Are you better off than you were four years ago?

From Bob Cesca:

GDP is growing steadily. Jobs are being added every month. Unemployment is slowly declining (with a few blips along the trendline). The deficit is shrinking. Middle and working class taxes are lower. Inflation is nearly an entire percentage point below the average that began in the middle 1920s (long term average is 3.43%, while our current rate is 2.3% and dropping). The price of oil dropped below $90 last week and stockpiles are huge — the highest level in 22 years. New home sales are up by 10 percent over a year ago. Moody’s Analytics is calling this a “genuine rebound” in housing and mortgage rates remain tantalizingly low. Consumer debt is declining and corporate profits — despite the president’s false reputation as a profit-hating commie — are nearly double what they were in the boom times of 1999. 9.75 percent at the end of 2011, compared with 5.7 percent in the final quarter of 1999. The Dow has doubled since the deepest, darkest days of the Great Recession and some analysts suggest that the DJIA should be around 20,000, not 13,000, given all of these positive indicators. Link

Personally, I’m not doing quite as well because my wages have been frozen thanks to deficit hysteria. But you’d have to be completely ignoring reality (or a Conservative) not to recognize that the economy is improving and that the President’s policies are helping, despite Republican obstructionism and misinformation.