In 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to rhetorically turn a close election a week before the polls into a comfortable Election Day victory by famously asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
While President Obama’s speech last night was generally well received, he did have to backtrack from his soaring rhetoric about change we can believe in. And so, he argued last night, ”Our problems can be solved, our challenges can be met.”
But he was forced to concede that it would be a harder and longer road that he and others had hoped.
“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy,” President Obama said. “I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”
”Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place,” he added.
But he had to. The reality greets us in the morning. Only 96,000 jobs added in August, lower than expected. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.1%.
Ever since Reagan’s infamous words, every challenging party has echoed the rejoinder – are you better off now that you were four years ago? It’s a personal call that I have seen repeated on social media sites by giddy conservatives looking to make hay.
But the real answer is far more complex. Most Americans are worse off than they were four years ago, whether we take that jumping off point as this date four years ago or January 2009.
Jobs are about the same, unemployment rates around 8 percent, RDI (Real Disposable Income), which happens to be the measure most political scientists believe is the crippling point, is about the same.
Game over?
Not quite.
As a New York Times article points out: “If Mr. Romney believes the ‘Are you better off?’ question will be political kryptonite for President Obama, he will have to reckon with an economic scorecard that is more mixed than he and other Republicans are claiming on the campaign trail.”
“People are not better off than they were four years ago, in the sense of where the economy is today compared to where it was,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard, ticking off statistics from the unemployment rate to housing prices. “But certainly, things could have been a lot worse. You can decide whether the glass is half-empty or half-full.”
The better argument is expressed by Lawrence Summers, who was President Obama’s chief economic adviser: “We avoided falling into the abyss, and it was an open question whether we would… It may not be easy to explain, but it’s right. It’s the truth.”
And therein lies the critical point. In a frightening four-day period in 2008, we almost saw the total collapse of the world financial system.
Despite a weekend spent attempting to save Lehman Brothers, on Monday, September 15, 2008, the investment giant declared bankruptcy. Stock markets tanked, AIG (American International Group) nearly collapsed, Morgan Stanley nearly collapsed, even Goldman Sachs was in trouble, banks in Europe teetered, and some accounts tell a chilling tale of just how close the system came to imploding in a way that might have marketed the end of this nation as we knew it.
Four years ago, we had to make the decision to bail out the US automobile industry. It is still a matter of controversy. But at the end of the day, how much worse would we be right now if that industry with its economic production and huge numbers of jobs had failed?
The point is, that no matter what you think about the economy today and what you think of President Obama himself and the job that he did, we are immensely better off today than we were four years ago. The system is sound and stable at the moment.
We may have problems. We may be recovering far slower than anyone thought or hoped for. But as a nation, we are more sound, as we no longer stand on the precipice of disaster.
What does this all mean? In our view, this election is not going to be won or lost on that simple question. Instead, it will come down to who can best articulate a vision for the future.
That is where things get interesting.
Can Republicans and Romney win on essentially a one-trick pony of tax cuts and shrinking the size of government?
Can President Obama convince Americans that we need to stay the course, that his modest vision is better for the middle class?
The numbers right now suggest a toss-up. President Obama needs to get the public to remember what caused this problem and give him more time to solve it, while Mitt Romney needs to convince the voters that President Obama has already had enough time.
To me, the critical question will not be are you better off now than four years ago, but rather, under whose policies and leadership do you think you will be better off under, in another four years.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
My view: only fools think it doesn’t matter if we’re better off than we were four years ago.
If someone–Democrat or Republican (or other) will tell me exactly what they mean by “better off” then I will happily engage the discussion. Like so many of our “national debates” the powerful of both parties draw us into a meaningless discourse in which the terms are undefined and the parameters unclear.
To be specific: I have a friend who is financially worse off (lower income) than four years ago. But with tears in his eyes he tells me that his life has never been better because he realizes that for too long he traded time with his family for earning more, working longer hours in order to have the good life that remained outside his grasp. Is he better off? Yes. I also have a friend who earns more now than he ever imagined possible. He has more choices and uses some of his gain to help others. He too, I am sure, would say that he is better off but the reasons are not all about the extra money but his ability to do something meaningful with it (he is starting a family foundation to support non-profit efforts dealing with child abuse).
I am not suggesting that there are not others who are worse off (along either of these dimensions or other ones) but only that “better off” or “worse off” is contextual, local and personal and not dependent on the many macro factors over which we have no control. Next time you hear a politician ask the question, ask them back: “better off in what way?” Then we will have something to talk about.
I echo Robb’s sentiments.
