That's simply not 100% true.
According to
Washingtonmonthly.com, more jobs have been created under the Obama Administration than the previous one. According to
econpost.com, the quarterly GDP has rebounded. Plus the stock market is higher and the unemployment rate has gotten lower. Many of the ideas of the current administration are indeed working... but they are being met by much opposition who either think differently ideologically, are hell bent on protecting their excessive corporate profits with little to no regard to anyone, or are simply determined to play political games (at the expense of everyday citizens) to try and win the presidential election for their party in 2012. He's made mistakes... such as the stimulus. It should have been more than what was ultimately presented and geared towards revamping our nation's infrastructure instead of giving loans to big banks & Wall Street. He was also soft on Health Care Reform... he should have never backed down on the Public Option or some form of single payer system. Alas, we could be in a lot worse shape right now if we had other people running the show with the convoluted belief that lowering taxes for the rich (even though they are at record lows right now), Union busting and cutting funding from Medicare/Medicaid and Planned Parenthood is the way to save our Economy.
Also, according to CBS polls most people believe that our economy is in shambles is due to the previous administration and Wall Street -
Just 8 percent say Obama is "most to blame" for the state of the economy. About 26 percent blame his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and 25 percent blame Wall Street. Eleven percent of respondents said Congress was mostly to blame. -
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_Obama_GOP_062911_7am.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody
I don't put tons of stock in how much a President manipulates or fixes the economy. If their administration drives us into debt (Bush), then that's obviously their fault.
That being said, the jobs we've created are not all good. The unemployment rate as reported is a joke, and most people realize that. If you're on unemployment and have used up all your benefits, you fall off the rolls and are not reported. Many economists will tell you they think the unemployment rate is significantly higher, that it's 14-18%, not 9% or less.
This also doesn't account for people working few hours that desperately want more hours, or that work unpaid internships that still collect unemployment, or don't. I'm not sure if every unpaid intern in every state can get unemployment while having an unpaid job.
Real unemployment rate higher than federal figures - MSN Money - New Investor Center
I firmly believe, as do a lot of other people, that the economy is barely improving before another major downturn.
Personally I think Obama should have launched a New Deal type plan to get unemployment down. The problem is we have too much debt, and adding onto it is tough. We keep banking on the future, but things may never get better. We are a service sector country now, and that section doesn't produce any real goods. The mass jobs of the industrial age have died, my hometown is a product of that. The Irish/Polish/Italian/etc. immigrants back when came to cities and had factory jobs. My hometown is about 60/40 White to Puerto Rican, black, dominican and various other ethnicities. Problem is, they came here after the industry failed and factories ended up empty. Same as Pittsburgh, same as Detroit and the entire Rust Belt of the US.
Crime of course exists in these cities because the jobs aren't there. Racist white people blame the state of my hometown on puerto ricans, but I never would. One, I'm not racist and my upbringing afforded me the ability to understand other cultures like many of my generation. Two, the fact that the jobs are no longer there is why the crime exists. When there are no jobs, drug dealing and gang life is the only "opportunity".
So what am I getting at? We need real jobs, not temp jobs (also counted as jobs for unemployment, but very shitty), not unpaid jobs, real jobs.
Modern neo-conservatives will say FDR's new deal was a failure and that social security is falling apart, so point and laugh at FDR. FDR helped save this country through the New Deal and re-writing history is silly. Social Security, pensions and everything are suffering because governments have gone too far into debt over stupidity like wars.
The IMF is imposing austerity on whoever get loans, otherwise known as fuck the little guy. On top of that it's just using debt to pay debt, like paying your student loan with a credit card. Globalization and this world economy is a disaster. We as human beings have the ability to figure out a system that will allow everyone a decent standard of living, while allowing the rich to be rich. Corporations and the rich once paid a 90% marginal tax rate, and still managed to be rich. Now it's something like 30 some odd percent, and they STILL bitch. I will gladly pay for universal healthcare out of my taxes, and you and others may praise Obama for passing the healthcare act but it needs significant changes. Mandatory insurance WITHOUT universal healthcare or a true public option is cruel, and we're just handing money over to major industry again. As I saw in a PBS mini-documentary, Obama was held at hypothetical gunpoint by the HMO lobbyists and told "If you don't include mandatory healthcare and tone down the public option, we will fight this bill with everything we have". So I don't fully blame him, but it needs to be fixed.
Marginal Tax Rates, by Alan Reynolds: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty - One view that lower tax rates = faster growing economy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...th-in-one-graph/2011/05/19/AGLaxJeH_blog.html - The other side
"Wealth redistribution, wahhhhh!" is BULLSHIT, because the Federal Stimulus was a redistribution of wealth, to those WITH money because they decided to gamble and they lost. Our economy is a joke right now, the repeal of Glass Steagall (Clinton's biggest failure to me) allowed the mergers of commercial and lending banks, and that was the death knell for the economy.