While we are not sure our paltry academic salary even qualifies us
as "Middle Class", and we are certainly not miserable these days of tennis
and beach combing on the pristine Pacific coast of Ecuador, we strongly
sympathize with the agonizing erosion of both the standard of living
and quality of life experienced by most Americans with less than a million
dollars of net worth.
However, we are less than impressed by the John Kerry campaigns latest
effort to spin, package and sell this bottom line by couching it in the
format of a statistically valid, social scientific think-tank type report,
ingeniously titled the "Middle-Class
Misery Index". Quite
frankly we feel most sociology majors from decent universities could
have done a better job at dressing up dubious data like this. The report is rife with dubious statistics,
slanted interpretations, misleading graphics and one-sided analysis.
Perhaps the campaign team would be wiser to stick to press releases
and sound bytes, and leave the statistical pontificating to al least
marginally independent academic researchers. How hard would that be,
considering that almost all of the academics we know are already firmly
within the Kerry camp.
The following graph is a case in point. It sure looks like it shows
that the "Misery Index" is actually going DOWN. Most people who lack
the interpretive skill or time to decipher what it actually shows will
come away with the exact OPPOSITE of the intended message!
The Middle-class
Misery Index is based on median family income, college
tuition, health costs, gasoline cost, bankruptcies, the homeownership
rate, and private-sector job growth.
