8 thoughts on “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?”

1. A better question is “are you better off than you were 20 years ago?”

   The analysis showed that, in real terms, middle class america has turned the clock back to 1992 on real wealth.

   http://www.freep.com/article/20120612/BUSINESS07/120612011/median-U-S-household-recession-net-worth?

2. “The median family’s net worth dropped to $77,300 from $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said.”

   2007. During the Bush administration.

3. “2007. During the Bush administration.”

   With DemocRATs in control of both the house and senate, spending money that we didn’t have on entitlement programs!

4. From the article linked by Sanity:
   “Incomes went down more during two years of this recovery than during the recession itself,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this.”

   Obama destroys wealth.

5. “Obama destroys wealth.”

   That’s right. Economic and fiscal policy didn’t exist, in fact the world didn’t exist, before Obama stepped into office. All that ails us is the result of Obama’s doing . . . that housing collapse and financial meltdown (remember Lehman Bros?) that happened prior to his administration was just a left-wing illusion. Ignore that stuff. In fact, life itself did not exist before the Obama inauguration, and therefore nothing that happened during the Bush administration has any bearing on the state of today’s economy.

6. Sanity has a point here that can’t be dismissed as partisan posturing. Much of the wealth people have is tied up in the value of their home. When the housing bubble burst started in the W Bush administration, many people, (including me!!) saw the value of their home decline significantly. Now, the fact is, we have been underwriting a boom in land development and home construction via mortgage interest deduction, liar loans and Fannie/Freddie (ie: taxpayers) implicitly underwriting every borrowers home loan regardless of that borrowers ability to repay the loan going back past the GHW Bush administration. Politicians thought the way to make more people middle class was to guarantee home ownership (and college degrees, but that’s a seperate post) because lots of middle class people own homes. It’s the same principle as the fat lady who thought she could become an opera singer by drinking heavy cream.
   Unfortunately President Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress in the first two years of his term doubled down on a number of the ill conceived policies and fixes of his predecessor along with burdening business with a number of new regulatory schemes that don’t protect the consumer (or taxpayer) so much as they increase the power of government regulators and large businesses that can afford to lobby for special carve outs for themselves. The fact that this economy can’t seem to get out of it’s way has many people and institutions that can be blamed. Our feckless President is just one.

7. You read a lot into three words, Sanity.
   Everything you mentioned happened after the Dems took control of both houses of congress in January 2007. Democrats own this recession.

8. *shrug* Some people don’t care how silly they look, they need to hold on to that BDS!

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