Are You Better Off?
November 2, 2011
"Well, you know, I think that we are better off now than we would have been if I hadn't taken all the steps that we took."
—President Obama, interview with local CBS News affiliate, November 1, 2011
A miserable few years
- Historical Comparison: Reuters recently reported that the Misery Index, an economic indicator that uses unemployment and inflation rates to gauge the economy’s well-being, is now at a 28-year high. As stated by CNBC.com, “When it comes to measuring the combination of unemployment and inflation, it doesn’t get much more miserable than this.”
Pessimism on the rise
- Consumer Confidence Plunges: A measure of Americans’ optimism about the economy and their personal financial situations – recently dropped to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years during October. According to CBS News, “Americans say they feel worse about the economy than they have since the depths of the Great Recession.”
- Fear about the Future: According to The Hill, “A resounding 69 percent of respondents said the country is ‘in decline,’ the survey found, while 57 percent predict today’s kids won’t live better lives than their parents. Additionally, 83 percent of voters indicated they’re either very or somewhat worried about the future of the nation, with 49 percent saying they’re ‘very worried.’”
- Difficulty Doing Business: According to the World Bank, “Doing Business” in the U.S. is getting considerably more difficult under the watch of the Obama Administration. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, “In 2007, the U.S. ranked third in the ‘ease of starting a business’ category. This year it ranks 13th. On the ‘paying taxes’ front we’ve dropped to 72nd place from 63rd. The cost of starting a business, measured as a percentage of per capita income, has doubled to 1.4% from 0.7% in 2007.”
Hard to imagine things being worse
- Standard of Living Falls at Record Pace: The Christian Science Monitor recently reported, “The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago.”
- Record Poverty: In 2010, 46.2 million Americans were in poverty. The number of Americans in poverty in 2010 is the largest number in the 52 years in which poverty estimates have been published by the Census Bureau. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million,” a rise of 8.1 percent in the past year.
- Housing Woes: A recent article from CNN Money did not offer much hope for change in the beleaguered housing market. The article notes, “According to Fiserv, a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6% by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35% below the peak reached in early 2006 and marking a triple dip in prices.”
- 32 Months: The number of consecutive months the unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent—the level the president said unemployment would never reach if the “stimulus” was approved. Prior to the enactment of the “stimulus,” unemployment had not been above 8 percent for this long since the Great Depression.
- Household Income Declines: According to an October report from Sentier Research, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, median annual household income has fallen significantly more during the economic recovery period from June 2009 to June 2011 than during the recession lasting from December 2007 to June 2009. During the recession, real median annual household income fell by 3.2 percent, from $55,309 in December 2007 to $53,518 in June 2009. During the economic recovery period, real median annual household income fell by an additional 6.7 percent, from $53,518 in June 2009 to $49,909 in June 2011.
- Weekly Earnings Falling During Recovery: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly earnings for employed workers—which actually grew during the recession—have declined since the president’s stimulus. Inflation adjusted weekly earnings grew by 3.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 when the recession began to the second quarter of 2009 when it ended. Since the end of the recession, weekly earnings have fallen by 2.3 percent under President Obama’s stimulus policies.
For additional information, contact:
The House Republican Conference Policy Office
