The Worst Five Years

By Steve McCann

 

As the mainstream media unabashedly cheered, Barack Obama was inaugurated for a second time as President of the United States. He and the American left, in alliance with the media, have it made clear that, in a second term, their primary agenda items are to permanently embed so-called "social justice" into the fabric of the nation and to destroy an enemy worse than radical Islam: the American conservative movement -- the fate of the country or the people be damned. They have already traveled a considerable distance in making life far worse for the average American as they follow in the failed footsteps of their ideological forefathers.

A key feature of the old Soviet Union, and virtually all other unsuccessful socialist/communist states, was viewing the economy in five-year increments. Out of that came the much ballyhooed five-year economic plan as a staple of centralized or statist planning. Unfortunately, these plans always fell woefully short and often times the people of these countries were much worse off at the end of the five years than before.

As of the end of 2012, the United States has experienced the worst five-year period -- which includes, as the final four years, Obama's first full term -- since 1928-1932 and the start of the Great Depression. From 2009 through 2012 the Obama cabal, and their allegiance to statist policies, has been in charge for four years. The global financial crisis took place in the previous year, 2008, and based on the historical pattern of American economic recovery since the depression years, the United States should have been experiencing broad and significant economic and job growth by year three at the latest.

But thanks to Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress, not since 1928 through 1932 have the American people been more significantly worse off at the end of a five-year period than they were at the beginning. The telling statistics:

A) Since January 2008 the employment age population has increased by 11.7 million, yet there are 3.0 million fewer American employed. (146.3 million in January 2008 vs. 143.3 million in December 2012) Factoring the population growth and 2008 labor participation rate the unemployment rate for December 2012 would be 11.4% as compared to 4.9% in December of 2007.

B) At the end of 2007, the median household income was $54,489.00 (inflation adjusted); at the beginning of 2012 it had dropped to $50,020.00 (a decline of nearly 9%). The most precipitous plunge over a similar period since the Census Bureau started issuing that statistic. While American incomes were rapidly eroding, the cost of living continued to rise as the commodity price index (basket of food, fuel and other essential commodities) rose 20% from December 2007 to September 2012.

C) The average net worth of all American households from 2007 through the beginning of 2011 took a nose-drive, dropping by nearly 40%, a drop driven in great part by a devastating collapse in the median value of their homes ($250,000.00 in 2007 vs. $173,000 in 2012; a decline of 30%).

D) In December 2007, 26.5 million Americans were on food stamps at a cost of $30 Billion. As of December 2012, 47.7 million were accessing the food stamp program (increase of 80%) at a cost in excess of $70 billion. Further the government calculated 38.0 million Americans were living in poverty at the end of 2007 (poverty rate of 13.0%); however, by the beginning of 2012, 49.7 million were living in poverty and the rate had increased to 16.1%.

E) The nation's growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the past five years has also been the most anemic since the depression years. The GDP (adjusted for inflation) in 2007 was $15.5 trillion; in 2012 it is estimated to be $16.0 trillion, a difference of just .5 trillion -- a growth rate of 3 % over five years or an annual rate of a miniscule .6%.

F) While the nation's growth rate has been stagnant, spending by governments at all levels has increased dramatically from $4.9 trillion in 2007 to $6.2 trillion in 2012, a jump of 26.5% which is driven entirely by the federal government as it has increased its spending by nearly 41% over this period. This has resulted in the total national debt rising from $9.2 trillion at the beginning of January 2008 to $16.45 trillion as of today. (a staggering 79% increase).

G) In keeping with the pattern established by the five-year plans of the Soviet Union, there are three groups that have fared well over the past five years: federal bureaucrats, Deomcratic Party loyalists, and crony capitalists in bed with the Obama regime. Since December of 2007 there has been an increase of nearly 12% in new government jobs created (1.97 million vs. 2.2 million today). Further, the average total compensation for federal government employees increased nearly 9% to $126,200 by the beginning of 2011. Additionally, the number of government workers earning more than $150,000.00 has more than doubled over this same period. By comparison, the average total compensation for those in the private sector was $62,100.00 at the beginning of 2011, 49% of what the average federal employee realizes.

Despite this devastating landscape, Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term. He is the only incumbent president in modern American history to win while overseeing such an economic disaster for the American people. Some of the responsibility for that outcome can be placed at the feet of Mitt Romney, who ran an uninspired and tactically outdated campaign; but the majority of those that did vote, and ratified by those who did not, chose this result along with the media who, in their love affair with Obama, deliberately opted to ignore the disastrous results of the first Obama term.

It is now painfully obvious that the bulk of the American people cannot be reached by reason and historical facts; they must experience first-hand the worst of times before they wake up from their celebrity infatuation combined with the assumption that there will always be a bottomless pit of money to be siphoned from an equally bottomless pit of wealth by a government committed to take care of them.

Barack Obama and the Democrats have signaled they intend to do nothing to alter the course the nation is on; in fact they intend to accelerate it. Without any firm and viable political opposition, wealth and job creation will further deteriorate with the second-term implementation of ObamaCare, higher taxes, ever increasing government expenditures, and the mushrooming debt, continued erosion of the value of the dollar and its potential demise as the world's reserve currency, as well as a Niagara Falls of new regulations.

The American people, including the Obama sycophants in the media, will be worse off in four years than they were at the end of 2012 (already a disaster) and a majority of the citizenry will increasingly experience the malaise and suffering of those who lived through the 1930's -- which was, in great part, exacerbated by the pursuit of policies similar to those of Barack Obama minus the mountain of debt -- a factor that will make matters significantly worse.

Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers will potentially accomplish what their ideological socialist/Marxist soul mates also achieved: the destruction of their nation's economy as well as the standard of living for the people and they will do so with the tacit approval of the citizenry and the encouragement of the mainstream media.

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