President Bush flew to rainy North Carolina on Monday to make a campaign-style sales pitch: The economy is better than you think it is.

"This economy is strong, and the best days are yet to come," Bush told employees at a construction machinery plant near Greensboro.

Blasting "pessimists" who had attacked his tax cuts, Bush credited those cuts with triggering high growth rates and rising employment.

This is the Bush economic plan: 1. Blame Clinton, then, 2. Blame 9/11, then, when you have been president too long and had too many of your own policies implemented for that to work anymore, 3. Claim you have succeeded in turning the economy around, and if you are still worried, it is because you are an economic girlie-man!

But, I guess things do look good if you are an economic policy wonk who makes more than $100,000 a year.

Bush has good reason to tout a robust economy, some economists say. Growth has been stronger than forecast — a 4.3% pace in the third quarter — Unemployment is a low 5%, and inflation remains relatively muted.

"The U.S. economy looks good, I might even say terrific," says Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics, who has advised the White House on fiscal policy in the past.

Even so, there are trends that have been worrisome to consumers. Drivers have struggled this year with sharply higher gasoline prices. The administration has projected that home heating costs will surge this winter. And data show that workers' income is lagging behind rising costs.

Okay, I won't deny that the economy is...somewhat better...than it was this time in 2001, an improvement which I think happened in spite of Bush's borrow-n-spend economic, er, "plan." But we're still kind of limping along, and if you want to know why the average non-millionaire thinks the economy is nothing to get happy about, note where the article mentions "workers' income is lagging behind rising costs" almost as an afterthought. Because -- and I realize that I don't have economic policy wonk credentials -- it seems to me -- that it should be sort of obvious that workers who aren't earning enough to pay for their lives are pessimistic about the economy. Because, you know, most people don't base their view of the economy on little numbers that indicate how many people the administration counts as unemployed, or how much "growth" is happening. They base their view of the economy on how well they, and their immediate circle of friends and family are doing. And in this case "how well" is not simply a measure of whether or not they have a job, but also, on what that job pays for, and what direction things seem to be going in general. Do people feel like they're getting ahead, or falling behind? What we have here is a moderate gain after years of sluggish growth, perhaps even a double-dip recession (depending on how you cut the numbers).

Let's go through this likely scenario: you got laid off in December 2001 and spent a year unemployed. Then you got a job that paid less than half of what you were making at the point you were laid off. Then, after a couple years of that you were unemployed again for a few months, and then you got another job that still paid less than half what you were making in December 2001, or maybe you got fed up and started your own business. So, you aren't technically unemployed right now. But you're not exactly breaking out the champagne either.

In fact, you're incredibly anxious, because you have been living on debt for the past four years waiting for things to really turn around -- for your income to achieve pre 9/11 levels, for something other than government and fast food to start adding jobs again.