I was in a village out in Mosquito Coast where a recent flood had wiped out crops and left already desperate people even more worried about how they would provide basic sustenance to their children. That's an economic crisis.

What we are experiencing in the US is an inconvenience.

Yes through trade we can buy more junk and technology has increased the quality of junk. That deserves articles. This is just nonsensical filler trash.

as I belong more to the lower orders than to the better heeled I could not help to notice that towards the late 70s all of a sudden the rent for an appartement in the good part of town (Germany) was out of my reach and not because my professional status had declined -
whoever throws these average figures at me disregards that fact and makes me furious and -
by the way -
I am deeply mistrustful about all that Bush-Bashing -
there is too much of an unanimousity and if something becomes "a truth universally acknowledged" it is always advisable to start a little bit of independent thinking only not by throwing callous averages around

And a note to Colin:
JobLoss is more than an inconvenience and like Heinrich Heine said about love but it fits the case of job-loss perfectly, it may be a most common story but to whomever it happens his or her heart is about to break

Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei.
http://gedichte.xbib.de/Heine_gedicht_Ein+J%FCngling+liebt+ein+M%E4dchen.htm

Kudos to editor Megan McArdle.

I have lost my job twice and know what it means to be unemployed. Both times I was able to find new work within a few months and at higher salaries. It was an inconvenience -- certainly compared to what people in less developed countries deal with.

The thrust of what Landsburg says is correct. Life is better now than when Bush took office (and I am not attributing that to Bush, it's just the nature of our economy). I know that if given the choice I would rather live now than in 2001, when I didn't even own a cell phone or DVD player. Now both are ubiquitous and their ownership unremarkable.

Now, there are problems, of course. Health care and education inflation spring to mind. But for all of the hand wringing we've still got it pretty good.

Oh, and for anyone that doesn't understand Silke's poem it reads:

It is an old story
that always stays new
and when it happens
breaks the heart in two

Wrong! Four years ago I was working for more than $40K. Now I'm unemployed.

The left's solution to Reich's vertical challenge? Saw off Shaq's legs mid-thigh and duct-tape them to Reich's feet. Only a liberal can be genuinely comfortable with the crude approach to generating and allocating wealth implied by Reich's comparison. What's left in this instance? A near dwarf now endowed with bloody, double-jointed legs he can barely use and a massively hemorrhaging former basketball star. The idea that someone's circumstances can be improved simply by tacking another zero onto their bottom line (whether through transfer payments or absurd no-limit credit) presumes they will know what to do with that zero. Conversely, those from whom wealth is taken are left with less resources to allocate, an act at which they've shown themselves extraordinarily competent by the very fact of their existence. Unless you believe aggrandizement in general the result of cheating or theft.

The median household income, adjusted for inflation, shrunk during the bush years.

If what is happening is the beginning of a badass recession, then Landsburg is doubly wrong: that it's an itty bitty correction & that Bush years were great, since the supposed increase in our prosperity would then have been a mirage.

The latter point is not of much immediate practical interest -- our problem now is what to do if in fact the developing recession is going to be quite severe. Instead of telling us why he thinks that Bernanke, Krugman, Cowen, Buffett, etc., etc., are all wrong, he's focusing on a point that's either wrong, or no practical importance if it's right.

I think the amount of debt built up by government, businesses, and individuals is a large part of the problem, and Bush and the Republicans were largely in charge of government spending. Whoever heard of having a war and charging it to your credit card, and calling it "emergency" funding six years after it started?

Agreeing with other posters, "average" doesn't mean much in this context. Statistics indicate that some people are working less because they have lost their jobs or their hours have been cut. Others are working more to make up for those who have been laid off.

Steven, maybe you should expand your circle of friends.