Stuff You Should Know - What's the misery index?

Episode Date: June 23, 2016

Economists love their data because somewhere in the numbers lies the answer to the ills of the country. They also love to frame data in a way people can relate to. Such is the case with the famous "misery index." Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. The W stands for Wayne.

Mm-hmm. The Wayne coin. That gets you every time. I know, it's funny to be 45 years old and named after Wayne coin. Because he's- He's like 48, right? No, he's in his fifties.

Me too. But it would be weird. I would've been named after a very, like, kindergarten age Wayne coin. All right, you know. Maybe your parents were friends with his parents and they really thought a lot about him. Boy, he's a real achiever.

Right, that Wayne coin's going places. Okay. That was a weird sidetrack. It was already out of the gate, man. Mm-hmm. What are you feeling? I'm good. Got a lot on your plate, got a lot going on.

Meh. Oh, you know what today is? What? Dude, today is the day that I leave this office and I go to a shop in Inman Park and pick up four brand new last chance garage hats. Oh, wow, it's a big day. Very big day.

Big day. So I have a couple of people I'd like to thank. It's a bigger deal than it should be for a grown man and a hat. But we all understand. First of all, Katie, my custom patch maker. This is really where it all came together. The patch isn't right.

The hat's not right. Right. Katie killed it. It looks identical. And you can find her work at tulipcake.com, C-E-U-L-I-P cake. And I said, you know, people might ask you to make them last chance garage patches. Did you ever destroy the mold?

And I said, I don't, you know, it's on you. It's up to you legally. I'm just saying you might get requests. You should have been like Ivan the Terrible who blinded his architects after they built his palace. No, I don't care. People, I'd love to see these things around. And LaMood Big Hats, L-A-M-O-O-D for big heads.

Because part of the problem was finding. The big and tall hat? Yeah, man. Like the problem I have with hats these days, I don't look like I have a huge head, but they just fit so snugly and they don't go far down enough on my head. So I finally looked up oversized hats

and found LaMood hats. And dude, they're exactly like the old hat. Except it doesn't stink. Oh yeah, nice. Like these are great. I got four brand new hats. That's an improvement for sure. So are you gonna put one in like the Seed Vault in Norway?

Probably one there. There'll be one in the nuclear suitcase. And I'll wear the other two. At the same time. At the same time. From back like Sherlock Holmes. That's right. Anyway, I'm super excited.

It's pretty cool. Thank you to Katie and LaMood Hats for allowing me to spend too much money getting four hats remade. And speaking of while we're thanking people, we owe a long overdue thank you to a guy who made us a really cool sign. Oh, you mean the sign this guy made for us

like seven years ago? Yeah, his name's Matt Street. He's at fatbison.com and he made a really cool Woodcarve sign. Yeah, it was in our TV show. It was like the production company got clearance rights for it and all this stuff. And we love the sign, but we just forgot to ever thank Matt.

So Matt, thank you so much for the sign. We love it. We have it hanging here in the studio. It is a work of art and we appreciate it. And we're sorry for the oversight. Yeah. Okay. Is that all the thank yous?

So let's talk about the misery index, huh? Yeah, what a great transition. Have you, had you heard of it before you came across this article? Yeah, I didn't know a lot about it though. Apparently it's gone a little bit out of fashion lately from what I understand. Yeah, I think so.

Because well, let's get into it. Okay, it turns out economics as a whole is in danger of going out of fashion. I read this really interesting article on Aeon, which is maybe the greatest website on the planet. A-E-O-N dot, it might be dot-C-O because you think it's British. About a lot of websites.

