the economies of China and India. Not only did the Saudis sense the alliance was fraying -for good reason because of the terrorists they spawned and funded - but once Bush decided to go after Iraq (which had no ties to 9-11 except in Bush propaganda), that’s when the oil prices spiked up considerably.

Even in the early days of that conflict, the Saudis mouthed good intentions that haven’t been delivered. They’d reassure us prices would hold or drop to $40/bbl, then $50, then $60, before they quit the pretense entirely and raked in all the profits instead. No matter how many times Bush has kissed the Saudis and held their hands, they really haven’t been Bush’s best friends at all. And is it such a wonder?

Bush helped increase Iran’s influence and brought a revival to Shia power, a chief regional competitor with most of the Middle East, which is Sunni. (And for novices, Hezbollah and Hamas are Shia terror orgs, while Al Qaeda is Sunni). Clearly, our national interests aren’t served enhancing either side of that divide. It’s better to advance secularism in Middle East governments, more than democracy or Bush’s preference of puppetocracy.

Meanwhile, back at the Misery Index, the bad economic news continues to be hidden. Kevin Phillips has a new book out, an article in the May issue of Harper’s, and provided a taste at the Huffington Post three days ago.

Distortions aplenty have followed. Some of the most pernicious include the shortchanging of federal pension and Social Security obligations and cost of living increases, a parallel shortchanging of cost-of-living increases in wage contracts tied to the federal CPI, the suppression of equitable interest payments on bank accounts and certificates of deposit, and the camouflaging of weak U.S. economic growth through inadequate adjustments for inflation. The benefits to the executive branch in Washington jump out — huge annual federal savings on Social Security and pension outlays, as well as on the amount of interest paid on the federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar debt. Some $250 billion a year could be involved.

If many individuals are losers, many businesses and financial institutions have been winners. Minimal cost-of-living increases favor corporations, while low interest rates make money cheaper to the financial sector. In particular, the gargantuan $10 trillion increase in financial-sector debt since 1994 could become unmanageable if mounting inflation forced borrowing costs up to 8% or 9%. And it is axiomatic regarding equities that when rates rise in the bond market, that competition usually undercuts stock market values.

In short, there have been three big gainers from understatement of U.S. inflation: the federal government, wage-paying businesses and the institutions and markets of the swollen U.S. financial sector. But skeptics have a weighty counter: Okay, it’s easy to understand how they all might profit from understating inflation. But if the understatement is patently false, how can they hope to get away with it?

In fact, the belief by many conservative U.S. economists that inflation is under control, despite global indications to the contrary (including soaring commodity and energy prices), has a major ideological component — their fidelity to monetarist economic principles (that only money supply expansion can create inflation) and to the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (that markets process all available information, so that if inflation were serious, markets would have reacted already). As late as January, monetarists on the Federal Reserve Board, notably Chairman Ben Bernanke and colleague Frederic Mishkin, believed in the new-version CPI and argued that U.S. inflationary expectations were safely “anchored.”

And again:

Critics, by contrast, smell a potential disaster. Oil is up over 80 percent in the last twelve months. The New York Times’ consumer reporter, W.P. Dunleavy, wrote on May 3 that his own groceries now cost $587 a month, up from $400 a year earlier. That’s a 40 percent increase. Reports in the financial press make frequent reference to foreign investors who distrust the U.S. dollar because they calculate true U.S. inflation at 6% to 9% including food and energy.

California economist John Williams, who runs an organization called Shadow Statistics, contends that if Washington still used the CPI measurements applied back in the 1970s, inflation would be in the 10 percent range. My own analysis, set out in much more detail in an article in the May issue of Harper’s, comports with that of the cynical foreign investors.

Therein lies the danger. If the current inflation rate is really 6-9 percent instead of the 2-3 percent claimed by government and most U.S. money managers, then Washington’s official estimates that the economy still grew at a rate of some 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008 become nonsense. Subtracting a 6-9 percent inflation rate from nominal GDP growth would identify an economy that was deteriorating and shrinking, not growing. Concerned foreign dollar-holders would become even more concerned.

