The “are you better off now” test runs into the hard reality that most people are not better off. Poll after poll shows that, but it also shows that there is a persistent minority who insist that they are.
Democrats and their media claim that it’s because working-class people are doing better and that it’s the rich who are suffering, the Gallup survey shows that’s a lie.
35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.
Let’s take a closer look at that 35%.
Most lower-income Americans, 61%, say their financial situation has deteriorated over the past year, while less than half that number, 26%, indicate it has improved.
Among middle-income people, 37% say that they’re better off and 49% say that they’re worse off. Among upper-income people, it’s nearly a split with 39% saying that they’re better off and 43% saying that they’re worse off.
Obviously, Democrats are much more likely to say that they’re doing better than Republicans.
Republicans (61%) than Democrats (37%) say they are worse off. In fact, more Democrats (47%) say they are better off than worse off.
But I’m still baffled by the “better off” part.
The people saying that they’re better off are wealthier and more insulated, but even if they’re not sweating the price of groceries (and with the upper-income tier starting at $100K, it’s not golden wings), the stock market is challenging, and 401Ks have taken a sizable hit. Some people might have switched to higher-paying jobs in a briefly tight labor market, but apart from that small group, how is anyone better off unless they’re working as an environmental or diversity consultant?
One thing is clear though, the Biden economy that he’s boasting so much about hurts the poor and helps his wealthy donor base. This administration is not the champion of the working class, but its destroyer.
Yeah, I sure as fuck ain’t sitting pretty. I never thought things could get worse but they have. The Alzheimer Joe administration is a disaster.
But try to take me down.
I just read the million plus 5 year plan adopted by the local county board of supervisors. All expensive radical left programs designed to destroy the county while making it permanently Democrat controlled.
These 5 year plans all sound like they could have been designed in the USSR or Communist China. Making things worse, and trying to take us down. My first reaction was, how do I survive this?
You just got to out lIve it, man.
Obviously the meagre evidence you provide here doesn’t support the claim that “the Biden economy that he’s boasting so much about hurts the poor and helps his wealthy donor base.” That’s just your talking point.
A serious analysis would point out the (again, fairly obvious) fact that the actual economic situation of a person is not equivalent to what that person says in a poll. The partisan divide in responses indicates that people have other reasons than purely how much money they have to say what they do.
I have yet to read an actual policy proposal in any of your columns that would improve the economy. “Stop the green energy industry!” and “Cut taxes!” are talking points, baseless, useless. From what I do read in your work, you are in favor of INCREASING government spending. You want money poured into the military, and you just recently made a passionate defense for Medicare and Social Security. Sounds pretty lefty to me…
I don’t know if Mr. Greenfield advocates more spending on Social Security and Medicare but thank you for pointing out that those government programs are LEFTIST, collectivist, and socialist in nature.
FDR’s welfare state was the beginning of the socialist cancer which is now on the brink of becoming full-blown socialist-fascist totalitarianism.
“We are not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy, i.e., a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls. A mixed economy is a country in the process of disintegration, a civil war of pressure-groups looting and devouring one another….
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.” – Ayn Rand
You want to improve the economy?
We can start by getting rid of the parasitic consultant class your party has spawned.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/06/mtas-consultant-bill-for-second-ave-subway-was-double-tunneling-cost/
“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent nearly twice as much on consultants for the Second Avenue Subway as it did to actually dig the tunnel from 63rd to 96th streets, a damning new assessment revealed Monday. ”
This is true across infrastructure projects which have become ways of shoveling billions to politically connected Democrats.
I wonder how much fewer ActBlue donations would come in if these parasites were kicked to the curb.
Thanks Daniel! Pointing out where the true waste is.
Obviously, you suck dicks. Big ones.
Also, there is the issue of short-run vs long-run (first thing that popped into my mind while reading the article).
One might be better off in the short-run (say, due to stimulus payments), but is one better off in the long run? The future looks awfully murky to me.
The future looks really shitty to me.
Yeah. I started figuring out the geography of what the next county 5 year plan will do. Fortunately I think I’m geographically in about the best possible place.
