As folks in editorial boardrooms and political strategy sessions persist in offering up characterizations of the U.S. economy that range from merely sluggish to something like moribund, it's easy to wonder if there is any historical perspective in play at all. Out here in flyover territory, where, economically speaking, life goes on more or less as it has for quite a while now, people are a bit less distraught about the economic picture and outlook.

1.  Unemployment, at 5.7% in July, is not at all high by historical standards. In the 2000s it has ranged from just under 4% to about 6%.  In the 1990s, it ranged from just over 4% (1999) to about 7.5% (1992).  As a general rule, then, in prosperous times about 95% of the U.S. working-age population is employed, and that's so today.

2. Inflation is pretty much in check, as it has been since the Carter administration, and gasoline, at $3.50 a gallon or so as of this writing and falling, is only a few cents higher than its previous peak of $1.86 in 1981, which would be $3.21 today adjusted for inflation. So despite all the arm-waving and editorializing, gas prices inflict only slightly more pain on household budgets than they did 27 years ago. 

3.  Housing prices have fallen considerably in some parts of the country, and as surely as the sun, will rise again. But so what?  The very same people who are characterizing these losses as a national tragedy were, a year or so ago, warning about the dangers of a housing bubble.  In other words, housing prices were too high then.  Now they're too low.  And, it seems fair to ask, too low for whom?  They're bad for sellers, good for buyers.  Welcome to a market economy. The idea that what's happening in the housing market constitutes a "meltdown," - a most favorite vogue word of the media these days - is an inappropriate metaphor and an unserious analysis.)

4.  Scare headlines indicating that home foreclosures are up multiple percentage points - i.e., doubled in the past year - make it easy to overlook the fact that over 95% of home mortgages in the country are performing perfectly well -- chugging along as usual -- and that a significant percentage of those that are being foreclosed involve properties that were intended to be flipped, or that were purchased with designer mortgages by people who saw as murky the simple proposition that when you borrow money, you have to pay it back, so it's a good idea to know, up front, if you're going to be able to. 

5.  If "recession" means two quarters of contraction, we are not in one. One may be coming.  Or one may not. Like so much that passes for dispassionate economic analysis, it's just conjecture.