I think I say it about Aeon a lot. And it just seems like I'm talking about different ones. But there's this article by Alan J. Levenovitz and it's called The New Astrology. And he basically makes a parallel between economics and economists and economic theory when you take economics and try to apply it to future forecasting and the BCE Chinese astrologers

that basically directed the way that the economy or the government was going to move based on the movements of the stars. So what are they saying? You might as well just do that. He draws some pretty interesting parallels between the two that economics in and of itself is not necessarily flawed,

but when it's used to forecast the future, then it becomes inherently flawed. Yeah. And this article really kind of, submits that. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, to an extent. I mean, the misery index is a legitimate economic tool

and it's hit or miss in a lot of ways. Yeah, I think one thing that hit home to me with researching this is it just seems impossible to say that there's one correct way of doing things. Right, or? That is absolute. And you're like, you know, if you do things this way, then there will be nothing but growth in jobs

and the GDP and GNP and it just doesn't seem to work that way. Right, I think the problem is, is that if you listen to economists, they like to act like they do have a handle on that kind of thing. But if you really look into economics, it's very politicized. There's liberal economics and there's conservative economics

and the fact that each one's saying it's right kind of makes you think that maybe no one is, you know? But the misery index actually is, it started out from a guy who was pretty good at walking the line between conservative and liberal economics. A guy, what was his name? Oaken.

Yeah, Arthur Oaken. Right. He worked on Kennedy's staff, his council of economic advisors, John F. Kennedy, that is. And he was, I get the feeling one of the main influences in talking Kennedy who initially did not necessarily agree, but talking Kennedy into kind of trying to enact both conservative and liberal economic policies simultaneously.

Right, the US was in a recession when Kennedy took office in 1961. And they talked him into not only increasing government spending like welfare programs, they raised the minimum wage and some other stuff like that, but they also cut taxes, which you do one or the other. You cut taxes and hope everything goes for the best because businesses will start investing in spending

or you start investing in welfare programs to help your ailing lower and middle classes, right? You don't do both. Yeah. And Kennedy did both and it was successful. Yeah. Well, at first he said, I don't know about this.

I don't know about this, Arthur. My Kennedy sounds like a robot. My Kennedy too, actually. Yours is fine. But Arthur, Mr. Oaken, Oaken, Oaken. I think Oaken. Oaken. It's a weird name.

Okay, UN. He talked him into it and said, trust me, and things worked out in that case. Yeah, well, and a lot of guys including Oaken's names were made by this advice that panned out, like the U.S. entered a boom. Yeah. And Oaken ended up as being the head

of the Council of Economic Advisers for Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, right? Yeah, and one thing that economists, economists love to do is, I mean, they love to forecast and all that stuff, but it's all about data. Sure, yeah. Man, they love to pour over data, like stuff that makes the average person,

their mind bleed from boredom. They just find it fascinating. That's what they do on Friday nights. Friday nights, they pour over data, historical data, trying to find, you know, it's like the big puzzle and they're all trying to solve it. Right. So they pour over this data, Oaken did,

and he said, you know what? I noticed something here. Between 1948, when we started recording some decent unemployment rates. Right. Which I didn't know, I didn't know we started that in 1948. Yeah, it seems like it would have gone back before then.

But between 1948 and 1960, he said, you know what, I've noticed that the gross national product rises 3% for every percentage point that unemployment falls with the caveat that unemployment has to be between three and 7.5%. Right. It's a pretty like, it's a pretty bold statement to say, I've noticed this is a definite trend.

It is, and it came to be called Oaken's law because it was verified, other people poured over the data and like, this guy's right. Man, he just keeps coming up with hits, doesn't he? That's right. And the reason you would want to know some arcane piece of data like that is that

if you know that that's the case, then you can say, well, if we attack unemployment, we can get it down a couple of points. We can raise GDP or GMP by 3% every time we drop it. So when we need to bulk GMP up, we just attack unemployment, right? Right. Easy peasy.

Yeah. And everyone said thank you, Art. Yeah, things worked out pretty well for a while, but then the 1970s came along. And if you, we're gonna talk a little bit about stagflation now, but if you haven't heard it, we have a pretty good episode. Was it good?

I think so. Okay. It's called What is Stagflation from February 24, 2011. Yeah, I think as far as our economics episodes, it was not bad. Okay. I went back and listened to a lot of it. Oh, okay, good.

Before I got bored. So it checks out? Yeah, the first three minutes were great. But yeah, go back and listen to that. But like you said, he served as chairman of the CEA for Johnson, and then in 1973, a very unfortunate thing happened that kind of ended up rocking the world

and the United States in particular with our economy. So we're gonna take a break and we're gonna talk when we get back about the Middle East. And I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasscher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. Now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast

or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, what happened in 1973? I'm two years old. I am negative three. The Arab oil embargo happened, right? That's right. So at the time, until very recently, the US was super dependent on foreign oil.

