I believe that we can fix the economy–but it will take a focused and entirely different approach. For a long time, I’ve maintained that the government statistics on economic growth often don’t match the reality regular people face. Today, we learn:

Spending by Americans took a big tumble in September, as they lost a popular government subsidy and were left with a lousy job market and a credit crunch.

The 0.5% drop in spending was the largest since December 2008, when the recession was at its worst. Most of the drop was in durable goods, which include autos. Outlays on nondurable goods and services posted a gain from last month. Spending rose 1.4% in August, revised up from a previously estimated 1.3% increase. That gain was driven by "cash for clunkers," which let motorists swap gas guzzlers for newer models. The car-rebate program started in July and ended in late August.

   The constrasting news:

The United States has emerged from the longest economic contraction since World War II.

The nation’s gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the quarter that ended in September, matching its average growth rate of the last 80 years, according to the Commerce Department. But government programs to encourage consumer spending on things like cars and houses are expiring, and employers remain reluctant to hire more workers, suggesting the recovery may not last, economists say.

   Those two pieces of news are not contradictory. Let me explain. When we measure gross domestic product, we are essentially looking at the question of whether stuff is being made. It does not tell us what people are being paid to make stuff, nor does it tell us whether the money generated from those sales is flowing in a fair way to the people, and we also can’t tell whether companies are making stuff with fewer workers.

   So, the GDP can go up–at the same time that people are feeling a lot of pain and are afraid to spend money because they don’t have a secure livelihood. The GDP does accurately tell us that wages are not going up, that one out of 5 people in America do not have decent paying work and, that during this economic crisis, companies are bucking up their bottom lines by dumping workers (translation: the corporate bottom lines are going to look better because "costs"–meaning, paying workers–are down.

  That is not a good place to be. An economy is about people, not statistics.

  The only way to get people back in the black is to go to the core of the problem: we need to reinflate peoples’ paychecks, not with a temporary program but with a long-term drive that must include broad unionization.