US economy is not "humming."

I keep reading these articles that state that the US economy is "humming" now, apparently based entirely on the recent rise in the stock markets. I agree that it's doing a bit better than it has been during the past three years, which is not surprising since it couldn't possible be doing worse. And since the federal government and federal reserve have been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of cheap money into it, which is bound to have some effect.

But the stock market alone is NOT the "economy." The economy consists of many more things that just the markets, which mostly represent the interests of the wealthiest ten percent of the population. It's also measured by jobs, by the rate of personal bankruptcies, by the strength of the dollar, by whether there is money to keep schools and police stations open, by the trade and budget deficits, by whether people can afford to go to the doctor when they are sick, and many other measures. And all of those are not doing well at all. It's convenient and easy and simplistic to just judge it by the Dow Jones average, but it's not realistic.

My personal economy is certainly not "humming" by any measure. I'm 51, and I have never in my life had such a hard time coming up with steady sources of income. And I have a very good college education, plenty of high-tech skills and such. I shudder to think how the folks with just high school educations are doing.

In my state of Oregon schools, police and other public institutions are on the rocks like they haven't been since the Depression, and far from getting better, they are by all indications things are getting worse. Significantly so.

And it's much worse among the African-American and Hispanic populations. Even during the height (depth?) of the Depression, 90% of black folks could find at least some work. Now the unemployment rate among them is around 30%, and rising. (At least as far as I can tell, they do a great job of hiding these statistics, so you never really know.)

And the single mothers I know are almost all rather desperate. This is almost an entirely "white male" recovery. And as a white male myself, I can assure you it's not even most of them.

And I don't see any of the Democratic candidates offering any thing other than platitudes, and what amounts to a kinder, gentler "business as usual." Dr. Dean sends me email asking me to read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense." I've read it, Doctor. What I want to know if you have any?

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