Like other countries, we wouldn't even sit down at the table with. We were getting oil from, right? Yeah, we're doing better now. Yeah. With our dependency. But back then, very bad. Very.

And it was a source of anxiety for a lot of people. And that anxiety actually panned out. So in 1973, Egypt and Syria and a few other Arab nations invaded the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula to attempt to take back land from the state of Israel. That's right. The US was found to be supplying arms to Israel. So as far as the Arab states were concerned,

the US had cast its law on Israel's side. And they were fairly peeved about that. So they literally shut off the tap of oil flowing to the United States and other countries that were found considered to be on the side of Israel in this war. Huge deal. It was an enormous deal.

This foreign dependency and the precarious situation that it placed the United States and came to pass. And the price of oil rose 37%. The long lines of the gas station were never seen before or since, even after the financial crisis of 2008. It was just insane. There was gas rationing in the United States in 1973

because of the oil embargo. And after a while, the taps were turned back on. But that shock to the system screwed the economy up for a decade. Yeah, inflation went out of control. And another unfortunate thing happened. Along the same timeline, unemployment started to creep up. And these two things happening at the same time

is devastating. Yeah, and up to this point, so first of all, the US had never had a shock to the system like that. That was one thing. Yeah, it wasn't a gradual thing. No, it was abrupt. But the other thing is when you have something that has never happened before, you can look at it and say,

wow, what happened? And new things that have never happened before come out of that. And one of the things was inflation and unemployment going up. Because up to this point, economists just assumed that the two were mutually exclusive. If inflation was up, prices were high, that meant that companies could go out and hire more people.

So unemployment, of course, would be low. Yeah, it kind of made sense. Well, not after the oil embargo. The shock to the system led to, like you said, high unemployment rates and high inflation. And it was a miserable time. Yeah, and that was called stagflation. It also led to skateboarding, as we all know.

Oh, yeah, because of the pools, right? Yeah, they could in Cal. Well, actually, that was the drought. But I think the drought was also tied into the economics. Sure. But they couldn't fill up swimming pools, so they started skating in swimming pools. Well, yeah, if you have a drought, then you lose your crops.

And if you lose your crops, you lose money, a significant sector of money. Exactly. So good news, we have half pipes now, and quarter pipes. And Powell, Peralta. And Peralta. They're still around, right? I think so, yeah.

Of course. Bad news is, like you said, it had a devastating effect for many, many years on the United States. So Oaken starts to look around. He said, you know what, things are pretty bad here. One might even say miserable. I've gotten any acclaimed for a while. Nothing's been named after me in a while.

So let me create this new method for looking at the economy. And it turns out to not be like a look over a period of time or anything, but just sort of like a Polaroid of that day. And not just that day for the country as a whole, or for the Fed, or anything like that. But what he did that was different was he looked into what it was like that day or that year for the average American in their daily life.

And he called it the misery index. Yeah, and it was very rudimentary at the time. It was just a simple calculation of the yearly rate of inflation plus the unemployment rate. Yeah, so if you have like 5% inflation and 2% unemployment, you have a 7% misery index. It's as simple as that. I don't know why it got so much while it was hailed as a big deal.

Because I think Oaken had a knack for noticing things that seemed obvious in retrospect. But at the time, no one had ever noticed before. OK, I'll buy it. Thank you. Why not? All right, so now he has this index. And not only can he look at a snapshot of that day,

he can go back because he was a data wonk. Sure, he could look at data throughout history. Well, at least in 1948. Yeah, which is when we started recording unemployment, like we said. Which must have been frustrating for him because our inflation rates data goes back to 1914. But that's only part of the equation.

So he must have been like, oh, man. Sure. And to be able to look at the Great Depression, you could have learned a lot, you know? Sure. So he went and he looked back and he says, here is what we've noticed. And this is so obvious to me that presidents and political

parties are brought in and out of office largely depending on how the economy is doing. Yeah. But they kind of proved it. But not even just how the economy is doing. Like he was saying, like the misery index, you can use it to predict whether the presidency is going to change hands politically.

