Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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PUTTING PAIN IN CONTEXT
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Posted by:
Michael Medved at
12:45 AM
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The best remedy for the prevailing hysteria about the current situation with the U.S. economy is a sense of historical perspective. Yes, we’re suffering a painful downturn but it’s hardly unprecedented and nowhere near the worst crisis since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate has risen to 6.7% but when Ronald Reagan took over the presidency from the hapless Jimmy Carter in 1981, it was sharply higher—at 7.5%. Fighting inflation, Reagan drove unemployment even higher, peaking at an unimaginably dire 10.8% two years into his presidency. It took six full years of Reaganomics before the jobless rate finally fell below 6.7% --its level in the current crisis—and yet we rightly remember Reagan as a great and successful president. The numbers and graphs that alarm the public today only mislead us when they’re deprived of context.
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