Obama economy worse than we thought

The One, President Obama, said he was going to break down barriers, reduce the wealth gap and make life better for everyone. But he failed; he failed to do what he promised.

Chad Stafko at American Thinker

Now, six years later, the degree to which Barack Obama has failed, as seen in the data, is quite staggering.

Consider the wealth gap. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, in 2014 upper income households had almost seven times the wealth of middle class households. That is the largest gap between these respective groups in the three decades the Fed has collected such data. Yes, it's even higher than the "Evil 80s" under Reagan.

Uh, that wasn't supposed to happen!

Recall President Obama's campaign exchange with Joe the Plumber when he stated, "And I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Obama also spoke of his desire to redistribute wealth in a 1998 speech when he said, "I actually believe in (wealth) redistribution."

Closing the wealth gap is a Utopian goal of liberals and Obama was no different. He campaigned on it.

Yet, lower and middle class Americans, groups with which Democrats so often claim allegiance, have fallen further down the economic ladder under President Obama.

Consider this staggering comparison: In 2007, the average household income in America was $55,627.

In 2014, that figure had slipped to $53,880 -- Americans earned less on average than they did seven years prior. So, what has happened is that the average American family has been earning less than it did when the great Recession began. All the while, over that same period prices of practically everything else we buy rose.

Let's look deeper into segments of wealth within the nation.

According to government data, in 2007 the lowest quintile of earners in America made up 3.4% of total earnings. That means the lowest 20% of earners in America only collected 3.4% of the total earnings pie in 2007.

In 2013 (the latest available data), that figure had dropped to 3.2%. Bear with me on the math, because it is damning evidence of Obama's Utopian economic failure.

That reduction from 3.4% to 3.2% of total earnings means these folks have seen a 6.25% reduction in the slice of their total earnings pie over that period.

What about the highest earning quintile? Over that same period, their slice of the pie actually swelled from 49.7% in 2007 to 51.0% in 2013.

Those are official government numbers. That's the undeniable fact that liberals should know -- under your Messianic President, the rich literally got richer and the poor got poorer.

Even that bastion of objectivity, The New York Times, cited a National Employment Law Project study in an April article in which it was noted that a million jobs in middle-income industries were lost during the Great Recession. The article added that those million workers then often found themselves either unemployed or flipping burgers at a minimum wage job.

Wow. Under Obama the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.