Yeah. So 1956, misery index is 6.53, which is great. That's during Ike. Yeah, very low. Mr. Eisenhower, President Eisenhower. And he got reelected because things were pretty good. As far as the misery index goes. Yeah, everybody was pretty happy.

Even though they didn't really know what the misery index was because it wasn't invented yet, they just had a general sense. Well, yeah, they didn't call it that at the time. No, they were just like, seems fine to me. You miserable? We like Ike. No, I'm not miserable. Are you?

So in 1968, Johnson came to the end of his term. And the misery index was up to 8.13. And then he had his Democratic successor, Hubert Humphrey in line. And because the thing had crept up, people a little more miserable. And they said, no, get out of here. I want Mr. Nixon in office.

Right. And I guess I'm not sure about this. So I don't understand why Johnson was replaced by Humphrey, by the Democrats. And this article seems to be because of this misery index that it would have predicted that. But he was the incumbent president. Oh, was he only a one-termer?

So let's see. So he was, he would have. I should know this. No, yeah, he was a one-termer, technically one in a third or one and a quarter. Because he took over after Kennedy's assassination. But if his term was up in 68, then he would have won the 64 election.

So he technically, I think, would have been able to have been president again. I'm not sure. We could have found this out, too. Sure. But I'll bet there's somebody out there who can explain it to us. Sure. So email us, will you?

At any rate, Nixon gets elected. And the misery index shot up to 11.67 during the first term, but then started to decline enough that he did get re-elected. But then, in 1974 with Watergate, the misery index leapt all the way up to 17.01. That's not good. No.

That was the all-time high at the time from what I understand. I think so. And that happened around 1974, which meant that when Watergate broke, some people who really subscribed to the misery index say, Watergate might not have been quite as big a deal if the misery index had been low at the time. Right.

He might have been able to squeak by without resigning or being forced out of office. I think everyone has more leeway if things are great. Sure. But his currency had been spent. Man, I watched All the Presidents Men a few weeks ago again. Yeah.

You ever seen that? No. Great, great movie. Yeah. I've always meant to you. Really, really good. And just sort of like, they don't make a lot of movies like that anymore.

Spotlight reminded me of All the Presidents Men. Sure. I haven't seen that one yet either. It's good. It's just I call it movies for adults. You know, there's no chase scenes or anything remarkable. It's just good dramatic movie making. Yeah.

Good stuff. Anyway. Wait, what's wrong with chase scenes? Huh? What's wrong with chase scenes? No, there's nothing inherently wrong with the chase scene. But I know what you mean. Just for the sake of a chase scene, which we see a lot of these days.

You know what I mean? Like Mark Ruffalo's chasing a priest in a car in spotlight. Yeah. Where were we? OK, we were with Nixon. Well, not with Nixon. You know what I mean? Ford comes in office for a short time.

And he actually managed to get the misery index sure down. Well, I think just the fact that Nixon was out, I think that probably helped. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And inspire like consumer confidence and the like. So it cracked back down to 12.66,

but not enough to keep the Democrats and Jimmy Carter from coming into office. And Carter actually cited the misery index. Yeah. It was relatively new at the time. Yeah. He talked too much about it. But it was a gee whiz thing that you could really just point to.

Like this plus this. This is the misery index. Yeah. Can you can you hear me? Yeah. That's my question. But that was his famous quote. Can you hear me?

It came back to haunt him, though, to say the least. Because he talked a lot about the misery index. And then in his term, it reached an all-time high of 21.98. Yeah. Which, man, I really think that shock to the system under the oil embargo and plenty of other stuff. This stuff gets laid at Carter's feet, I think, unfairly in a lot of respects.

Well, I mean, I would love for someone that really knows their stuff to explain to me exactly how much a president's influence has on the economy and how long it takes for that to bear fruit. Yeah. I would love to know that, too. I think, though, the guy who came after Carter, Reagan, is a pretty sterling, unassailable example of an impact a president can have on the economy.

