In an interview with Steve Croft of “60 Minutes” that, at times, seemed more like an audition for press secretary than journalism, President Obama said, “The country is better off than when I came into office.” The reason for his horrible poll numbers? People don’t feel it.
When asked if people “feel it,” the President said, “They don’t feel it. And the reason they don’t feel it is because income and wages are not going up.”
How does that make someone better off than they were before? You’re working the same, or more, and you’re making less somehow equals “you’re better off”? That’s a neat trick.
In 2008, the median household income was $53,644, in 2012, that number had DROPPED to $51,017. If that’s better off, we could all use a dose of worse.
President Obama wasn’t done. He went on to say, “When I came into office our economy was in crisis. We had unemployment up at 10 percent, it’s now down to 6.1.” That’d be great, if it were true. It’s not.
When he took office the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. After his trillion-dollar “stimulus” package, the unemployment rate went up steadily, topping out at 10 percent in October of 2009 (long after he took office), and staying above nine percent for more than two years.
Worse, the U-6 unemployment rate — the rate that counts people who’ve given up hope of finding work (the U-3 rate pretends they don’t exist) or people who want to work full-time but can only find part-time work (the U-3 rate doesn’t factor that in), is at 12 percent.
So, if you put aside all the data and facts, President Obama is absolutely correct. It’s like being held a gunpoint, then the guy holding you hostage puts away the gun and uses a hand grenade and the police count that as the threat against you as having been alleviated.
Unfortunately for Americans, the President seems to think this unacceptable “new normal” is acceptable. It’s not.
H/T Free Beacon