Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

improving national economy—alliance with nature’s governmentFigure 4. Time series plot of Okun’s misery index for the U.S., monthlydata, April 1979 to April 1988. The U.S. misery index peaked in Januaryand March 1980 at 24.5, reversing the rising trend of the 1960’s and 1970’s,thereafter declining irregularly to 10.3 in April of 1988.The marked decline in the U.S. misery index during the decadeof the 1980’s was a surprising development not widely anticipated byeconomists and other informed observers. A recent review of U.S. economicperformance during this period concluded (Pluckhahn, 1989):Few who looked at the bleak economic landscape of a decade ago couldhave known that unemployment would decline from more than 8% to5.4% and inflation would be cut by almost two-thirds, from 11.3% in1979 to 4.6% in 1989. . . .Who would have forecast that the economywould grow for the final seven years of the 1980’s, breaking the recordfor a peacetime expansion? Other milestones include more than 18 millionnew jobs created in the 1980’s, and manufacturing productivityaveraging more than 4% annual growth throughout the decade—thebest record of the post-World War II era. (p. 1)Thus the sharp decline of both inflation and unemployment duringthis period, as well as a vigorous and prolonged economic expansion—which, as of June 1990, was more than two and one half times as longas the post-war average 7 —was a largely unforeseen development. 8The Canadian misery index shown in Figure 5 displays a similarpattern of persistent rise followed by a steep decline. 9 The plot shows a423