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Most Americans say they're worse off under Obama
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| Shakka |
The more things change...the more people pull their heads out of their collective ass. But to be fair, look at what it says about Reagan. People's opinions are fickle.
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Most Americans Say They’re Worse Off Under Obama, Poll Shows
2010-12-09 05:00:15.1 GMT
By Rich Miller
Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when President Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.
The survey, conducted Dec. 4-7, finds that 51 percent of respondents think their situation has deteriorated, compared with 35 percent who say they’re doing better. The balance isn’t sure. Americans have grown more downbeat about the country’s future in just the last couple of months, the poll shows. The pessimism cuts across political parties and age groups, and is common to both sexes.
The negative sentiment may cast a pall over the holiday shopping season, according to the poll. A plurality of those surveyed -- 46 percent -- expects to spend less this year than last; only 12 percent anticipate spending more. Holiday sales rose by just under a half percent last year after falling by almost 4 percent in 2008.
“It’s definitely different this year than it’s been,”
says poll respondent Larry Deyo, a 38-year-old father of two in Marlton, New Jersey. “I can’t really do too much with spending.” He says he lost his job at a kitchen and bath design center when the company closed, and he’s now working at a Home Depot Inc. store with a “significant decrease” in pay.
It was President Ronald Reagan who popularized the question, “Are you better off or worse off than you were four years ago” in his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter.
Past Presidents
Obama’s numbers in the poll, given the context of an economy that is struggling to recover from the longest recession since the Great Depression and the experience of past presidents, aren’t so bad.
As Reagan approached the end of his second year in office, his numbers were more negative than Obama’s in this survey. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in Oct. 1982, 61 percent of Americans said things were worse and 33 percent said they had improved. Reagan won re-election in a landslide in 1984. In the final months of George W. Bush’s presidency, as the financial crisis intensified, Americans said by a 2-to-1 margin that their financial situation had deteriorated, compared with a year earlier.
Americans in the poll also oppose Republican lawmakers’
calls to extend tax cuts for upper-income Americans beyond the end of 2010. Obama reluctantly agreed to a two-year extension of those cuts as part of a compromise package that also retained breaks for the middle class.
Sixty-six percent say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That’s up from 62 percent who felt that way in an October poll and is the worst reading since the Bloomberg National Poll began in September 2009.
Unemployment Is Top Issue
Unemployment and jobs are the most important issue facing the country now, the poll finds. Fifty percent of those surveyed identified joblessness as their top concern, twice the number who chose the federal budget deficit and government spending.
Members of Obama’s Democratic Party are about evenly split on the question of whether they are doing better than two years ago. Republicans and political independents are more downbeat.
More than 60 percent of Republicans say they’re doing worse under Obama. Just over 50 percent of political independents feel that way, compared with a third who say their situation has improved.
Obama, 49, inherited an economy in deep crisis. While it has started to recover -- showing 3.2 percent growth over the past year -- unemployment has remained high. Joblessness rose to a seven-month high of 9.8 percent in November, significantly above the 7.4 percent rate that prevailed in December 2008, the month before Obama was inaugurated.
Stock Market Gains
The stock market has performed much better. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index has risen more than 50 percent since Obama was sworn in Jan. 20, 2009.
“After looking at all the politicians and all the policies, they’re not geared toward Americans. They’re geared toward the corporations,” says Ken Cmar, a 45-year-old poll respondent residing in Crystal River, Florida.
He says his business aligning wheels on vehicles has shrunk as trucking companies and municipalities with bus fleets have cut back. “It’s that trickle-down economic thing and I’m at the wrong end,” Cmar says.
By age group, only the young -- those under 35, a core constituency for Obama in his presidential bid -- consider themselves better off than they were two years ago.
‘Naivete of Youth’
The young often show a greater “sense that things are getting better for them than we see for older respondents,”
says J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm that conducted the nationwide survey. “Maybe that is the sweet naivete of youth or, more likely, they are building their careers and things are, in fact, getting better for them.”
