It's The Personal Economy Stupid

I read a blog where a conservative was despondent over the fact that nobody cared or gave credit to the administration for good economic news. I also read a story that Rove plans a strategy to run on the economy. From Bloomberg News Service:

Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, laid out a plan to win the 2002 congressional elections by stressing national security. For 2006, Rove is framing a strategy for Republicans to sell the U.S. economy.
In a recent speech, Rove argued that Bush's policies of tax cuts and trade agreements had pulled the nation out of recession, created millions of jobs, boosted productivity and increased disposable income. That record can help lead Republicans to victory in November, Rove said in the May 15 speech at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

No denying the macro indicators are up but who is reaping the rewards? Could this be a clue to why average Americans are not excited by the economy?

Almost all the benefits of productivity growth have gone to firms, and very little to workers,'' says Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel.....One explanation for the public malaise may be the distribution of prosperity. Total compensation for Americans fell to 65.4 percent of national income in 2005, down from 66.2 percent in 2001, Federal Reserve figures show. At the same time, corporate profits rose to 12.3 percent of national income, up from 8.5 percent in the year Bush took office. ``From middle incomes down, there has been very little gain,'' says Robert Solow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in economics. ``No wonder they feel they're not sharing in this prosperity.''

No wonder.

By most major indicators -- from a historically low 4.7 percent unemployment rate to strong corporate profits to the stock market -- the economy is moving forward. ``We are like marathon runners winning the race,'' Edward Lazear, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a May 23 interview.

If you look more closely at the economic numbers you will see that the vast majority of new jobs are in the restaurant and hospitality business(jobs being taken by cheap foreign labor) and the government. We are handing truckloads of money over to the corporations through tax cuts and government policies. No wonder their numbers look so good.

As for Bush's tax cuts, Treasury Department figures show that as the economy recovered from the 2001 recession, federal revenue fell 6.9 percent in fiscal 2002 to $1.85 trillion and dropped again in fiscal 2003. In the third quarter of 2003 -- the strongest three months of economic growth in the Bush presidency -- revenue fell 4.9 percent to $430 billion from the same quarter a year earlier.

Oops.

The housing market -- which has contributed to about half the economy's growth since 2001, according to a Merrill Lynch & Co. report -- offers more cause for concern. Housing starts fell 7.4 percent to an annual rate of 1.849 million in April, the fewest in 17 months, the Commerce Department said May 16.

Half the growth!!!? Oops

Seventy percent of 1,002 respondents in a May 8-11 Gallup poll said the economy was in fair to poor condition, up from 63 percent in an April poll.

Unaffordable health care. Gas 3.oo a gallon. Minimum wage 5.15. Low wage jobs with others going overseas. Think their is a chance that many peoples personal economy is far worse than the corporate numbers? Or is it the liberal medias fault for not saying how good things are over and over again?