“The unemployment rate has dropped to 5.4%, real economic growth has jumped to 4.8%, real GDP has averaged 3.4%, in line with the average WWII expansion rate. Somehow this message is muted by the media. Yet over the past year:
Inflation adjusted consumer spending is up 3.6%.
Residential housing investment is up 13.9%
Spending on machine tools for heavy-industrial manufacturing is up 54.2%.
Exports and imports are up nearly 11%.
After-tax corporate profits are up 19.5%.
Industrial production is up 5.2%.
High-tech production is up 5.2%.
Productivity has reached an astonishing 4.6%.
Household wealth is up 11/1% hitting a record high $45.9 trillion.
The GDPdeflator is up only 2.2%.
Interest rates are at 45-year lows, with short term rates at less than 2%.
15-year mortgage rates are just above 5%.
Home ownership stands at a record 69.2%.
Impressive? No, remarkable, considering that the economy was up against an inherited recession, a busted tech bubble, corporate scandals, 9/11, two wars and an oil price shock. More than 1.69 million people are employed today since 2001.
Taxpayers in the top 1% earn only 14.8% of the nation’s income, but pay 34.4% of individual income taxes. Similarly, taxpayers in the top 5%, make a quarter of the income but pay over half the total income tax. Why not share tax relief with those who pay the most taxes? Punishing successful earners and investors, as Mr. Kerry would do, is no way to grow an economy”.
These are excerpts from an article entitled “It’s the Economy, Smarty Pants” by Larry Kudlow in today’s WSJ. Is everybody happy?? No, and we weren’t all happy in 1999 and we won’t all be happy next year, the year after and the year after, and the year after…..
Passion for the truth must be accompanied by the ability to recognize it.
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