"IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!"

Governor Romney’s political strategy supposedly centers on attacking President Obama for weak economic performance. The general line of attack is that the Obama administration has presided over a period of weak growth and high unemployment. Their “killer” line supposedly is: “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”
Nobody on either side of the aisle seems to be paying attention to the numbers. If they did, the Republicans would be exposed has not having a leg to stand on, and the Democrats would be on the attack, demonstrating that the economy has demonstrated far stronger GDP and employment growth during the Obama administration than the last time the policies espoused by Governor Romney – tax cuts favoring wealthy “job creators,” reduced regulation and increased defense spending -- were implemented during the administration of George W. Bush. Consider the following statistics supplied by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:
G.W. BUSH YEARS:

During 8 years of Reaganomics Redux under George W. Bush (from October 1, 2001, the beginning of Bush's first fiscal year, to the end of his last, September 30, 2009) where lower tax rates (for wealthy taxpayers (“job creators”), reduced regulation and long wars constituted the formula for growth:
Real GDP grew from $11,370 billion to $12,873 billion. That’s a compound annualized rate of growth of 1.16%.Payroll employment decreasedfrom 131,193 million to 129,532 That’s an average annual job loss of 207,600.
THE OBAMA YEARS:
During the 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration (From October 1, 2009 to April 1, 2012 – the last GDP data point as of Sept. 23, 2012)
Real GDP grew from $12,873 billion to $13, 564 billionThat’s a compound annualized rate of growth of 2.11% nearly twice that of BushPayroll employment increased from 129,532 to 133,300 in 2 yrs and 10 monthsThat’s an average annualized job increase of 1,329,000 compared to Bush’s loss of 207,600 jobs per year.
The answer to the Republican killer question, Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? is “Yes, Americans are better off than they were when it can reasonably be said President Obama’s policies went into effect on October 1, 2009: Unemployment at the end of the Bush administration’s final fiscal year ending September 30, 2009 was 10%, it is now 8.1%, and there are now 3.8 million more workers on payrolls than then and Gross Domestic product is now $691 billion (5.4%) higher.
Perhaps more importantly, the overriding question should be: "Are you better off today than you were when Republicans instituted Reaganomics -- the economic policy that has dominated the past three decades?

As the following graphs demonstrate, the only segment of the population that can answer the question in the affirmative is the top tier of income earners:
  Fundamentally, Reaganomics makes the rich stupendously richer, the poor desperately poorer, and forces the middle class to mark time. Three decades of data support this assertion unequivocally. For a scathing account of how the rich garnered virtually all the growth in national income from the time of Reagan on, see the “Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality” by Chad Stone, Hannah Shaw, Danillo Trisi and Arloc Sherman at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3629. Study the graphs (reproduced with permission), revealing the following eye-opening statistics:§  Real family income between 1981 and 2010 increased:o   For the 95th Percentile: Nearly 50%o   For the 50th percentile: About 5%o   For the 20th percentile: Not at all. Nada. Zip.

§  The percentage change in after-tax income between 1979 and 2010

o   For the top 1 percent: 277%

o   For the next 19 percent: 65%

o   For the middle 60 percent: 38%

o   For the bottom 20%: 18%

Question: Given that Romney’s policies are basically the same as Ronald Reagan and G.W. Bush why would anyone (other than a very rich person) vote for him?

For more reasons not to vote for Romney, and for more ammunition debunking the extreme conservative Republican memes, read my e-book, "The Predicament: How did it happen? How bad is it? The case for radical change now!"  (www.the-predicament.com) available in Kindle format from Amazon.com and in other formats at all major e-book sellers like Kobo, The Copia and Barnes & Noble, and Apple iBookstore.