Trump’s claim that the Misery Index reached its highest level in three decades under Biden is a miserable lie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 29, 2021 Donald Trump had a very long article titled Year in Review: Joe Biden’s cascading domestic catastrophes. (It runs over 5,000 words, which would take 25 minutes to read at an average rate of 200 words per minute).  One of his claims caught my eye:

“The MISERY INEX (a combination of the inflation and unemployment rates) has reached its highest level in three decades under Biden.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to fact check just that claim, and found it to be miserably false according to a Misery Index web page. When you look at the Misery Index, as shown above for 2020 (Trump) and 2021(Biden), you find that under Biden it rose from 8 to 11, while under Trump in April 2020 it had peaked at slightly over 15. It had peaked at 12.9 under Obama, at 11.5 under G. W. Bush, at 10.6 under Clinton, at 12.5 under G. H. W. Bush, and 19.3 under Reagen.   

 

Where had Trump gotten that highest level in three decades? It might have been misreading of an article by David N. Bossie at Fox News on November 15, 2021 titled Biden’s misery index makes Carter presidency seem like the good old days, which instead said in the third paragraph that the Consumer Price Index jumped to its highest point in 30 years. Elsewhere in the Trump article it had said correctly: “Unemployment quickly fell to half its pandemic peak.”

 

The image is a colored version of one from page 171 of the 1904 edition of The Adventures of Pinocchio found at the Internet Archive.