As he notes, even the Clinton administration (which progressives have rightfully pointed out was economically right of center) changed the measuring tools to downplay bad news.

In practical terms to most Americans, here’s what’s really happened:

-seniors on Social Security have seen their buying power reduced.

-even the recent minimum wage increase fails to keep the working force at the bottom tied to the inflation rate, so they’re getting poorer, too.

-people at the bottom, relying on food stamps and other assistance, are going hungry and more malnourished.

- 3 or 4 out of every 5 workers are also growing poorer via reduced buying power (in addition to declining values in their number one asset - their homes).

None of this will be fixed by a $28 savings from a summer gas tax holiday. Smart energy policies that break our dependence on foreign oil is the biggest longterm cure. Especially if you start factoring in the cost of two Iraq Wars to the price per gallon.

Shorter term, a modest amount of relief can be provided by ending the windfall tax cuts that Bush awarded America’s wealthiest moguls and by providing middle class tax cuts. Adding an effective universal healthcare program that lifts that burden off so many backs demands that measures must be built in to control the pace of the rise in medical and pharmaceutical costs. That’s a massive business lobby our government is going to have to stand up to. And even the Democrats aren’t displaying sufficient specifics on how to accomplish that.

And where both parties are worst is in providing any answers to the poorest. Jobs still flow out of this country due to bad trade policies and corporate subsidies. The folks FDR called “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic ladder” have fallen off the ladder entirely - with no fresh relief in sight from government. They’re facing the real misery of not enough food, rising unemployment and homelessness. If they’re illegal immigrants, they’re facing total ostracism and deportation, even though they’ve caused none of the misery citizens are experiencing. As Iraqi veterans come home, they’re facing a VA that’s doing a pisspoor job identifying and treating PTSD, so they’ll be swelling the ranks of the unemployed and homeless further. (And as was the case post-Vietnam, the handful that got spit at by antiwar zealots, that’s nothing compared to the tens of thousands that will get shit upon by their neglectful government).

Where are the Democratic proposals of relief to the already miserable? And can any of the candidates claiming to offer honest answers really do so, or do they plan to change the way we measure pain too, to minimize the truth?

Progressives who wish to build a more progressive society and government need to start including the worst off more than they have so far. The minimum wage boost - phased in for several years - that the Democratic Congress passed is not going to even atch inflation over that period. The poorest don’t have the luxury of waiting for 4 or 8 or twenty years for practical results. Their stomachs are rumbling today - something I noted through my recent volunteer work at a local food bank. As well as my year-old inability to find a freaking job.

Don’t worry, us poor people won’t be bought off by soaring rhetoric or the newfound populism of whiskey shots and gun anecdotes. We won’t fall for filthy rich elitists who claim to be weak in economics while consorting with lobbyists daily. We won’t be driven to side issues involving guns and religious escapism either, because it’s really not bitterness we’re feeling.

It’s hunger. And worry. And anger. And that won’t just be directed at candidates and officeholders. Shoplifting will increase. Black market economies like drug dealing will rise. Families will break up, adding more strain to safety nets, to domestic violence incidents, to substance abuse. Communities will be damaged, like nearby Halsey, Oregon, where the major employer - a lumber mill - went bankrupt last week. These aren’t the threats of a pissed-off blogger struggling to keep his life and blog afloat. This is the reality of how our economic system works when it really isn’t working worth a shit at all.

So don’t think numbers games and campaign promises will provide a change in that reality. If progressives think voting Democratic Party is going to be enough, the challenge they’ll have to meet is to create short and longterm answers. Quit fucking with the index and start doing something serious about the real misery.

The billions of dollars unaccounted for in Iraq is shocking. But so is the hundreds of millions raised for presidential candidates. So many at the bottom need just a few hundred or few thousand to make it through and they’re not going to be joining any coalition that continues to ignore them. They may, however, reach a day when they’ll mug you for your wallet and they won’t be asking who you voted for.