Michael Snyder:
Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an “economic recovery”, but the truth is that thingshave not gotten better under Obama. Compared to when he first took office, a smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has been absolutely shredded. If we are really in the middle of an “economic recovery”, why is the homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years? Why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House? Why has the national debt gotten more than 6 trillion dollars larger during the Obama era? Obama should not be “taking credit” for anything when it comes to the economy. In fact, he should be deeply apologizing to the American people.
And of course Obama is being delusional if he thinks that he is actually “running the economy”.  The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system than he does. But the mainstream media loves to fixate on the presidency, so presidents always get far too much credit or far too much blame for economic conditions.
But if you do want to focus on “the change” that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy. That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality. The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president…
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobsthat have been “created” in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.
#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.
#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.
#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 36.6 weeks.
#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” soared by an astounding 8,332,000. That far exceeds any previous four year total.
#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#9 When Obama was elected, the homeownership rate in the United States was 67.5 percent. Today, it is 65.0 percent. That is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.
#10 When Obama entered the White House, the mortgage delinquency rate was 7.85 percent. Today, it is 9.72 percent.
#11 In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 268 billion dollars. Last year, it was 315 billion dollars.
#12 When Obama first became president, 12.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs. Today, only 11.9 million Americans have manufacturing jobs.
The middle class was losing ground long before anyone had even heard of Barack Obama. Wage stagnation, the loss of work-related pensions and benefits, predatory lending practices, skyrocketing healthcare costs, systemic corporate and financial malfeasance, lobbyists and big-money special interests buying influence wholesale, tax breaks subsidizing the off-shoring of millions of American jobs—all of this crap was well established long before anyone had even heard of Barack Obama. Truth be told, public disgust with many of these things is one of the main reasons he got elected in the first place.
At the point Obama was elected the economy had been brought to the brink of collapse. Unemployment was skyrocketing. So was debt. It looked as if the entire world might plunge into another Great Depression.
So, is it better now, or what?
@Greg: Is it? What did we get for our $6.7 trillion dollars? Considering it was failed liberal social engineering that tanked the economy in the first place, who would expect more liberal social engineering to improve the situation?
@Greg:
No. It is most assuredly not better, as the 30 plus data points show.
Reagan took only 18 months to turn the economy around when he inherited the disasterous economy under Carter. Clinton pushed NAFTA and socialist governmental policies push jobs offshore. Government debt went from 10.8 trillion prior to Obamanomics to the almost 17 trillion it is today. Democrat rule over Detroit brought that city to third world status. Over 43 million Americans are on foodstamps out of a population of just over 300 million. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on cronyism in the form of green energy boondoggles like bankrupt Solyndra. Obama continues to stonewall job formation and US energy independence by blocking the Keystone pipeline. Taxes are going up, further stagnating our economy.
So unequivocally things are worse under Obama and his marxist policies.
The headline should read “33 reasons why Obama was re-elected” or “The Democrats plan 33” or “33 reasons/47 % of the Democrats electoral”
Think how bad things would be if obama hadn’t done so much to save the economy. LOL
If a Republican were President now, liberals would be screaming about how bad things are. Under GWB unemployment was 6% and dropping and the media were still telling us things were awful. When new job numbers would come out the media would question the kind of jobs and what the pay was for them. Now that curiosity is pretty much gone.
If the media were fair Obama would have about 10% support.