While Democrats and political independents agree that unemployment is the top issue, Republicans are about evenly split between jobs and the budget deficit, which totaled $1.29 trillion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
“The deficit is outrageous,” says poll respondent Lisa Brandel, a 36-year-old free-lance writer in Bellefontaine, Ohio. “But the root of the problem is that we need more jobs.
If we get better employment, more people will be paying taxes and the deficit will go down.”
On the tax cuts, the survey conducted before, during and after the negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans this week, shows that only a third of Americans support keeping the lower rates for the highest earners.
Tax Cuts
Another third say they want only the tax cuts for the middle class to be extended, while more than a fourth say all the tax cuts should be allowed to expire Dec. 31, as scheduled.
The agreement Obama announced Dec. 6 would temporarily sustain the tax reductions for all income levels. The president said the compromise was needed to break a deadlock with Republicans who vowed to block tax cuts for middle-income Americans if those for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 weren’t extended, too.
The Bloomberg National survey of 1,000 U.S. adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
For Related News and Information:
Top government stories: TOP GOV
Political stories: TNI POL
Stories about the White House: TNI EXE GOV Calculate your net worth: NWC Stories about taxes: NI TAXES
--Editors: Max Berley, Mark McQuillan.
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| People feel they’re worse off after economic collapse than they were before? No way! |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
People feel they’re worse off after economic collapse than they were before? No way! |
Deep, man! |
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| Zharen |
Obummer may have an inherited a slump economy and two wars, but the additional 0.3% unemployment rate has happened under his watch. That's not exactly the type of change I wanted.
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Deep, man! |
OK, how's this:
americans are a myopic, impatient bunch of children who want everything yesterday and aren't willing to pay for it. they're more than happy to hold 2 completely opposing viewpoints which they'll frequently express in consecutive sentences (really loved the tax debate, republicans always so concerned about the debt/deficit, but hey, let's have those tax cuts continue, party on wayne!). most couldn't grasp the seriousness of the crisis, but they're sure it was wrong to bail those banks out. oh, the economic contraction is terrible and obama has been a failure, but we shouldn't have bailed those banks out! hey, let's start an entire political movement based upon how evil government is and show the rest of the world what a bunch of ignorant hicks we are, woohoo!
better? :conf: |
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| ziptnf |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zharen
Obummer may have an inherited a slump economy and two wars, but the additional 0.3% unemployment rate has happened under his watch. That's not exactly the type of change I wanted. |
:stongue:
Why do you think that unemployment rose? He certainly didn't go out there and take away money from businesses so that they'd fire people. Maybe it could have something to do with the economic meltdown that has been happening across the entire country for the past several years. What, do you think he can snap his ing fingers and everybody has jobs and money? HOORAYYY! Pfft. |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by ziptnf
What, do you think he can snap his ing fingers and everybody has jobs and money? HOORAYYY! Pfft. |
That's Bernanke's job. |
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| ziptnf |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
That's Bernanke's job. |
Actually, now his job is to look incredibly shifty on camera while trying to explain why the Fed is spending $600 billion more dollars. |
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| Comrade Stalin |
| High unemployment is Obama's fault, yet, if he ever tried to do anything about it, he shows his true communist colors. Stimulus? Commie. Bail out of GM? Commie. Healthcare reform? Commie. Obama stop trying to help this country. Just let the market, which wouldn't exist if the government didn't save its malfunctioning ass anyways, take care of everything. The problem will solve itself! As it always does right? I'm sure that would have worked for Socialist Roosevelt. Especially with the political radicalization of workers during such a calamity when the government decides to do nothing. |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
hey, let's start an entire political movement based upon how evil government is and show the rest of the world what a bunch of ignorant hicks we are, woohoo!
