Table of economic data, 1960 - 2003

[Julien Sorel]

The idea here is to give people a reference point for what the public perceives as acceptable economic performance from a president. Obviously, Carter's performance in 1979-80, with high unemployment and high inflation, didn't wow enough people. But notice that in 95-96, Clinton's numbers were just solid, not spectacular -- better than Bush's right now, but not dramatically so, and Clinton got re-elected fairly easily. Bush's daddy was also hurting bad when Clinton dethroned him. But what's really interesting is Reagan in 1984. Notice the giant unemployment rates -- 8.3 and 7.3 in the years prior to and during the election. But things were perceived to be getting better. That's the trick. People felt that the country was moving in the right direction, or at least felt the odds of that happening were worth not risking hiring someone new and untested to replace Reagan. And things eventually worked out, at least on the short-term economic front. There is a tendency for the public to stick with the evil it knows, thus the incumbency advantage, and to be reasonably smart about judging its own economic circumstances.

Let's go back to LBJ in 1967. His numbers were enough to get him re-elected, had he been able to tough it out in the primaries. He chose to cut and run, and we got Nixon as a result. Clean for Gene...

[Frodo]

1. Kick.

Thanks for the compliation of data. What's the source.

I agree. Those of us counting of the economy being the easy pruning of the shrub see things as worse than the numbers make them look.

[Julien Sorel]

3. I got the info from

BLS.gov, bea.gov, and inflationdata.com, because the bls site doesn't break CPI things down the way I wanted. The source for inflationdata.com is, of course, bls.gov anyway -- they did some of the annualizing stuff, and spared me the annoyance of having to put my own basket of stuff together. BLS really sucks for that. If you're clever, you'll find a lazy stunt I pulled with the 'annual' unemployment data, but I ain't going to say what it is, and it's minor anyway. ;-)

[wryter2000]

2. Link?

I'd sure like to be able to print that out. I've been looking for something like that for ages!!

[Julien Sorel]

6. I'll e-mail it to you when

my web-mail server is acting normally. It won't let me add attachments for some reason right now.

[SadEagle]

4. Is the GDP growth adjusted for inflation?

eom.

[Julien Sorel]

5. Of course.