Good times not rolling

President Bush and his political aides are puzzled by how little credit the White House is getting for the economy. The frustration is especially acute as next week's election nears. The president has devoted campaign appearances to boasting about the performance of the economy.
By all the traditional measures, the economy is good and Bush should be reaping the customary political rewards. Growth is steady. Inflation and unemployment have stayed low. The stock market is setting records. The gasoline price crisis has blown over.
But Americans don't feel the economy is good. Over 55 percent in a recent CBS poll said it was bad and a similar percentage said it was getting worse. Only 32 percent approved his handling of the economy.
One factor may be that, although the situation has improved slightly in the last month or so, real hourly wages have been stagnant since 2001 even though worker productivity has improved 14 percent in that time.
If Americans feel insecure about their financial future, maybe that's because it really is insecure.
Bankruptcy
Yale economist Jacob Hacker, writing in The Washington Post, noted that bankruptcy is much more common than it was 25 years ago and cited a study that "found the likelihood that a worker will lose a job over a three-year period has been rising -- and is now about as high as it was in the early 1980s, which saw the worst economic downturn since the Depression."
The country has weathered cycles before, but pointing to charts and graphs and invoking macroeconomic numbers is of little comfort to worried homeowners. It's about as much use as telling President Bush that, statistically, his luck is bound to turn.
Scripps Howard News Service