The Biden Diet makes you lose weight even if you don’t want or need to. Anyway we all know all those deplorables in fly-over country are fat porkers in need of a diet. If the Biden Diet doesn’t work the Cuban-Venezuelan Diet is next.
Let them eat cake!
or, as in North Korea, dandelions
Even the soldiers in North Korea are riddled with parasites, such as intestinal worms, from the diet they eat.
Or moss off rocks. I heard thy actually eat that shit there.
I’d rather starve to death.
Yeah, they eat stuff off the ground and such. That’s one way to ingest those intestinal parasites.
The Left has always hated the middle class. It is the repository of traditional values and social stability which the Left works assiduously to destroy.
That’s only a relatively superficial manifestation of what the Left truly hate. What they truly hate is the happy, successful, independent, individual. It is the independent man of ability, ability on any scale, whether it’s a child with a lemonade stand, a child with a genius IQ, an independent truck driver, a waitress making tips, a brain surgeon, or an industrial tycoon, that they truly hate and want to crush.
“Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end—sacrifice as a way of life. It is man’s independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy…. The advocates of collectivism are motivated not by a desire for men’s happiness, but by hatred for man . . . hatred of the good for being the good; . . . the focus of that hatred, the target of its passionate fury, is the man of ability.” – Ayn Rand
Thanks Kasandra, I was reading yesterday how the middle classes are the backbone of the country. One reason that the Democrats efforts to destroy the middle classes is so dangerous.
Yeah, thy hate us. Although I’m lower middle class.
Yes, I hear my few progressive friends still talk about the Democrat party being the party of the “little guy’ and I want to laugh.
Well, it is the party of the “little guy”. The envious, miserable, little guy of little ability and little productive talent, like Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, AOC, Bernie, Obama, etc., who could never make it in a real world of competition.
The little guy shall inherit the earth and a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, Washington D.C., and another one in Hawaii.
Then you become one of them. It takes a lot of screwing people over to get that stinking rich. But I know what you mean. They all make me sick to my stomach.
Yeah, my mother still believes that stupid shit and she’s seventy seven or so. I remember when I was a young boy I asked her what the difference between Republicans and Democrats was, she told me the D-Bags were for the poor and the retards were for the rich. How anybody can believe that, I don’t know.
And we were being told by the M.S. Media and Hollywood Airheads that the Democrats was t he Party of the People and the Poor and the GOP was the party of the Wealthy and now we know that Biden is a a Globalists and a Traitor to America
What? You beat me to it! You said the exact same thing I did!
The IRS has already announced that they are going to use those 87,000 armed thugs they just added to go after waiters and waitresses. That is how the feral government is going to treat the rich
Thanks Chief! Getting a job as a waitress is one of the main ways young ladies around here squeak by financially, while waiting until they can hook some poor sucker to marry and support them for life. Not exactly a rich pool of tax money there.
-can hook some poor sucker to marry and support them for life.
The support for life comes by way of alimony and child support post-divorce. Trust me.
Fuck yeah, it does. You have no obligation to support them financaially when you’re married but you do when you’re divorced? Are you kidding me?
-while waiting until they can hook some poor sucker to marry and support them for life.
Trust me, what they do is marry, or maybe just get pregnant–then divorce and live off of alimony and child support.
Yeah, Iv’e lived through that. And I’ve had chicks try to do it to me again. I don’t think so. Get a job, bitch.
Why can’t I upvote anybody? This is annoying.
I bet many of those saying they’re better off are working for the government on some level. Most got paid during the shutdowns, so they just got a long staycation, and their employer didn’t go out of ‘business’ as a result. Their pay is usually indexed to inflation (especially in unions), and so is WIC, and other welfare programs. The economy can go to h*ll in a handbasket, and until the government can’t borrow or print money and goes broke, they’re fine.
The issue with “inflation” is WHAT has been INFLATED! Most people who live week t0 week don’t have an extra 10% or credit to access! It’s those really poor who ALWAYS suffer the most!! What’s an extra $3 per dozen eggs to a well off person??
Appropriate, given that the “poor” vote Democrat. The “poor” are richer than 99% of humans who have ever lived. they have so much money, they, unlike working Americans, can afford to #BurnLootMurder their way through major cities. Want to stop crime? Take away their money.