Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago?

[mystery-ak]

September 11, 2023
Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago?
By Brian C. Joondeph

What a great question going into the 2024 presidential election!

It was asked over 40 years ago and led to one of the biggest landslide elections in U.S. history.

As the Harvard Kennedy School summarized:

    In the final week of the 1980 presidential campaign between Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, the two candidates held their only debate. Going into the Oct. 28 event, Carter had managed to turn a dismal summer into a close race for a second term. And then, during the debate, Reagan posed what has become one of the most important campaign questions of all time: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Carter’s answer was a resounding “NO,” and in the final, crucial days of the campaign, his numbers tanked. On Election Day, Reagan won a huge popular vote and electoral victory. The “better off” question has been with us ever since. It’s simple common sense makes it a great way to think about elections. And yet the answers are rarely simple.

This is the question that Donald Trump, or whoever is the ultimate GOP nominee, should be constantly asking. At the next GOP debate, rather than debating Trump’s temperament and fitness to serve, while he is leading the GOP pack by 50 points, they should be hammering the question of whether average Americans are better or worse off than they were four years ago.

more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/are_you_better_off_today_than_you_were_four_years_ago.html

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I'm not. It's not all Biden's fault, as we went from 2 incomes to 1.5 as my wife now works part time. But things like energy prices are out of control.

[roamer_1]

I am... But surgery that cleared up 20 years of screaming pain probably ain't what they're going for 

[LMAO]

I think most people would answer that with a resounding “no.”

But the administration keeps telling everybody how great things are going

[jmyrlefuller]

Marginally so, for reasons completely unrelated to national and state government that have both done their darndest to make my life a living Hell, and there are a lot of days it feels like it.

[DefiantMassRINO]

September, 2019 ... yes, I was better off than I am in September, 2023.

[catfish1957]

Yeah, but is my own doing, and despite our idiotic corrupt government

[libertybele]

No, we are not better off today than four years ago.  We are experiencing skyrocketing prices on insurance, groceries, gas, and taxes, like many people.