Are you better off today than 8 years ago?

Somehow, the media powers-that-be have successfully trained the American people to believe that President Bush has "failed". Few people around the water cooler are willing to stick up for the President. It isn't hip to like George W. In fact, you get brownie points for ridiculing him. It's a fad. It's tempting to just follow the crowd, but let's look at what has really happened over the last 8 years.

President Bush inherited a fragile economy. Irrational exuberance had created a bubble in the technology sector. The bubble began bursting in 2000 and Bush inherited a weak economy. Then 9/11 came long and further rocked the economy. President Bush was handed a can of worms that was created during the 1990's. (You should read The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11)

Where are we today?

• The poverty rate, at 12.5% is historically very low. In only about 7 of the last 50 years has it been lower.
• The 2003 Bush Tax cuts brought the economy to life and put it on a solid footing for the shocks it sustained in 2007. The higher level of investment brought in record amounts of additional revenue to the Federal Government. See page 2 of this U.S. treasury publication. This proves that tax cuts can in fact equate to higher revenue to the government.
  
• The recent 2007 census shows that the number of uninsured (health care) has dropped since 2006. Percentage-wise, it's at 15.3%, at par with what it was during most of the 1990's.
• Median household income continues to rise, almost fully recovering from the 1999 tech-bubble high.
• Home ownership has remained very high (68% )
  
• Minority ownership of homes and businesses is at an all time high. (See this) P.S. See my update on this issue here
  
• Despite heavy pressure on the low-end for jobs (due to illegal immigration) we've had fantastically low unemployment rates in the 4-5% range for most of the last 8 years. Canada and most of Europe can only dream of numbers like this.
• Arthur C. Brooks, an expert on mood, tells us that Americans are generally as happy as they ever have been since 1970 and they are less angry. Americans are happier than our European allies.
• While inequality of income is up over the last few decades, inequality of happiness, which has always been low in America, continues to drop. So income does not translate into happiness. But since so many people are fixated on income equality, it should be noted that over the last decade, upward mobility of the poorest quintile was more than 58%. I personally value upward mobility more than I value income equality. And in this regard America has it right. See page 3 of this for the stats. And don't forget that the top 5% of tax payers pay 60% of all federal taxes. Is that progressive or what? The bottom 50% of taxpayers only pay 3.1% of our entire federal budget.
  
  

(Feel free to help fact check my census data: http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf)


And consider the external shocks that America sustained during his tenure:

• The worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor
• China and India came onto the world stage as economic powerhouses competing for world oil reserves.
• Millions of illegal immigrants continue to pour across the border putting pressure on social services and competing for jobs. This is why we so often hear about the proliferation of "low wage service jobs".
  

And in 2007 and early 2008 there were some internal shocks that would have crushed a lesser economy: sub prime mortgages, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae. etc. etc. Yet here we are posting positive GDP growth.


Yes, today in 2008 the economy has many dark clouds. But the forces at play would have hampered any president equally. The question isn't "why has Bush failed us?", the question is "how much worse would it have been under a tax-and-spend president?". Just as we can expect El Nino to affect the weather periodically, so can we always expect turbulence in the economy. Such things are good! It keeps the cycle of renewal going. But as things are, President Bush has bent over backwards to smooth out the affects of the slow-down.

In short, America under George Bush has thrived and continues to be a bastion of opportunity that attracts millions of immigrants each year.

Maybe it's Iraq that bothered you. As of last month, the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq (5) dropped lower than the number of of servicemen who died during peacetime training activities (7). In other words.... the war is over! It's still a dangerous place to be, but such was the case in Japan and Germany for quite sometime after WWII. It's a peace keeping operation now.

Even during the height of the Iraq War, U.S. casualty rates weren't that much higher (and were often lower) than our peacekeeping activities of the 80's and 90's. (That's a fact! See tables 4 and 5 of http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf) And the monetary price tag? The media would have you believe this is most expensive war in history. Not so. Again, our military expenditures as a percent of GDP are historically no worse than the Cold War.

Now what was accomplished:
I will quote from Bret Stephens. "A partial list would include:

• Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an already crumbling sanctions regime. The U.S. would be faced with not one, but two, major adversaries in the Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse. And the U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.
  
• Instead, we now have a government that does not threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and asserting its interests.
• We have a defeat for al Qaeda. Critics carp that had there been no invasion, there never would have been al Qaeda in Iraq. Maybe. As it is, thousands of jihadists are dead, al Qaeda has been defeated on its self-declared "central battlefield," and the movement is largely discredited on the Arab street and even within Islamist circles.
• We also have -- if still only prospectively -- an Arab bulwark against Iran's encroachments in the region. But that depends on whether we simply withdraw from Iraq, or join it in a lasting security partnership.

In addition to these accomplishments, I think it is worthwhile to discuss would-be accomplishments that were thwarted by Democrats. President Bush would have greatly alleviated the Social Security problem. His plan, a creation of expert economists, was the nation's last best hope to save Social Security. But now, Every dollar I currently send to FICA is a dollar I will most likely never see again. President Bush was also willing to sign immigration reform into law. Congress failed. President Bush tried to keep the judicial bench staffed. Congress wouldn't confirm his appointees.

This reminds me of two more great accomplishments during Bush's terms: Roberts and Alito. Without them, this very moment, you'd be living in a country that happily performed partial birth abortions. You also may have lost the right to own most firearms.

We don't live in a perfect world. President Bush didn't live up to my every expectation. He compromised when I would have stuck to my guns. He stuck to his guns when I would have compromised. I disagreed with many of the things he did. But I understand why he did them. He didn't use the bully pulpit as much as I would have liked. He happily worked with Democrats who always stabbed him in the back in the end. So he's guilty of trying to be a nice guy. His bipartisan record greatly exceeds that of Barrack Obama. I know full well that another president could have solved some problems better. There isn't a president in history who can't be picked apart by an unsympathetic historian. But things work themselves out. America is place where people solve problems, not governments.

You may have you seen the bumper sticker "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention". A more apt statement, As Mr. Brooks recently pointed out, would be this: "If you're not grateful to live in America, you're not paying attention".

I, for one, am grateful. I have benefited greatly from this democratic experiment we call the United States. I'm grateful to all Americans who go about their lives trying to do good...even if they make mistakes along the way. President Bush is one of them.

P.S. 9/2/08
I came across this commentary in the WSJ which came to similar conclusions with some very interesting supporting data.

P.S. 9/11/08
I did get some feedback from a friend that I would like to acknowledge. I want to make it clear that I do support President Bush. This is not intended to be a disinterested view of the the Bush years. My values and core beliefs influence my perceptions. I think one of my goals was to demonstrate that according to some measures, Bush has been a very successful president. And I concede that according to some measures he has fallen short. We all pick and choose the measures that are important to us based on our experience and values.

Secondly, I confess that attributing economic success or failure to any given president is a very questionable exercise. The economy is complex. Inputs to it can take years to manifest themselves. However, there is currently a lot of political hay being made out of the weak economy this year, so I'm adding my two cents.