Just answer the question...

An article in The Economist titled “Private Effort Common Good” addresses the frequently asked question: “is America better off than it was four years ago?” The article focuses on the speeches made during the Democratic Convention and reiterates the Obama Administration’s tactic of avoiding answering the question and instead attacking Mitt Romney at every possible chance, even going as far as literally lying to make Romney look like a terrible person and presidential candidate. So since the Democratic Party refuses to correctly address the question, let’s do that here, keeping in mind Prof. Eubanks explanation that a good government is one with which people prosper.

Cutting the national debt in half was one of Obama’s pledges before getting elected in 2008, yet under his administration the debt has risen so high that, when asked, he did not even know exactly what it was (or maybe it is just that he really doesn’t care what it is). By the way Obama, it’s over $16 trillion, and, thanks to technology, easy to track—just ask the Republicans about their clock.

Another promise Obama made was to reduce the unemployment rate. Currently, the unemployment rate, including the underemployed, is right around 15%. This number does not even include the people who have given up on finding employment altogether! Yet instead of taking responsibility for this unacceptable reality, his administration wants to focus on ripping Romney apart over the statement he made regarding the 47% of citizens on public assistance. Well guess what, Mr. Obama, many of those people would not be on welfare if it wasn’t for your administration’s policies and strategies that have worsened the economic situation, rather than improving it.

Concerning the issue of private sector job growth—another of Obama’s supposed goals—using government force to prevent “shovel ready” private sector projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, achieves the exact opposite result.

So over the last four years have we seen more or fewer people prosper? With an unemployment/underemployment rate of about 15%, a national debt so high that bankruptcy is actually a possibility, and 47% of the population on public assistance, the answer is clearly fewer. So there’s your answer, Mr. President. The country is not better off than it was four years ago. In fact, it is substantially worse and thanks to your administration’s policies it is almost without a doubt going to get even worse in the coming years, because the national debt is so high that we have no choice, but to implement a plan to massively reduce federal government spending over the next 10 years, which will cause another rise in unemployment. And to add to this problem, with the most likely end of the Bush tax cuts and other

“nickel-and-diming” income tax policies, every worker will have less disposable income which will lead to even higher unemployment and slower economic growth than what we have been experiencing over the last several years. Bravo.