But some people bought snow mobiles! SNOW MOBILES!

The Weekly Standard, like the rest of the conservative press, has taken to crowing about the improving state of the economy. However, unlike many other conservative publications, the Standard also claims that the benefits of economic growth have been distributed equitably or as columnist Irwin M. Stelzer (or at least his headline writer) put it, "2003: The Rich Got Richer . . .
. . . and so did everyone else. ". What evidence does Mr. Stelzer use to ... support his thesis? He points out that Americans own a lot of ATVs. Clearly, the popularity of ATV's proves that the economy is delivering the goods for ordinary Americans, far better than any actual economic statistic. Who cares if your neck deep in debt and are worried about your job, someone somewhere has just bought a an ATV. I guess annoying economic data is avoided, because it isn't all that impressive. For example, despite growing GDP, average hourly wages increase a grand total of one cent in November. Not that the Standard would every mention something like that, not when we have the BEST ECONOMY EVER and some people have ATV's and all those facts and stuff just kind of get in the way of that message.