“only fools think it doesn’t matter if we’re better off than we were four years ago. “
I don’t believe anyone said it doesn’t matter…
Look at the “headline”.
The headline means that the nation is undoubtedly better off than we were four years ago when we were on the verge of collapse. But that’s the not going to be the deciding question for this election.
375,000 people quit looking for a job last month, these numbers never really get mentioned that much. True unemployment numbers are actually over 15,000,000 and when you add in the underemployed it shoots to over 23,000,000. About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. My son-in-law just graduated with a masters and whenever he applies for a job in his field there are routinely 300 other applicants. “It could’ve been worse”, “it’s Bush’s fault”, “the world almost ended”, etc. are the only answers the Democrats can come up with. They have no clue how to move forward, it’s time for a change.
So you do not believe that the world’s financial system nearly collapsed following September 15, 2008?
Basically all I’m arguing is that the “are you better” argument is not the end of story.
“So you do not believe that the world’s financial system nearly collapsed following September 15, 2008?”
You know and the Democrats know that one will never know how things would’ve played out but it’s a great punching bag for Obama to use as an excuse for his poor performance in his almost four years as president. Deep recessions are supposed to be followed by strong recoveries, but under Obama it has been followed by the slowest economic recovery in our history.
National debt just went over 16 trillion. We now have a new record number of food stamp recipients of over 46 million which comes out to 1 in 7 Americans. I can go on and on, the numbers are ugly. Now honestly to all of you Democrats, if a Republican was in office with these lousy stats you wall would be screaming that he had to go.
[i]”Only fools?[/i]
I invite you to my office. We will contact several of my 840 small business customers located throughout California and we will ask them if they are better off. We will ask them how they feel about all the employees they have had to let go over the last four years. More importantly to this conversation, we will ask them how they feel about their lack of certainty concerning the economy and why they are not hiring again.
We will ask them what they think about public-employee unions with workers retiring in their 50s with full pay pension and benefits for their rest of their lives. While we are at it, we will ask them how many paid days off they get, how many hours a week they work, and how many vacations to Europe they have taken. We will ask these things and ask them to tell them how they feel about the same for city, county, state and federal workers (aka, the taxpayer funded workforce) and the Democrat-union power that keeps them richly rewarded at the expense of just about all other public services.
We will ask them about their problems securing working capital after government bailed out the big banks and then hammered the small banks with increased regulations and restrictions… and how this combined with economic uncertainty from Obamacare, Algore-scare, and threats of greater taxation… caused their community banker to stop returning their calls.
We will ask them how they feel about the government bailing out GM and Wall Street and not main street.
Then we will call the 78 borrowers of mine that could not pay their small business loans. We will aks them how they feel about losing everything they worked for.
We will ask all of them what they think of Obamacare, and the regulatory environment, the cost of energy, and the tax rates they pay.
“Only fools?”
Only fools have their head buried up their love-fest for this incompetent President and his cast of equally inexperienced and unknowing clowns.
Only fools are ignoring the last four years that has led to an explosions of debt , the erosion of a culture that values: free enterprise, self-determination, hard word and success.
The biggest fools are our youth and the people that claim to advocate for them. They are being screwed big time. They are screaming support for the very man, the very Party, the very ideology that is mortgaging their futures. In their blind, professor-brianwashed, hormone-driven, enthusiasm for the cool Obama factor, they are ensuring that they are perpetually and chronically reliant on a Greece-style moocher-looter political co-dependency system.
We have four-year terms for a reason. Obama made commitment after commitment to get elected, and he has failed on every one of them.
He is in way over his head.
He is an empty chair.
Time to grow up, stop acting like fools, and elect a boring and competent President to help lead us back to the greatness we deserve.
I am better off than I was four years ago.
My children, young adults, are better off than they were four years ago in terms of job prospects.
My business is better off than it was four years ago.
Millions of American are better off than they were four years ago due to changes in the health insurance laws and regulations.
In my opinion, the nation is better off than it was four years ago by many measures.
Al Qaeda is definitely not better off than it was four years ago.
“My children, young adults, are better off than they were four years ago in terms of job prospects.”
Really? Maybe YOUR kids are, but nationally Forbes says it’s quite a different story:
“About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.
Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.”
Jeff Boone: “Time to grow up, stop acting like fools, and elect a boring and competent President to help lead us back to the greatness we deserve.”
Yeah, like George W…
Oops…been there, done that.
[i]National debt just went over 16 trillion.[/i]
There is a bipartisan process in place to deal with the national debt and the deficits. Creation of that debt is a shared responsibility of both parties. Gradual reduction is their shared responsibility as well.
