SLACKJOT

September 4, 2012

squashed:

You are better off than you were four years ago
Apparently the pundits are spending today on the question of whether you are better off than you were four years ago. Above is a graph of the United States seasonally adjusted employment for the past five years. The first plane is placed where Obama took over as pilot. The second plane is where we are now now. You will notice two things:
The planes are at about the same level.
The first plane is in the process of crashing.
You would rather be on plane #2 than plane #1. This is not a difficult question.
I chose seasonally adjusted employment—but you’re welcome to try this yourself with any metric you want. May I suggest United States Exports, the DJIA, and GDP. Some have a bit more turbulence than others—but the overall arch remains consistent. Obama took office in the middle of a crisis. Things turned around relatively quickly. Now the trend is pretty good.

The little airplane is a nice, simplistic illustration and the pilot analogy is apt. Although the general answer should be yes (overall and tentatively), the are you better off now than 4 years ago? question strikes me as irrelevant because a financial collapse of the magnitude of the 2008 collapse is not fixed in 4 years. Insofar as electoral politics goes it does matter but no one should be asking it in polls. It suggests that people should expect to be better off now and that they should blame the current President if they are not.
You’d like to think that people’s attention spans are long enough that they remember to place blame for the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression where it’s due. The collapse was in the 8th year of Bush’s Presidency so he deserves far more blame than the pilot who took over during the nosedive (as this cutesy graphic illustrates).

You are better off than you were four years ago

Apparently the pundits are spending today on the question of whether you are better off than you were four years ago. Above is a graph of the United States seasonally adjusted employment for the past five years. The first plane is placed where Obama took over as pilot. The second plane is where we are now now. You will notice two things:

The planes are at about the same level.

The first plane is in the process of crashing.

You would rather be on plane #2 than plane #1. This is not a difficult question.

I chose seasonally adjusted employment—but you’re welcome to try this yourself with any metric you want. May I suggest United States Exports, the DJIA, and GDP. Some have a bit more turbulence than others—but the overall arch remains consistent. Obama took office in the middle of a crisis. Things turned around relatively quickly. Now the trend is pretty good.

The little airplane is a nice, simplistic illustration and the pilot analogy is apt. Although the general answer should be yes (overall and tentatively), the are you better off now than 4 years ago? question strikes me as irrelevant because a financial collapse of the magnitude of the 2008 collapse is not fixed in 4 years. Insofar as electoral politics goes it does matter but no one should be asking it in polls. It suggests that people should expect to be better off now and that they should blame the current President if they are not.

You’d like to think that people’s attention spans are long enough that they remember to place blame for the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression where it’s due. The collapse was in the 8th year of Bush’s Presidency so he deserves far more blame than the pilot who took over during the nosedive (as this cutesy graphic illustrates).

12:43pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLaAExSmIG3Y

(Notes: 111)