Whether you agree with his politics or his economic policies or not, he most decidedly had an effect on the economy. Yeah, I just remember hearing one time, I need to look this up. But somebody told me once that the economic impact of a presidential four-year term is felt the most, like, eight years later or something. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Economies don't move on a dime. Yeah, I just don't know if that's correct. They're holding, lumbering things. They aren't fully understood by anybody. Yeah, it's interesting to me now more than ever before, though. Because remember, economics used to just bore me this year. I know I was really, really surprised when you suggested this one.

It's slightly more interesting to me now. What changed? Oh, just wondering things like that and during an election season. Like, are the decisions we make now going to affect us in one year, two years, eight years? Yeah. Well, if there's any economists who

are still listening after that initial remark about the new astrology, we'd love to get a primer on how long it takes for a president to impact an economy if they do it all. And I'm sure it's a range, you know. It's not like starting at eight years. And really honestly, was Carter that band, or was he a victim of cross-stars?

Yeah, I mean, you can make a case where a lot of bills of presidency is not being directly at their feet. But you remember that Simpsons, where they unveiled a statue of Jimmy Carter in Springfield. And on the pedestal, it says, Malays Forever. And somebody goes, Jimmy Carter, he's history's greatest monster.

Poor Carter. So like we said, it came back to haunt Carter because he talked a lot about the index at Rosalot. Then Reagan came in and was like, well, let's talk about that misery index that you'd like to talk about so much. Right. That's at an all-time high.

Reagan got in there, knocked it down to 9.55 by the end of his term, enough to get Bush Sr. in. It inched up some. Then Clinton was able to. It didn't go up that much, though. And I read an interesting article today on whether or not Ross Perot really got Clinton elected, because that's sort of the popular thought.

He was a spoiler? Yeah. I could see that. But he was definitely more in line with Bush Sr.'s policies than Clinton's. Well. Or at the time. Yeah, you would think.

But I read one article that said that it was kind of a myth that basically that Clinton won by 6 million votes, and it would have taken 75% of Perot supporters to have been aligned with Bush. And supposedly exit polls showed it more like 38% to 40%. And so they're saying it's sort of a myth that Perot swung the election to Clinton. I see.

But I mean, that was one person's opinion. So who knows? You know, I've been reading a lot about. You know that suspicion you can't quite kick, that there's really no difference between Republicans and Democrats these days? That they're really just kind of all in the same little club? I think people feel that way sometimes.

I've been reading a lot about that. And apparently it's all based on neoliberalism. That's like the key. Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of, if you look into neoliberalism and the policies of neoliberalism, you realize we're living in the thick of it. But no one, everyone's kind of blind to the idea

that it's just a single thing that basically everybody in power subscribes to. And that it has a trickle down effect of screwing over everybody below the top. But just the name itself seems totally fine. But it's interesting. Yeah, I researched that a little bit lately, too. Yeah, there's this good article we totally should.

Let's do it, Chuck. Agreed. Man, we're going to get some emails for that one from billionaires. Yeah. So let's just finish out this quick little recap. Clinton brought it down to 7.35. Things were great.

Bush Jr. gets elected despite the fact that Clinton had a low index. Well, it depends on how you look at the 2000 election. We should do one on that one, too. But this is that's considered one of those rare instances where the misery index didn't indicate where it was going to go. But you could also say it might have had things gone slightly differently in the Supreme Court.

George W. Bush, the index rose from 7.35 to 11.4. And then Obama came in and went down to 7.87. But another weird flaw in the system is exposed there because despite the fact that the misery index was lower, things were not good. The stock market had crashed. Unemployment was rising at a rapid rate. And they said, it basically was another example of, look,

this misery index isn't all it's cracked up to be. Right. So let's work on it. Yeah. I think a lot of people said, this is too simplistic. You can't rely on this. We'll talk about some of the additional factors that people have worked into the misery index after this.

Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point. But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so the misery index, Oaken. Everybody's happy with him. They're like, this is just too simple, especially in what's called the post-stagflation era after the oil embargo. And so some people have said, OK, there's certainly, there's other things you can add in to give a genuine true snapshot of what the conditions are

like on the ground, as it were, right? Well, yeah, not only what the conditions are, but whether or not performance over a period of time is getting better or getting worse. Yes, and rather than say, oh, under this president, the misery index was this, and it gives you a pretty good idea. This one guy named Robert Barrow, he wrote a 1996 book called Getting It Right.

