Tom Oliphant: Prosperity, where are you?

[paineinthearse]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/09/prosperity_where_are_you/

Prosperity, where are you?
By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist | August 9, 2005

WASHINGTON
AT THE White House these days, there is a reason the resident propagandists insist on using the word ''recovery," as opposed to ''prosperity." Recovery is the ultimate process word in a political economy. It implies progress but is meant to help the mind slide by the past and the present as it makes assumption about the future without any hard predictions.

There's just one problem, and it lies behind the decision to waste President Bush's weekly radio time on the economy last weekend in order to stage a show-and-tell with his domestic advisers and manufacture photo opportunities out of the signing of two pieces of legislation that have nothing to do with prosperity. One was an energy bill that will have no impact on price or supply; the other a highway measure that will only have impact on the reelection prospects of legislators who supported its budget-busting projects.

The underlying problem is that the vaunted recovery is well over three years old, way past the time when in the ordinary course of events recoveries morph into prosperity. In fact, this so-called recovery is already the slowest and puniest in post-Depression history, despite the fact that the event the country is supposedly recovering from was so minor it barely registered on the scales and despite the fact that the economy has received more stimulus from hemorrhaging deficits and easy money than it has ever received in modern times.

At the White House, ''recovery" is also the preferred term because of the public opinion polls to which its employees are addicted. Views of Bush's handling of the economy remain strongly negative -- by nearly 15 percent in latest samplings.

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