Better Off Than Four Years Ago?

[monk222]

The toughest question that the Obama campaign has had to deal with is the standard first question that comes with an incumbent president: are we better off now than we were four years ago? It is tough because the economy is still staggering and too many Americans are struggling hard to make ends meet and are too often failing. By the standard analysis, the expectation has been that Obama should lose: things are bad. Yet, you don't have to be a liberal Democrat to understand that this is not entirely fair, because the bottom really fell out just before Obama took office. Still, Obama has had to swim against the stream, as he has to persuade voters that the standard analysis should not be applied this year, and that the economy is on the verge of an upswing under his adminstration. Anyway, Paul Krugman has pointed to a great response to this conundrum.

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Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, “is the house in better shape than when you got here?”

Yes, that would be a really ridiculous question.

…

A serious reporter asks the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they brought enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. That might require some minimal knowledge of how to put out fires.

-- Dean Baker