The Dow is up! All is well! Yea, right.

I'm soo tired of hearing from (mostly) politicians something that goes like this: "The economy is strong, the stock market is (choose one from: booming, surging or rising)."

For the millionth time - just because the stock market is booming, that doesn't mean that a great deal of America (and as of right now, dare I say the majority) thinks the economy is headed in the right direction.

From Gallup:

I won't pretend to be an economist, but to me, when the stock market is on the rise, that means that company profits are up. And two of the principle ways companies have increased their profits in the last decade are offshoring and downsizing - two things that devastate the average American worker.

Proof positive came last Friday on Bill Maher's HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher. On of his guests was John Fund of the Wall St. Journal. During a discussion on the economy, when Maher brought up some not-so-great statistics about the economy, the first thing Fund said was, "but the stock market is up!" Thankfully, Maher pounced, and when Fund boasted about a four percent unemployment rate, Maher jumped on that, too.

A low unemployment rate is a good thing, but it's not completely indicative of the "health" of the workforce. When I lost my full-time, well-paying corporate job nearly five years ago, I could not find one that even remotely paid what I was earning. This forced me to wait tables and go back to graduate school. But, the minute I took a part-time job, I was no longer considered unemployed. And right now, there are millions of people in that same boat.

Another critical factor is the price of gas. At right is what the price of a gallon of gas was in San Francisco a week or so ago. (It's probably higher now.) And it's not going to get any better, probably ever. I've read in some places that a barrel of oil could top $150 by the end of the summer.

More on the oil crisis in a separate post later tonight or tomorrow.

My point here is that the economy isn't so rosy because stock prices are high. You know who that's good for? Corporations and the very rich, who are only paying 15 percent on dividends now, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. I find it nuts that a vast majority of the middle class pays well into the twenties, yet millionaires and billionaires pay 15 percent on stock dividends.

When I mention this to some Republicans I know, they accuse me of "class warfare." To me, it's only class warfare when liberals fight back. And we need to fight back more.