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Global Economic Crisis Deepening - by Stephen Lendman
In the 1960s, economist Arthur Okum began calculated America's Misery Index by adding the unemployment and inflation rates for a sense of public pain or lack of it in good times.
In May, it hit a record high exceeding 25, surpassing the earlier June 1980 21.98 top, based on how both measures were then calculated, not today's methodology, manipulated to hide painful truths.
At issue is:
-- over 22% unemployment, including discouraged workers and the so-called "birth-death model" estimate of net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from ones no longer operating; during hard times, painful truths are hidden by creating non-existent jobs out of whole cloth instead of subtracting them to reflect fewer, not additional new businesses;
-- double digit inflation, including soaring food, energy, healthcare, college tuition, and other costs omitted or understated in core figures;
-- rising poverty, more than one in seven affected according to way understated Census Bureau figures, using threshold measures developed 40 years earlier;
-- record numbers on food stamps;
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