PrintApril 14, 2009
Are You Better Off Today?
In his closing remarks during the final presidential debate of 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked the American people: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"Things are moving a more rapid clip, so perhaps it would be appropriate today to ask if we are better off today than we before control of Congress changed hands in the last two years of the Bush administration and a new president was inaugurated last January.The EconomyOne common measure of economic well-being is the unemployment rate. During the first seven years of George W. Bush's presidency, 2001 - 2007, the rates were, respectively: 4.7, 5.8, 6.0, 5.5, 5.1, 4.6, and 4.6 -- all in the low/normal range historically speaking. By the last quarter of 2008, the unemployment rate had crept up to a still tolerable 6.9 percent; but by March 2009, it stood at a whopping 8.5 percent. Better off?Another helpful measure of how well our economy is doing -- or not -- is the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), both...(Read Full Article)
