America’s Economy Before and After Obama: A Study in Failed Policy


If physical appearances count, Mr. Obama has aged rapidly during these past eight years.  But far more importantly, the America that Obama inherited looked different from the one he is reluctantly handing off to Donald Trump.

“The president said the U.S. ‘is indisputably better off’ because of him, and those who voted for Trump “are better off than they were when I came into office for the most part,” CNS News reported.

Obama can make any claim he wishes.  So let’s look at some specifics.

Breitbart News put President Obama’s claim to the test using eight key metrics of economic health: the federal debt, the gross domestic product annual growth rate, the unemployment rate, labor participation rates, median annual income, home ownership rates, health care costs, and reliance upon food stamps.

Six of these eight metrics show that Americans are demonstrably worse off in November 2016 than they were in January 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated.

The two metrics which show nominal improvement–the unemployment rate and median annual income–come with significant caveats.

Let’s be generous and give him the two metrics where improvement was shown, ignoring the caveats.  That means improvement was seen in two out of eight measures of the people’s economic health.  That’s a score of 25%, which yields a grade of F by virtually any scoring standard.  When it comes to accomplishments in bettering the economic lives of Americans, Obama flunked.

Here is just a sample of these eight criteria.

The growth of the federal debt illustrates utter irresponsibility.

The federal debt has doubled from $9.99 trillion at the end of FY 2008 (September 30, 2008) to $19.95 trillion at the end of FY 2016 (September 30, 2016), according to usgovernmentspending.com. That $9.96 trillion increase in Obama’s eight years is about equal to the $9.99 trillion in debt racked up in the 219 years from the founding of the republic in 1789 to 2008.

Economic growth was the worst since Herbert Hoover, and we all know what economic calamity befell the nation during his presidency.

President Obama has overseen the worst economic growth of any President since Herbert Hoover. He’s the only President since Hoover who has not had a single year that saw an annual growth of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that reached or exceed three percent, as CNS News reported…

Median Household Income might appear to have improved, and it did, in nominal terms.  However, after adjusting for inflation, thereby adjusting for what that income would purchase, things don’t look as good.

When President Obama took office in January 2009, median household income, in nominal terms, was slightly above $50,000. According to Sentier Research, median household annual income in September, 2016, the most recent period for which data is available, was $57,616.

“In real dollar terms, the median annual income is 1.5% lower (-$884) than its interim high in January 2008 but well off its low in August 2011,” Sentier Research found.

The last one we’ll look at is healthcare costs since that was such a major part of Obama’s domestic agenda.

Health insurance rates, both for employer-sponsored programs and Obamacare, increased significantly between January 2009 and November 2016.

“In 2008, the average employer-sponsored family plan cost a total of $12,680, with employees footing $3,354 of the bill, according to Kaiser data. By 2016, the cost of the average employer family plan was up to $18,142 for the year, with workers picking up $5,277 of the tab,” as Time.com reported.

That’s dreadful.  Much more “help” from Mr. Obama and nobody other than members of Congress and those in the military will have healthcare.

Mr. Obama’s economic policies failed.  But that should not come as any surprise.  When the foundational beliefs are wrong, the results will be poor.  Mr. Obama opposes free-market solutions to economic problems, preferring the controlling hand of government as the economic decision-maker.  Therefore, his economic program was doomed before it even was implemented.  And doing a better job of implementing a bad idea would not have helped.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Obama’s physical appearance shows a man who has aged rapidly these past eight years.  Even worse, neither he nor the country have much of anything positive to show for it.

Source:  Breitbart



Share

54 Comments

Leave a Reply

Pin It on Pinterest