Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Review & Outlook: Negative $4,019 - WSJ.com
This seems to answer the "are you better off?" question very clearly...
The Wall Street Journal is telling this story:
"In January 2009, the month President Obama entered the Oval Office and shortly before he signed his stimulus spending bill, median household income was $54,983. By June 2012, it had tumbled to $50,964, adjusted for inflation. (See the chart nearby.) That's $4,019 in lost real income, a little less than a month's income every year.
Unfair, you say, because Mr. Obama inherited a recession? Well, even if you start the analysis when the recession ended in June 2009, the numbers are dismal. Three years after the economy hit its trough, median household income is down $2,544, or nearly 5%.
Add the authors: 'The overall decline since June 2009 was larger than the 2.6 percent decline that occurred' during the recession from December 2007 to June 2009. For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession."
