I took a few minutes this morning and read the bull /bear debate. I was left thinking after your opponent's last word: some statistics (or the misuse thereof) don't mean much. We have very low unemployment and a strong economy and yet we keep being told how rotten things are, like the low savings rate. I contribute to that low savings rate, having retired in the fall of 1998 at age 53 (corporate downsizing during those wonderful 90's). Not being rich, it was a bit scary at the beginning of these last 8 1/2 years. Yet, despite our negative household savings rate and this "lousy" economy, our net worth has more than doubled during that period thanks to strong stock market returns, the rapid real estate appreciation, and things like being able to refinance our sizeable mortgage at a dramatically lower interest rate (less money spent on mortgage is a big help when income has taken a nasty hit). So, I wish for more of the same "lousy" economy we've had since 2003. I do fear that inflation will end up being the killer, and have been unable to understand why anyone would want to own a long term bond yielding under 5% (or could it be that a lot of those 20 year old wiz kids that participated in the tech bubble moved on to bonds?).

By the way, I came from a rural poor up bring, obtained an engineering degree and worked as an engineer at a utility company. I've watched enough economic cycles to appreciate that the world is always changing, and no amount of clinging to the past will stop change (although we may be able to make change harder on ourselves by resisting). Our friends in the media, business and union leaders, economic pundits and politicians are always right there resisting change. And most of the propaganda that we get fed daily is like you say: to keep us poor and stupid. In the past few years, we keep being told over and over that things are terrible. I guess that we just have to let the Bush tax cuts expire and all will be wonderful (and yes, I'm being sarcastic).