For those of you whose memories don't go back that far, this index is the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Few people talk about this index these days, but I thought it would be useful to show it to you as background (Graph 1). As you can see, things were pretty miserable in the 1970s and 1980s.
Today, though, at least according to this metric, they are not too bad. The Misery Index is now as low as it has been since the late 1960s. Today, we are living in a world of low and stable inflation and low unemployment. It is useful to remind ourselves of this sometimes.