April 12, 2004:  #01  Political Satire/Commentary where satire is always commentary but commentary isn't always satire ™·2004.
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John Kerry reinvents the "Misery Index" to alert the country to the danger of thinking good news is good rather than bad.·

    Given the fact that the "Misery Index" popularized by Jimmy Carter in defeating Gerald Ford in 1976 defined "misery" as the product of the joblessness rate, the prime interest rate and inflation would, if applied to current economic conditions, yield a good result rather than a bad one, John Kerry's campaign is inventing a new "Misery Index" as a basis for claiming economic conditions are bad.  The success of Kerry's new "Misery Index" rests upon whether political advertising can induce a sense of misery among people not feeling miserable in the ways predicted by Kerry's "Index."  Of course we've long known that watching political commercials inherently induces misery.

    One of the criteria selected is the "median" income since use of that number will always have strong political appeal to half the population since half the population will always, by definition, be below the median income regardless of whether it rises or falls.  It's akin to the claim years ago by Ted Kennedy that we need to spend enough money on education to enable all students to be "above average."  

    Another criterion is enhancement of productivity through loss of unproductive jobs and accretion of productive jobs.  However, rather than describing improvement in productivity as the beneficial change that it is-- i.e., a rising tide that lifts our standard of living--  Kerry's "Misery Index" applies the single-entry accounting method of analysis by describing half the phenomenon:  the loss of unproductive jobs to countries with cheaper labor forces (described as "exporting" jobs).  This debit-entry-only analysis ignores the credit-entry half of the equation-- i.e., increases in standards of living through the same, and newer, products becoming available at lower costs and increases in high-skilled, high-productivity jobs.

Says Kerry, my index of mis'ry
revises the meaning of mis'ry
for casting of blame
'cause absent such change,
we'd need more revision of hist'ry.

The old definition of mis'ry,
invented by Carter, says hist'ry,
used prime-int'rest rate
times joblessness rate
to measure the index of mis'ry.

But now that the joblessness rate
times prime at its near-lowest rate
is good 'stead of bad
the index we had
was bad for our candidate's fate.

So therefore we had to compute
some standards designed to refute
the good news abounding
with claims for confounding
the folks who cast votes in a booth.

So what is the method we push
to claim things are bad 'stead of good
to make voters mad?
Defining as "bad"
whatever's accomplished by Bush.

    Will Kerry's new "Misery Index" become the new standard for determining the extent to which likely voters may be satisfied or unsatisfied?  What is more likely to occur as a result of Kerry's redefinition of the "Misery Index" is its ultimately refinement into a more realistic index-- i.e., a set of criteria to measure the level of misery inflicted by political advertising generally.

--Jim Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com.

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