[i]We now have a new record number of food stamp recipients of over 46 million which comes out to 1 in 7 Americans.
[/i]
Yes, we are still slowly coming out of recession. That number will go down as the economy grows.
[i]Deep recessions are supposed to be followed by strong recoveries, but under Obama it has been followed by the slowest economic recovery in our history.[/i]
I invite you to look at the pace of recovery from the Great Depression. I believe your statement is incorrect. The recession we are emerging from is the worst since that Great Depression.
“Jeff Boone: “Time to grow up, stop acting like fools, and elect a boring and competent President to help lead us back to the greatness we deserve.”
Yeah, like George W…
Oops…been there, done that.”
We’ve already been there, done that with Carter and unfortunately we went there again.
Mark, W was boring, but not competent. His resume was almost as thin as Obama’s except for his experience as governor of Texas.
Let’s stop doing the Bush thing please. It is old and tired. We are not electing Bush. Romney is not Bush. Romney and Ryan and a much stronger ticket than Obama Biden if you care about the economic strength of this country.
By every measure that we should care about at this point in time, Obama has been a dismal failure.
“Deep recessions are supposed to be followed by strong recoveries, but under Obama it has been followed by the slowest economic recovery in our history.
I invite you to look at the pace of recovery from the Great Depression. I believe your statement is incorrect. The recession we are emerging from is the worst since that Great Depression.”
Not according to Forbes:
“Deep recessions are supposed to be followed by strong recoveries, but, under Obama, the worst recession since the 1930s has been followed by the slowest economic recovery in the history of the republic. In a very real sense, there has been no recovery at all—things are still getting worse.”
Rusty: “We’ve already been there, done that with Carter and unfortunately we went there again”
Name a republican administration in the past 20 years that has brought us strong economic growth and an improvement in the lives of the middle class and poor? How many jobs each month were we losing during the 8 years of the second Bush administration? What was the economy like during Daddy Bush’s four years? Go on, tell me again how great the republicans have been when they were in the White House. I’m not saying that the Democrats are perfect, or that President Obama is the greatest man to ever hold the position. I am saying that he is a far sight better than the man who was there the previous 8 years, and will do far less harm than the alternative.
Jeff: Can you say Citizen’s United?
I will never vote for another republican president until the current Supreme Court Majority has retired. Mitt Romney will devastate our future if he is elected.
rusty: I don’t see how Forbes makes that analysis, since the Great Depression — which was marked by two sharp recessions — lasted from 1929 to almost 1940.
Jeff: [i]Let’s stop doing the Bush thing please.[/i]
Then Republicans should stop asking if we were better off than we were four years ago — when Bush was president.
[i]We are not electing Bush. Romney is not Bush.
[/i]
Like Bush, his fiscal policies don’t add up. Like Bush, his proposals would likely expand the deficit and the debt. Unless, of course, he doesn’t mean what he says. Which, given Romney’s character and track record, seems quite possible.
He’s also got the same foreign policy advisers that Bush had. Like Bush, his foreign policy would be a disaster. Romney is very similar to Bush.
Jeff Boone: “Let’s stop doing the Bush thing please. It is old and tired”
The Bush/Chaney administration was the most incompetent administration in our modern history. Rape and Pillage is how I would describe their approach to the job. You don’t get to ignore that atrocity. The fact that in four years President Obama has brought us back to any level of economic recover after what he inherited is an accomplishment, especially as the congressional republicans have stated that their only priority has been to make him a one term President.
Mitt and Paul will simply continue the Republicans march to failure that we have witnessed in the past 20 years. They are great at putting money in their own pockets, and those of their friends, but have destroyed the middle class and our economic future. The Democrats really aren’t a whole lot better, but they are better.
From Tim Egan in the NYT “Bill Clinton went right to the firing argument in his summary of the Republican view: “We left him a total mess, he didn’t clean it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.’ ”
Forward or back that is the question?
Bush and Obama were both disastrous for the US economy. Both ran up terrible deficits, though Obama did so at a faster rate. Now that we recognize that these disastrous deficits are killing our economy, we need to put someone in place who can deal with them. It is Obama whose deficit spending is similar to Bush.
[quote]the critical question will not be are you better off now than four years ago, but rather, under whose policies and leadership do you think you will be better off under, in another four years.
[/quote]
[quote]By every measure that we should care about at this point in time, Obama has been a dismal failure.[/quote]
I am in complete agreement with Robb’s viewpoint on this question.
