Better Off

Republicans ask us whether we are better off today than we were four years ago. How can they dare ask such a question? The answer, of course, is "We're a whole lot better off than we were four years ago!"

September 2008 --- It was the end of the Bush era and a complete disaster with little outlook for improvement. The Dow was teetering at 11400 and was at 8000 by the time Obama took office. People were losing their jobs and their homes. It looked like we were heading into the worst depression since the Great One and that this one might actually be as great. We were bogged down in two foreign wars. And the national debt had already climbed to ridiculous levels. 

Obama's first year was a continuation of the Bush budget and a continuation of the slide toward disaster. However, Obama's policies had turned many of these factors around by his second year. He could have done more, perhaps, if the Senate had not been hostage to the 60/40 rule for passing anything significant. Then, by the time the Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, they made it clear they were not going to cooperate with Obama and were going to make him a one-term president by sacrificing the people of the nation. In spite of all that, employment has risen steadily throughout the last three years, housing has been somewhat dealt with, and the Dow is back to 13500. We are out of Iraq and there is a plan to leave Afganistan.

We are clearly better off than we had a right to think we might be. No one is entirely happy with where we are. There is much more to be done, but a return to Republican economics is the last thing in the world that might make things better.

While we're at it, let's consider the National Debt. Republicans constantly harangue Obama about increasing the debt. But if you actually look at the debt graph for the last fifty years, what you find is huge increases in the debt under Reagan (the god of Republican economics) getting even worse under the first Bush. Clinton actually managed to bring the debt under some degree of control and then the second Bush shot it upwards remarkably. Obama inherited a $9 trillion debt with interest in a time when debt reduction would have created an even worse economic condition.