The Greatest Story Never Told - America's Economy
By Gordon Bishop (06/19/08)
If you want to know the Truth about our economy and our government, you have to read a little 7-page publication called IMPRIMIS , the official monthly newsletter of Hillside College, a small private school in Hillsdale, Michigan.
IMPRIMIS, with over 1.6 million readers, has become one of my key news sources because I know what they print is the Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, so help you God! Yes, these folks also believe in God! – utterly amazing in this day and age.
You can’t say that about our liberal-socialist mainstream media, beginning with the three commercial networks and such Leftist cable outlets as CNN, MSNBC and many others, or the print media led by the Marxist New York Times, Washington Post and Time magazine. They’re all for tax-and-spend redistribution of income – what the old Soviet Union and the Communist People’s Republic of China imposed on its oppressed citizens.
FREEDOM? Forget about it!
So what’s so good about IMPRIMIS? Here’s some uplifting words from Patrick Toomey, President of the Club of Growth and former Congressman from Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional district from 1999-2005, which have just been printed in the May issue of IMPRIMIS:
There is a debate going on today over whether our economy is in recession. Polls (primarily liberal ones) show sagging public confidence. But some perspective is sorely needed.
The fact of the matter is that we in the United States, and to a lesser degree the entire world, have just lived through – and continue to live in – the greatest period of prosperity in human history.
Over the last 25 years, more wealth has been created, more people have been lifted out of poverty, standards of living have been elevated more dramatically, and the quality and length of life have improved, more than ever before in recorded history.
Unfortunately, as economist Larry Kudlow says, this is “the greatest story never told.” (I listen to Kudlow on his ABC radio broadcasts.)
We need to start telling the story, and also to think about its causes.
First, let us focus on the united States (and I say this with full knowledge that the State of Michigan is a unique exception among the 50 states to America’s extraordinary recent prosperity (a strong liberal state facing bankruptcy).
Average economic growth in the U.S. has not only been positive for almost the entire last quarter century, but for much of this period the rate of growth has accelerated.
Our nation’s total economic in 1982 was $5.1 trillion. Last year it was $11.2 trillion (in real 200 dollars).
Per capita economic output in 1982 was $22,500. Last year it was $37,907 (in real 2000 dollars).
The average unemployment rate in the 1970s was nearly 7 percent. It has been declining, on average, every decade since, and has remained below 5 percent since 2003.
The service sector of our economy has been on fire, growing from $1 trillion in 1982 to $5.5 trillion in 2006.
And do you know how far back one has to go to find the year when America’s total manufacturing output peaked? All the way back to 1007!
Yes, U.S. factories produced more last year than in any previous year in our history.
The Dow Jones industrial Average began the 1980s at 825. Today, despite its recline declines, it remains above 12,000, a 1.400 percent increase.
These gains in income and wealth have resulted directly in a better standard of living for virtually every segment of American society – including the poor.
Among families living below the official poverty line in the early 1970s, less than 40 percent had a car, almost none had color televisions, and air conditioning was virtually unheard of.
In 2004, 46 percent owned their own homes, almost 75 percent owned a car (indeed, 30 percent owned two or more cars), 97 percent had color TVs, and 67 percent had air conditioning.
The list for increasing prosperity goes on and on and on….
So why do we here so much complaining in the media? Because that’s what the media report. They try to portray a free and spirited county as a ‘down-and-out’ society on the edge of collapsing. Fear and more fear distort the real Truth of America’s successes.
The millions of success stories far outweigh the number of failures the irresponsible media report every day, every week, every month and every year.
It’s Time the public stop listening, viewing or watching the negative and lying self-hating Americans. They’re just angry because America has yet to surrender to an anti-American Marxist movement.
Thank God!
Gordon Bishop
IMPRIMIS: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp
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