Your Money, Your Life
September 17, 2014

While the nation's attention is focused on the ISIS terror threat, a more important issue for all Americans is the economy. 

And now there is new data from the Census Bureau.

A couple of weeks ago, speaking in Milwaukee at a Labor Day bash, President Obama said this:

OBAMA: "So I just want everybody to understand -- because you wouldn't always know it from watching the news -- (laughter) -- by almost every measure, the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office.  (Applause.)  We're better off by almost every measure."

But that turns out not to be true.

Let's begin with the most important economic statistic, your income.

The median household income in the U.S.A. last year was about 52,000 dollars, pretty much what is was in 2012.

However, over the past six years income has fallen eight percent.

And it's worse for households led by people under the age of 65.

From 2000 to 2013, their income has dropped more than 11 percent.

That's brutal because, as everybody knows, prices have gone up big time on almost everything.

So the end result is that the American middle class continues to get hammered, and President Obama's rosy outlook simply has not materialized.

On the subject of poverty, it went down slightly last year.

But the 14.5 percent poverty rate is above the rate when President Obama took office.

In 2013, slightly more than nine million American families lived in poverty, a small increase since 2009 when President Obama took office.

But then there's this, according to the Heritage Foundation.

One third of the U.S. population is receiving aid from at least one welfare program.

There are 80 so-called means-tested welfare programs currently available to low income folks.

In some states, people on welfare receive more than 40-thousand dollars in services a year.

That means the poor have purchasing power, and 75 percent of them have a car or truck.

Ninety-two percent have a microwave oven.

Sixty-seven percent have cable or satellite TV.

Fifty percent have a personal computer.

Forty-three percent have internet access.

Forty percent have a wide-screen plasma TV.

And more than 50 percent of poor families with children have video game systems like Xbox or Playstation.

So while it is not pleasant to be poor, Americans are not destitute.

The major reason the economy is not improving is that business continues to keep the payroll down.

There are more people seeking jobs and fewer jobs available.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the private marketplace drives wages.

The more jobs created, the higher the salaries will be because companies need good workers.  For example, if CNN wants to hire a Fox News person, they'll have to pay that Fox News person more money to go over there.

Barack Obama is a classic liberal, believing that the federal government should run the private sector.

That has failed, no matter how the president spins it.

Wages are stagnant as Mr. Obama enters his seventh year.

And that's the memo.

 

Posted by Bill O'Reilly at 8:03 PM
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