Markets and Choices in a Free Society. And in it, he takes the misery index, Oaken's misery index, and he says, we can add some stuff to this to make it an even clearer picture, not just of the conditions on the ground. But you can take it and apply it genuinely to a president's entire term to see just how good their economic policies were or weren't

for the health of the economy. And he added some other stuff. Yeah, he added four main new measurements. Took the inflation rate during the last year of the president's term, compared it to the average inflation rate over the entire course of the subsequent president's term. Which is based on what you were saying,

that a four-year term, the effects are felt like years down the road. So I think that's what he was doing there, right? Yeah, it makes sense. Did the same thing with the rate of unemployment. That was number two. He added in changes for the 30-year government bond yield over presidency.

And then finally, he said, I need to look at the difference between the long-term GDP growth and the real rate of growth. Compare all these things along with the original, this plus this equals this. Right, and with the real growth rate, that's where you take the actual change, either the shrinking or the growth of the economy, the GDP year over year, right?

And he took that after a year over the course of a presidency and averaged it out, I guess. That's right. Yeah, and he came up with what's called the Barrow Misery Index. And a lot of people think that that's where the Misery Index started, when in fact, it was Oaken who came up with it,

about 20 years before Barrow took it up and improved it. Yeah, so under Barrow's Misery Index, Clinton and Reagan, this Bill Clinton, of course, came out on top. And then a guy named Steve Henke, about 10 years later, this was originally in 1996, and then Henke came along in 2006, and said, you know what, we need to add even more things.

And this all just makes sense. You need to, if you want a more detailed picture, then add more detail to the data going in, you know? Right. So he said, we need more detail. Why don't we do this? Let's measure inflation and unemployment like we're doing, and then let's now add interest rates

and subtract annual percentages from the GDP to get a more accurate picture. Right. And he said, you can use this anywhere. You can use it all over the world. Well, that's what he did, and that's kind of what made his version of it pretty famous. He figured out how to apply it to other countries,

even countries that used price controls to keep inflation in check, which means price inflation is held back artificially. So Henke looked into other things like the exchange rate in the black market in a given country, that kind of thing, and he figured out real inflation rates, and he applied it around the world to find out

what country is the most miserable and what country is the least miserable. And what he found in 2014 was that the most miserable country in the world was Venezuela, which had a Henke misery index of 79.4. It's pretty high. Very high. And then Japan had the lowest misery at 5.41.

Yeah, the US came in at about 19, correct? I think 11. Oh, 11? Yeah. No, no, no, 11 was our... Oh, I'm sorry, 19th, yeah, yeah. Yeah, ranked 19th with an 11 rating. I didn't hear that.

Yeah, that's because my tooth is still gone. You'd think it'd be more pronounced, the THS. If it were 19th, I would have heard it clear as well. August, can't get here soon enough. So there are critics of this one, too, though. There's critics of all these indexes. Well, yeah, a lot of them say, no, still too elementary. Some people say this is all just tripe, like you can't.

You can't use this stuff to make any real predictions. You could use it to look back at the past, but to use it for the future, probably not. But some people do believe in the idea that if you have enough data and the right kind of data, you can get a clear picture of misery. And again, that's what we're after here. The whole point of the misery index

is to figure out how unhappy and just low the average person in a country is feeling at that moment, right? So HuffPo actually came up with a pretty good one. HuffPo. Boo, yay. In 2009, HuffPo came up with what they called the real misery index, right?

And so a lot of people cite the use of what's called U3 unemployment statistics, which when you hear unemployment numbers in the news, that's what you're hearing. That's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues as the official unemployment numbers, right? Yeah, and that's the very first thing that people will say if they want to poo-poo

the unemployment numbers. That these are just false numbers. Yeah, if someone says, hey, man, look how great ex-president is doing, look at the unemployment rate. They say, man, they're just using the U3. They need to use the U6. Wake up, pal, open your eyes.

