The DC newspaper The
Hill has a new poll that found 52 percent of likely voters believe the
country is now in "worse condition" than four years ago, while just
31 percent believe it's in "better condition."
It is pretty clear that people believe they are not better
off today than four years ago, but what would things look like if we were better
off today?
Well, for example, if your home was worth $80,000 in
September of 2008 it should not be worth less today and perhaps should have
gained a little value. Or, if you were out of work then, you should have a job
today, and if you had a job then, you should perhaps be making a little more
today. It should not cost you much more to fill your car with gas, and trips to
the grocery store should cost about the same today as then.
However, most Americans cannot make such claims today. Most
homeowners have lost value in their homes; more than 34 million of us are
unemployed, underemployed, or have exhausted unemployment insurance and become so
discouraged that we have given up looking for work; gasoline prices have
doubled, food and health care prices have increased; and relatively few have
seen their wages increase.
The jobs numbers released last Friday reflect feeble job
creation in August. Just to stay even with the new people entering the job
market each month the economy must create 125,000 jobs, and to make progress in
replacing those jobs lost during the recession we need lots more new jobs than
that. The 96,000 new jobs created in August falls 29,000 jobs short of what’s
needed just to stay even.
The U-3 unemployment rate fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent. It
most often is a good sign when the U-3 rate falls, but the fact that for every
job created four people gave up looking for work and dropped out of the active
work force means no good news there.
Economist James Fitzgibbon of the Highlander Group said that
"If we impute the data samplings of non-working citizens at the labor
force rate of January 2009 we would have a Household U-3 Unemployment rate
currently of 11.4%." That isn’t better than four years ago, either.
Mr. Fitzgibbon then addresses the effect on the Labor Force Participation rate of the 368,000 people who dropped out of the labor force last month, which "has fallen sharply to 63.5 percent, a new 31-year low reading."
Mr. Fitzgibbon then addresses the effect on the Labor Force Participation rate of the 368,000 people who dropped out of the labor force last month, which "has fallen sharply to 63.5 percent, a new 31-year low reading."
Add to that the fact that from June 2009 to June 2012,
inflation-adjusted median household income fell 4.8 percent, to $50,964,
according to a report by Sentier Research. The report notes that incomes have
dropped more since the beginning of the recovery than they did during the
recession itself, when they declined 2.6 percent. That certainly does not indicate we are better
off than four years ago.
Yet, Vice President Joe Biden said last week at a campaign
appearance at an AFL-CIO event just before the beginning of the Democrat National
Convention that his answer to the question “Are you better off than four years
ago,” is “yes, we are.”
"You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a
little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is
alive," Mr. Biden proclaimed.
After 43 months in office, the vice president cites only two
things to support the idea that we are better off than four years ago, both
weak. As good as it is that bin Laden has been dispatched to his just reward,
whether he is alive or dead is totally irrelevant as a measure of whether Americans
are better off today than four years ago. The
other one, General Motors, is not looking quite as bright and shiny as the vice
president seems to think it is.
The company is losing market share; its products are not competitive
in the American market. The federal
government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26 percent of the company, which
earned it the nickname “Government Motors.” The government not only cheated GM
bondholders out of their investment when it acquired the stock, but would need
to get about $53.00 a share to break even on the “investment,” but the stock currently
sells for about $20.21 a share. The government has $10.1 billion
worth of stock, and sits on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.
President Barack Obama showed what he thinks is important
when he put his ideology ahead of what Mr. Biden termed his “profound concern
for the average American.” His first priorities were taking over the healthcare
system and force-feeding green energy to the American people. That put energy
industry workers out of work, cost Americans millions in higher prices, and
lost a pile of taxpayer money. But like the man said, “You don’t ever want a
good crisis to go to waste.”
The President’s foolish, ham-handed decision to focus on
health care and green energy have damaged, not improved, the economy, and as
Clint Eastwood so perceptively noted in Tampa, “When somebody doesn’t do the
job, we gotta
let ‘em go.”
2 comments:
OK, is 52% going to win this election? I know it should, but with Obama, stranger things HAVE happened...
Thanks for posting your fine article on Faultline USA. It needs to be read widely. I've been Tweeting it and posting it on FB.
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