Our misery index has hit a new post-2011 high, ringing in at 45.60, the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Shot (graph below) tells us. The index is simply the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates and is the brainchild of Arthur Okun, an adviser to US President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It assumes “that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of inflation both create economic and social costs for a country. A combination of rising inflation and more people out of work implies a deterioration in economic performance and a rise in the misery index.” If you’re reading Enterprise, we’re comfortable assuming you agree the effects of inflation are transient and should be fading by the time (a) we hit November and (b) we fully digest the subsidy cuts from earlier this summer sometime in September. And unemployment is actually dropping, if slowly. But wow, does it make for an ugly graph.

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