| Two years ago, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president of the United States . Are you better off today than you were two years ago? Numbers don't lie, and here are the data on the impact he has had on the lives of Americans:
| January 2009 | TODAY | % chg | Source |
| Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S. | $1.83 | $3.104 | 69.6% | 1 |
| Crude oil, European Brent (barrel) | $43.48 | $99.02 | 127.7% | 2 |
| Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel) | $38.74 | $91.38 | 135.9% | 2 |
| Gold: London (per troy oz.) | $853.25 | $1,369.50 | 60.5% | 2 |
| Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL | $3.56 | $6.33 | 78.1% | 2 |
| Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL | $9.66 | $13.75 | 42.3% | 2 |
| Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. fob | $13.37 | $35.39 | 164.7% | 2 |
| Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall | 7.6% | 9.4% | 23.7% | 3 |
| Unemployment rate, blacks | 12.6% | 15.8% | 25.4% | 3 |
| Number of unemployed | 11,616,000 | 14,485,000 | 24.7% | 3 |
| Number of fed. employees, ex. military (curr = 12/10 prelim) | 2,779,000 | 2,840,000 | 2.2% | 3 |
| Real median household income (2008 v 2009) | $50,112 | $49,777 | -0.7% | 4 |
| Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10) | 31,983,716 | 43,200,878 | 35.1% | 5 |
| Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10) | 7,526,598 | 9,193,838 | 22.2% | 6 |
| Number of long-term unemployed | 2,600,000 | 6,400,000 | 146.2% | 3 |
| Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009) | 13.2% | 14.3% | 8.3% | 4 |
| People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009) | 39,800,000 | 43,600,000 | 9.5% | 4 |
| U.S. rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings | 5 | 9 | n/a | 10 |
| Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10) | 29.9 | 23.5 | -21.4% | 11 |
| Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date) | 140 | 164 | 17.1% | 12 |
| U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate | 89.76 | 82.03 | -8.6% | 2 |
| U.S. money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim) | 1,575.1 | 1,865.7 | 18.4% | 13 |
| U.S. money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim) | 8,310.9 | 8,852.3 | 6.5% | 13 |
| National debt, in trillions | $10.627 | $14.052 | 32.2% | 14 |
Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history. Over 27 times as fast! Metaphorically, speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane 27 times faster . . . it would be doing 1,755 MPH! This is a disaster! Sources: (1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. of Labor; (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC; (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury |
Posts
14 comments:
"Are you better off today than you were two years ago?"
Yes, he's supposed to just wave his magic wand and 30 years of conservative malfeasance will just disappear.
Are you better off today than you were 3 years ago?
5 years ago?
10 years ago?
Unless you're a CEO or sitting in on the board of directors, probably not.
And if you keep falling for this obvious bull, right now will seem like the good old days.
Numbers don't lie, but idiotic people lie by abusing numbers.
All of the commodity price increases make sense given that the market contracted so much as a result of the recession. The rebound (thanks Obama!) will naturally raise prices back to more natural levels.
Most of the other numbers are similar. Median income went down from 2008 to 2009? I wonder why....? Could it be that Bush's recession threw tons of people out of work, which would naturally cause lower household incomes? Hmmmm....
Of course, they don't look at the facts concerning the W presidency, during which both total jobs and median income went down. Not a record to be proud of.
Two years into Reagan's first term, unemployment was 10 percent.
High unemployment means fewer people are working. That means fewer people are paying taxes. That means revenue will go down. That means deficits will go up.
We can fix this by raising taxes, but the Republicans have made that impossible. The only other solution is to spend money to stimulate the economy.
The Republicans in Congress have filibustered nearly all of Obama's attempts to fix the economy.
I guess the only thing left to do is complain, but you're complaining about the wrong people.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics, indeed. I love how the citations aren't links--they're things like "Wall Street Journal" or "FDIC", like you're ever going to verify those numbers.
But if you want to play that game, let's just look at the first one. Yes, gas prices were under $2 a gallon in January '09--their rock-bottom minimum after skyrocketing for all of the 2000s, to a peak of $4 a gallon in mid-2008.
Just a reminder: this was all caused by unscrupulous people who put a little short-term profit ahead of their own, and the country's financial security.
The largest banks, hedge funds, the regulators in charge of them -- all wanted fast money, and the numbers in that list are the direct result.
Gas: 1.83 in 2009? Not where I lived.
Stopped reading there.
Agree with last Anon post: where I lived the price of a gallon of gas in 2009 was closer to $3; I haven't seen gas at a $1.89 per gallon in many many years.
So what's going on is that this rightwing thinktank is either: a)*lying* and just making up junk numbers (which will satisfy dumbed down conservatives who don't bother to read or fact check), or b) the rightwing think tank is quoting the absolute lowest price of gas anywhere in the USA in early 2009 (which I find doubtful, even so) and then quoting the absolute highest price of gas in some other part of the USA right now. In other words, the usual rightwing *false equivalency* at work... essentially meaningless.
