Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is Terrible

Mired in debates at Debate Politics, I constantly have to get involved in arguments from progressives who say that Obama has not been terrible for the economy. The main statistics that I hear are the stock market and GDP. Let us get one thing straight: these are terrible measures of economic well-being. GDP counts a dollar spent by government to be just as good as a dollar spent by individuals. Let me ask, was a dollar spent on Mount Rushmore just as good as a dollar spent for food by a hungry family? Absolutely not, so then why do we not dock government spending at all? In our case, of course GDP is going to rise, look at spending over the last few years! Are we better off for it? It is debatable, but I have not seen the benefit. And the stock market could easily be in a bubble because of the monetary inflation from the Federal Reserve. I see it as poised for another crash (commodities spared). And how many of the companies in the stock market are only around because of direct injection of money from the government? The stock market, then, cannot be used to measure well-being.

Then what can we use? There is no perfect measure, but Murray Rothbard's Private Product Remaining (PPR) is a great measure. It is a little too negative, but I like it. Unfortunately, I cannot find updated statistics on it. As an alternative, I like Gallup's economic indices. They are a great source for real unemployment numbers, and also have a great measure called the Economic Confidence Index. It combines the responses of their Economic Outlook Index and their Economic Conditions Index. The result? The Economic Confidence Index is at its lowest point since September of 2009. Where is the improvement? Surely if Obama was doing a good job we would see these numbers getting better, but they are clearly getting worse.

Yes, I realize that these numbers are based on opinion and not fact, but you cannot deny that unemployment is not getting better and that federal debt is getting out of hand. And as for a more robust measure, how about Consumer Spending? It has not changed much since September of 2009, except that now people are spending more on gasoline and food. That means that spending on other things has gone down, and so people are getting less. Quality of life, therefore, is decreasing. The facts are out there, stop trying to deny reality.