A lot of people are worried about the economy--and with good reason. But the media isn't helping. Yesterday the stock market "crashed," and all the news outlets reported that the Dow recorded the biggest one-day point drop in the history of the world. Great news. Bad math.

While it's true that the Dow fell 777 points, it began at 11,142. This means that the average fell about 7%. Compare that to Black Thursday (Oct. 24, 1929), where the Dow fell about 13%, a drop almost twice as large as yesterday's. By November 11, 1929, the market had fallen over 40%. In order to see a similar drop today, the Dow would need to fall to 6685 by mid-October. Now that would signal a disaster.

Furthermore, big drops in the Dow don't necessarily indicate impending financial collapse. On Oct. 19,1987, also known at Black Monday, the average fell almost 23%. As you'll recall, there was no "Great Depression" of the late 80's. (In fact, stocks rallied and posted a record gain the very next day).

The point of all this is that these may seem like difficult economic times, and things are harder than they have been in the past few years, but life in the United States is still good, no great. We have food; we have shelter; we have all the IPhones money can buy. How's this for difficult economic times: the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe is currently estimated to be 85% (6.1% in the US), with an inflation rate of 10,000,000% (the next highest inflation rate is Burma, at about 40%). Try buying an IPhone when they cost $3,000,000,000 (that's 3 billion with a B), and you don't have a job.