Contributors

Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Perennial Question

The question always asked when an incumbent president is running for a second term is, "Are we better off than we were four years ago?" Though the economic numbers are up and down week to week, but they've been on a pretty steady upward trajectory for a long time now.

For example, Amazon is planning to hire 50,000 workers for the Christmas season, and will keep thousands of those workers permanently. Macy's, Walmart, Target, Kohl's and other big retailers are also expected to hire hundreds of thousands of workers. The Fox Business News report says that hiring during the 2012 season is expected to reach the highest level in at least five years. Which means that demand, consumer expectations, disposable income are all up, and that increased activity may well snowball.

Real estate closures have continued a steady downward pace; we're now at the lowest rate since Q4 2007. Housing starts are up and the real estate market is starting to come back. Housing values are starting to come back, with the Q3 2012 posting the largest increase since 2006.

The stock market has been hovering near record high territory for a while now, nearly double what it was at the start of Obama's first term.

Unemployment is coming down steadily. Romney claims he'll reduce unemployment to 6.1% by 2016, but that's the number that the CBO says will happen given Obama's policies.

Britain's GDP is up, as the UK exits a double-dip recession. This should help the US economy as well, because when our trading partners do well we American exports also improve.

The British double dip is especially instructive. It was caused by budgetary belt-tightening, the exact course Republicans recommended the United States follow. President Obama was able to stave off the worst, but if Republicans hadn't stymied his programs the economy would have improved even more.


Since Romney's and Ryan's economic plan is a rehash of Bush's failed policies of lower taxes on the rich, eliminating regulations on businesses that are already playing fast and loose with the rules, and more spending on defense, with a dash of heartless "let Detroit fail" and insane "let's bomb Iran and Syria," it's clear that another four years of Obama would mean steady growth, while Romney would simply dig another deep hole and bury us in it.

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