In assessing one’s well being there are many aspect of one’s life other than just the number of dollars in the bank account. True. that is an important parameter, but it is only one. To me there are many measures that we should care about at this point in time in which I, my children, all of my patients, and many but of course not all of my acquaintances and their children will be far better off under Obama/Biden. I’ll list:
1) Anyone with insurance and a child between the ages of 22 and 26. Especially if, as I do, that child has a life
threatening illness. It will not be either emotionally or financially beneficial to us if her health care were to
bankrupt me as I approach retirement.
2) Anyone whose health insurance is job dependent
3) Anyone who has a pre existing condition ( my own families example, non of us would be insurable due to
managed but “pre existing conditions”, yes, all three of us.
4) Anyone who happens to be gay and wants all the same civil right afforded to straight couples, such as
hospital visitation rights. Likewise those whose love of country is such that they want to serve in the military
but were previously denied that right because of whom they personally love.
5) Anyone who obtains their contraception through their health plan
6) Anyone who depends on Planned Parenthood for their preventive health screenings
7) Anyone who was brought to this country as a child, has worked hard, been successful, played by all the
rules and now cannot get the benefits of that hard work
8) Any woman who works the same hours as the man working beside her and makes less money. Can anyone
really tell me why my daughter should make less than my son for exactly the same work ?
9) The 1/2 the population that the Republicans want to tell what medical procedures they must, and what medical procedures that they cannot have done.
There is a long list of factor far beyond just the current numbers that we all “should care about”.
Mark: [i]Name a republican administration in the past 20 years that has brought us strong economic growth and an improvement in the lives of the middle class and poor[/i]
Reagan.
[i]Jeff: Can you say Citizen’s United?[/i]
Mark: can you say… [url]http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php[/url]
Look, I agree with you that big dollar donors are corrupting the political process, so why did you not complain about Soros and Union money propping up Democrats and promoting a left political agenda?
At leats corporation are tax entities. They deserve representation in the political process, do they not? Unions are not taxed, yet historically they have spent much MORE money influencing the political process.
[quote]I invite you to look at the pace of recovery from the Great Depression. I believe your statement is incorrect. [/quote]What really brought us out of the Great Depression was a little event known as WWII. Don’t think I’d suggest using that recovery mechanism.
Jeff
[quote]At leats corporation are tax entities. They deserve representation in the political process, do they not? Unions are not taxed, yet historically they have spent much MORE money influencing the political process.
[/quote]
On what are you basing the assertion that “tax entities” “deserve representation in the political process?
I note that you did not use the words “have a right to” but rather the word “deserve”. I have truly never considered the possibility that being a “tax entity” gives such an entity any special rights or considerations.
[i]Mark West: “Name a republican administration in the past 20 years that has brought us strong economic growth and an improvement in the lives of the middle class and poor
Jeff Boone: “Reagan.”
[/i]
Jeff: I am happy to debate you on the economic prowess (or lack thereof) of Ronald Reagan, who I like to call the architect of the destruction of the University of California, but as he left office in 1989 you have to use some fuzzy math to make him fit. Since Reagan left office, we have had 12 years of Republican administrations and 12 years of Democratic ones. On the economic front, your side doesn’t look so good. On the foreign policy front, your side is an abomination. On the Supreme Court? I rest my case.
I watched most of the DNC Convention (as much as I could without throwing a shoe through my TV). There was a very LARGE contrast between Clinton and Obama. Clinton moved moderates toward the Democrats, and Obama scared them back away.
Here is the difference… one that my left-leaning friends are apparently blind to.
Clinton both slams, and demonstrates respect and acceptance, of the competing worldview. The words of Clinton sting like does the feeling of losing a game, but with the expectation that he understands you will come back to play again.
Obama demonstrates that he doesn’t even understand competing worldviews. Obama demonstrates that he is myopic and shallow in his ideological comprehension and vocabulary. Obama’s words don’t just sting. They cause the anger of rejection. Obama’s words are disrespectful to conservatives. He is dismissive of their ideas… as if they don’t even have a place in national dialog.
Not only does this cause the divisiveness and polarization we see amped up today, but it is also turing off more and more moderates that have that nagging “Obama is incomplete” and “Obama is in over his head” feeling.
The guy has just not had enough real life experience to understand. He does not “GET IT”. He needs to go away.
Obama is like a boat. The happiest days are the day you acquire it, and the day you get rid of it.
“Obama is like a boat. The happiest days are the day you acquire it, and the day you get rid of it.”
LOL, that’s a perfect analogy though many weren’t happy the day they got it. (In their case it was left in their driveway by a relative)