Typical. I'm sure that this makes Fox "nooz" viewers very happy though, bc it accords with Glenn Beck demands that they think and believe.
Gas prices hit a record high in the summer of 2008, then crashed around October, right as the economy went off the rails. By June, they were already up to levels we're used to seeing.
$1.85 gas existed for about a week -- how much more blatant can they get with the spin doctoring?
left-winged losers.
left-winged losers.
Ladies and gentleman, another example of the stunning right wing intellect!
This has to rank up there with "keep the government away from my medicare" and "is our children learning?"
Seen as a response -
*****
"I had to stop at the very first 'statistic' below, regarding gas prices. Please consult the graph at the following link, which paints the true picture of gasoline costs over a longer period.
http://c0002954.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/average-us-gas-price-2003-2009.jpg
You're busted..!
That aside, how often do I have to remind the 'conservatives' here that we don't have a nationalized oil industry and that Obama won't have any impact on prices? Prices for crude are set by the markets based on factors outside of who is President and involve worldwide consumption. Meanwhile, at home, US oil companies are enjoying record profits... so tell me, just who's at fault for emptying your pockets faster when you go for a fill-up..? ; ) Now, apply this reality to all commodity prices and you get the larger picture.
Same thing for the unemployment trend - I already pointed that one out to you, so you may want to look at that one instead of pushing the same old disingenuous story. ( http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/05/jobs-contract-16th-straight-month.html ). Busted again.
Same for house prices - http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2009/1/22/saupload_09_01_21c_existing_home_prices_and_income.png - look how the trend runs. If anything, the pre-Obama drop has now stabilized. Busted again!
Meanwhile, check out the unemployment rates when Reagan was in office - http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/rr-unemployment.jpg
Then, check out average hourly earnings during the Reagan years - http://static.businessinsider.com/image/4bbcb53d7f8b9a2e1beb0c00-590-/real-average-earnings-have-not-increased-in-50-years.jpg
Statistics are funny... looks like Obama and Reagan are neck-and-neck as regards their effectiveness!"
*****
I just finished forwarding this garbage to MyRightWingDad when I realized he'd already posted it. Amazing how these emails get around so quickly. Quick caveat: My Dad's fwd was prefaced by the fact that it came from the Dick Morris' website. Now, there's a source you can trust!!
That's funny. The references are given for the statistics but they are fake? It must be due to the vast conservative conspiracy of which all of those agencies are a part.
Here in Colorado, gasoline is currently almost $1.00/gallon (>31%) lower than the highest prices in the country. (I paid $2.90 yesterday) The local news is attributing that to our proximity to the Bakken oil field and our proximity to refineries. So, it's not just the crude price which determines gasoline market prices.
We also have 2 wonderful pieces of legislation on the books in Colorado that have protected us from our tax and spend legislators. The first, TABOR, which was passed as an amendment to our state constitution in 1992, limits the growth of government's confiscation and spending of our money to the rate of inflation and any confiscation above the inflation rate has to be refunded to the taxpayers. In addition, TABOR requires that any proposed tax increase has to be voted on by the citizens of the state (what a novel idea). The 2nd piece of legislation denies non US citizens from access to state government hand out programs and other non emergency services. It's a good thing that this 2nd law was passed in 2006, before Obama's litigious maniacs took over the justice dept. or we'd be sued like Arizona.
As far as oil company profits go. I ran the numbers, from SEC income reports, last week for an argument with my liberal buddy. The average tax rate (taxes paid / net income) for the largest 9 US oil companies is 43%. Compare that to the high tech sector (Dell, HP, IBM, Apple) which averages around 24%? Here's the data:
The top 7 US oil companies:
Company, income (B), taxes (B), pct
Exxon, $53, $21, 40%
Conoco Phillips, $18, $8, 47%
Chevron, $27, $13, 49%
Anadarko, $2, $1, 46%
Devon Energy, $4, $1, 32%
Occidental, $7, $3, 41%
Marathon, $5, $3, 47%
Totals, $115, $50, 43%
30 years of conservative malfeasance? Where have you been living for the last 30 years? Republicans, and only some Republicans are conservatives, have controlled Congress (remember they're the people that are proscribed with the power to confiscate our money and decide how it is spent?) for only 10 of the last 30 years (33%). It's quite enlightening to graph the spending with the party that controls Congress and you see which party has the spenders.
gasbuddy.com is an awesome web site where you can find the cheapest gas prices to your proximity. All of the prices are reported by people that purchase gas on any given day. They also have a neat little graphing utility where you can plot the gas price over time for most large cities in America. And, yes, in January 2009 gas was in the $1.80 price range and has increased ever since. http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24
Post a Comment