Which, you know, is valid. Well, yeah, so the BLS has six measurements of unemployment, U1 through U6. And U6 is the broadest. It includes people who are so discouraged with the state of the job market that they've given up looking for work and have given themselves over entirely to Judge Alex, right?

Right, and then it also includes people who are working part-time, but wish they could work full-time, but there's no full-time work available. Yeah, like I'm a graphic designer, but I work at Starbucks. So that's the U6 measurement. And that's considered the broadest snapshot

of unemployment, the real vision of unemployment. Yeah, like you said, mostly they use U3, I guess, because it's in the middle. I mean, U1, they would never use U2. Everybody used to like, but not anymore. I still like U2. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, you know, not like I used to.

I'm not poo-pooing or anything. But I did see that concert they did on HBO. And I have to hand it to them. My big problem with U2 for years was they just got so out of control with those live shows. Like these giant spider spaceships and things, and I was always of the belief that, man, you need to go back to basics

and just get up on stage and play again. And that's what they did with this new tour. I mean, that was a cool visual element, but the stage setup and the way they did it was very much back to basics. And I think they really connected with fans again. Yeah, that's gotta help. Yeah.

Because when the interactions between you and the fans are other than the fans and giant spiders. Yeah, you can only go so far in that direction. I think they realized that, sure. Anyway. Where'd it go, U2? I'll defend those guys. Even though I know everyone in the world

generally wants to punch Bono in the face. I know. I'm not one of them. It's gotta feel weird. I like him. Yeah, I'm on record. Sure. Bono, if you're listening.

Well, if your Jared indicator is any predictor, Bono's gonna come out to be canonized one day. If what? Oh, yeah, yeah. You're like, there's something about Jared. I don't like him. We found out about Jared. Right.

And then now you're saying, I like Bono. Good guy. Something's gonna, like they're gonna find a cure for cancer and a saliva or something. You never know. So did we even mention what the HuffPo, what kind of outrageous numbers they came up with? No, well, we didn't mention everything they used.

We were talking about the U6 measurement. HuffPo used that measurement. The most extreme one. Of unemployment numbers. They also used other things like the inflation rate of food and drink and fuel and healthcare. Because other, the misery index just uses the consumer price index, which is inflation as a whole.

HuffPo used the inflation of some really essential things that people can't do without. And where you're gonna immediately feel the pinch when prices go up with those things. Key factors. Right? They also included the rate of credit card delinquency, the cost of housing.

How many people are using food stamps? That seems like a smart move. Totally. Home equity loan deficiencies. I guess people who are late on their payments. And then they took the average of those seven numbers and added it to the U6 unemployment numbers. Which, here you can step back and say,

wait a minute, how would you, how are you adding this together? How does this make any sense? You can't just keep adding things. Right. And really you can take that all the way back to the initial misery index. Like what, you're just adding unemployment percentage

and inflation and all of a sudden you have a magic number that doesn't make any sense. This HuffPo metric really points out the inherent flaw in it, I think. Yeah, because in 2008, the Oaken misery index was 8.1, but HuffPo's real misery index, AKA you think things are bad,

here's how bad they really are index, was 29.9 compared to the 8.1. Right. And some people are like, oh, well that just shows how off the Oaken misery index is. Yeah. Who knows? I know they quit doing the real misery index at HuffPo

like five years ago. I think it was a, am I gonna call it a stunt? It was a bit of a stunt. Maybe. But I'm sure really what happened was the writer who was contributing it for free. Sure. Like left for a paying job.

That's probably what happened to the HuffPo real misery index. Yeah, you're probably right. I was reading this guy, Tim McMahon, he has a site or he writes for a site, I'm not sure it's his or not called inflationdata.com. Jim McMahon? Tim, his brother.

Gotcha. Not the Super Bowl shuffle. No, his brother. So he mentioned this 2001 paper that concluded that unemployment causes 1.7 times more misery than inflation. And so if you're doing any kind of misery index that uses those two,

you need to first multiply the unemployment number by 1.7 before adding it to the inflation number to properly weight it. And like, how did they come up with that? So I looked at the paper and it was actually pretty clever. There's like 23 years of the survey of life satisfaction and happiness that these researchers looked at back in 2001.

