Those of us old enough to recall the Reagan era (pardon me while I take a moment to remember it…Oh, well, back to 2022) will recall the famous “misery index.” Invented by economist Arthur Okun, Reagan used it to convince Americans to choose him over Jimmy Carter. It was a combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, the two together serving as a gauge of how miserable people felt with prices rising even while work was hard to find.

Well, last month under Biden, the misery index reached 11.5%, the highest in a decade, even higher than in the early days of the pandemic.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/biden-misery-index-rise-americans-pessimistic-about-countrys-future

But I bet I know what you’re thinking: 11.5% seems awfully low, considering the widespread misery this Administration has created. Well, there are a few reasons for that. One is that it doesn’t include the many other ways the Democrats are spreading misery, like with open borders, skyrocketing crime rates and their never-ending assaults on personal freedom and individual rights. Another is that the unemployment rate is only 4%. But it seems much higher (and honestly is) because that stat only includes people who are actively looking for work, and not those who are living off government largesse. Also, unemployment claims “unexpectedly” jumped last week:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobless-claims-coronavirus-pandemic-feb-12-2022

The third factor is that the bigger portion of the misery index, inflation, might be a high 7.5% (with no ceiling in sight), but that’s still a really lowball estimate. Boston columnist and radio host Howie Carr did a deep dive into how inflation is really affecting everyday Americans.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/02/16/howie-carr-biden-inflation-a-pain-at-the-pump-grocery-store/

It’s not just a “high-class problem,” as Biden’s smug chief of staff dismissively described it. Carr quotes many listeners who shared their horror stories about both inflation and the supply chain shortages, from having to drive from store to store searching for cat food as if on a treasure hunt, to a man who put $25 worth of gas in his truck and it didn’t even cut off the “low fuel” light.

Carr also points out that the government inflation figure is kept artificially low by not including two of our biggest necessities: food and fuel. He consulted a website called shadowstats.com that computes inflation using the more honest pre-1980 formula. Under that, current inflation is actually 15.63%, the highest since 1947. That was so long ago that Joe Biden was only five years old.

Even accepting the artificially-low 4% unemployment rate, that would put the current misery index at nearly 20%. Yes, that feels a lot more accurate to me. Incidentally, the misery index hit a high under Jimmy Carter of 21.9%, but if anyone can break that record, I have faith that Biden can.