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Isn't showing the world dumb American hikes more the concern of Youtube? |
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| atbell |
| quote: | Originally posted by ziptnf
Actually, now his job is to look incredibly shifty on camera while trying to explain why the Fed is spending $600 billion more dollars. |
I'm not very happy about this. Say what you will about the nesesity of the Fed buying treasury bonds (yeilds are sliding up which is exactly why they are buying) but having to defend himself against political fire is not the job of the reserve chairman. For central banking to retain any credibility it has to be seperate from elected officials.
This is because our knowledge of economics is such that we now know how to stimulate an economy in the short term with incredible accuracy. So if central banks yeild to political preasure every 4 years the economy will pull ahead in the months ramping up to an election only to crash down much worse in the early years following it. |
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| Zharen |
| quote: | Originally posted by ziptnf
:stongue:
Why do you think that unemployment rose? He certainly didn't go out there and take away money from businesses so that they'd fire people. Maybe it could have something to do with the economic meltdown that has been happening across the entire country for the past several years. What, do you think he can snap his ing fingers and everybody has jobs and money? HOORAYYY! Pfft. |
Well maybe if he did a little more than try to pass Obamacare, the unemployment rate might have gone down a little bit. Instead, this "historic passage" has only managed to divide Americans even further. And in case you don't know how to read a calendar, it's been two years now since Obummer's been in office. Where's the hope? Where's the change?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/...bush/index.html
| quote: | Somewhere in Texas, former President George W. Bush must be smiling. When President Obama and the Republican leadership reached a deal on extending all of the Bush tax cuts, including a generous exemption for estate taxes, the current president ratified a key policy from the former administration.
While Obama ran as the candidate who would fight to overturn Bush's record, a huge number of his policies remain in place.
This says a lot about President Bush. One of the key measures that we have to evaluate the success of a president is not simply how many of his proposals pass through Congress but also how many of his policies outlast his time in office. Many of Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs, including Social Security and the Wagner Act, survive into our time.
Though Harry Truman ended his term with his approval ratings in the tank, most of his key national security programs would define America's Cold War policies through the fall of the Soviet Union decades later. Lyndon Johnson pushed a host of policies such as Medicare and federal aid to education that survived the conservative revolution.
Thus far, President Bush has been doing well on that score.
Most of his counterterrorism policies have survived. Although Obama has begun to draw down the troops in Iraq, he has acknowledged that a substantial number will remain in place, and he has expanded the war in Afghanistan. Until the disastrous Gulf Oil spill, the administration supported expanded offshore drilling and did little to fix the regulatory bodies responsible for monitoring these operations.
Congress is deliberating an extension of President Bush's biggest domestic policy of across-the-board tax reductions. President Bush pushed through Congress a massive tax cut in 2001, and another in 2003, both of which severely undercut the fiscal strength of the Treasury.
The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 provided relief for middle- and upper-income Americas with much of the benefits going toward wealthier citizens, which they argued would accelerate economic growth. The tax cuts reduced rates cross the board on income, dividends and capital gains. They also slashed the estate tax while lowering the tax obligations of married and working poor Americans. |
Oh look, thing's have been more or less the same. How surprising. :rolleyes:
| quote: | Democrats railed against Bush's tax cuts. They became symbols of the policies of the era that, in their minds, worsened inequality. The tax cuts, Democrats said, were also hugely damaging to the fiscal strength of the federal government since they fueled large deficits.
Barack Obama made his attacks on the tax cuts a pillar of his campaign in 2008 and continued to oppose extending the reductions for the wealthiest Americans. As late as September 2010, the president attacked Minority Leader John Boehner during a speech in the Republican's home state of Ohio by criticizing Republicans for supporting the "same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations."
But in the end, Obama reversed himself, and he did so in dramatic fashion. House Democrats were caught off guard as the negotiations excluded the Democratic Caucus. Obama justified his decision by telling his supporters that he had no choice.
Since he was going to lose anyway on extending the tax cuts, he said that he should just accept this outcome and get the best deal possible, which included an extension of unemployment benefits.
Now that the tax cuts have received bipartisan support from the leader of the Democratic Party, they would be doubly difficult to eliminate in two years when the debate occurs once again. |
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