And they found that. Economically based or just like how happy are you? No, here's the thing. It was how happy are you? It was like a single question. Like, would you say based on how you're feeling right now that you are fairly satisfied, unsatisfied, very satisfied with your life right now, right?

And then they took that measurement for that country as a whole. And you can do this for any country that participated in the survey. And then they looked at inflation and then they looked at unemployment for those years. And they could figure out the variation between, or the interplay between unemployment and inflation

and satisfaction. And they found that unemployment was 1.7 times more miserable than inflation in regards to life satisfaction as that survey goes. Pretty clever. It's a lot of hocus pocus, but I thought it was pretty clever how they did it. That makes sense to me,

because to be without work, like if you have a job and things inflation is happening, you'd still have your job. Sure. And you're like, man, this sucks to pay this much more, but you can still conceivably pay for it. Yeah, I'll cut back here or there. If you're unemployed, then there's not a lot of hope.

Right. Yeah, that number might be conservative. Yeah, I agree with you. Very interesting stuff, sir. So that's it, man. That's the misery index. You got anything else? No, but I'm looking forward to hearing from economists

that- Me too. Like in an unbiased way, try to explain things. Me too. If you send just these crazy political emails and they're going to fall in deaf ears because everyone yells at each other that they're right, I just want to hear some real numbers. Yeah.

Do it, Chuck. If you want to know more about the misery index, you can type those words in the search bar at housestuffworks.com. And since they said search bar, just plain old search bar, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this a follow up on vocal fry. Vocal fry, once again.

Oh yeah. Regarding vocal fry guys, you guys were offended because someone said vocal fry was repulsive. But there is another side to this, dudes. I suffer from a neurological disorder known as misophonia, which we totally should do a show on this. I agree. It's a condition where a person has extreme emotional

response to commonly occurring sounds. And I remember hearing a lot of times, just like people chewing noises or gum or whatever. He said, in my case, my trigger noise is the high pitched F sound when some people speak. It feels like my brain is cringing as if an allergic reaction is taking place. Cannot stress enough, this is not a mere noise.

It's a legitimate mental disorder that can vary greatly in severity. I don't visibly freak out when I hear my trigger noise, but it really kills me inside. It gives me an instant headache and it's why, which is why I will get away from the noise if at all possible. I believe in avoiding complaining in life

and playing the victim, but this disorder really has made my life like a subtle hell. It's been especially toxic to my family relationships and my ability to learn in school. I felt compelled to email you guys because you definitely appreciate interesting medical conditions. I think it would be a great topic for a show someday.

There's a documentary about it called Quiet, Please. If you watch the trailer, you might be inspired to watch it to learn what the condition is. Oh yeah. Huge thanks to everyone of Stuff You Should Know. You make mundane parts of my life. Interesting and educational.

I'm gonna anonymize this from Texas because I didn't hear back from them. From Texas. Yeah, Texas. P.S. was in disbelief when Chuck said he had not seen Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore. That's a good P.S. Believe it.

It's a good post script. And post P.P.S., right? Not P.S.S. I think it's post post script. Yeah, the people who often put P.S.S. It doesn't mean anything. Do you think Stuff You Should Know could ever become a television show?

Well, Tex. Never. We actually did that. We found out the hard way that it came. Yeah, we did a TV show on the Science Channel and it ran for one full season that played out over the course of several days. Which we'll always have, Chuck.

We'll always have that season of television we did once. It lasted nine or 10 days. Let's just show them all at once. Yeah. Out of order. But you never know. We might get another shot at Stardom. But we're not looking to it, you know.

I like it. In this room where no one's looking at us. Yeah. Jerry, Daniel McGatis. No, she's just there looking away in disgust. That's right. Good idea about the Misfonia. I think we mentioned that before.

Like that was, I really liked that vocal fry episode. And that was the one thing that I wish we would have mentioned because it's a legitimate thing that it does affect some people. But yeah, look for a Misfonia episode at some point in the future, Tex. If you want to get in touch with us, we're all over social media.

We're on Twitter and Instagram at S-Y-S-K podcast. We're on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And you can join us at our very own home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.