When it comes time to vote in about three weeks, you really only have to ask yourself two questions: first, am I better off today than I was two years ago? And second, is the country headed in the right direction?
Now, I can't answer that first question for you personally. But I'm a pretty average guy. Okay, maybe above average, in terms of income and assets, compared to the national average, certainly. So if I'm worse off than I was two years ago, the average Joe (or Jane) has got to be a lot worse off. Without telling you more than I care to divulge, let me give you a view of where I am today vs. where I was a couple of years ago.
Two years ago, I was basically making twice as much annually on my investment portfolio as I earn in salary, and my salary puts me in a pretty high percentile among U.S. earners. Year-to-date this year, my portfolio is down about 30%. Joe Biden and his vapid Press Secretary like to argue that the stock market isn't the best barometer. Yeah, well, when you're 63 years old and thinking about retirement, it's certainly a consideration.
True, my income has increased in each of the past two years, such that it's up nearly 10% vs. two years ago. However, my cost of living is up 8.3%, so I'm hardly better off, income-wise. And my income has only increased because of my own performance, not because of anything the current administration or legislature has done. My income has increased by at least that amount throughout my career, no matter who was in office.
Speaking of my cost of living, that 8.3% is an overall number. Two years ago (January 2021 is my exact benchmark, by the way), I was paying $2.25 a gallon for gas. Now, I'm paying close to four bucks, and I'm supposed to be thanking Joe Biden for what he's done to "bring it down" from closer to five bucks. (Which is unadulterated BS, by the way; what brought it down from the peak was reduced demand, because nobody could afford to drive at those prices.) So my 18.8 gallon gas tank costs me about $33 more to fill each time.
The cost of food is up 11.2% year-over-year. It hasn't been up that much since just after I started college. It's up 10% vs. two years ago. So between gas being up about 50% and food being up about 10% (I'm annualizing these numbers, if you're paying attention), my salary increases are pretty much gobbled up.
All my other costs are higher, too, but I'm not going to delve into every spending category. Suffice it to say that by any standard of living metric, I'm worse off. And since overall I'm better off than about 90% of most Americans, chances are you're worse off, too.
Fortunately, I live in an area where crime isn't a big problem. However, I love to travel. Not long before covid reared its ugly head, I had a two-week work trip in the Fall to Oregon. It was beautiful. A colleague and I stayed the weekend, and we spent one day driving from Portland down to Eugene, then over to the coast, up to the Willamette Valley, and back to Portland. The next day, we drove along the Columbia Gorge, visited Multnomah Falls, then drove around Mt. Hood and down to Bend, before returning via the Santiam River valley.
I vowed to make a return trip with my wife. But Portland has become such a cesspool of lawlessness that I'm too concerned about our safety to travel there. The same is true of New York, where we've spent many enjoyable trips, walking the city, feeling the energy, seeing the sights, enjoying Broadway shows, strolling Central Park. Now, I'm afraid I'd get knifed on the street. Same with Chicago, another great city where I've spent a fair amount of time.
The only state I've never been to is Delaware, and I'd like to cross it off my list. But, I've always imagined combining it with a trip to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and other historical sites. Yet Philly, too, has become crime-infested, and so I'm holding off on that trip as well.
We had a cruise booked out of L.A. in March 2024, to the Mexican Riviera. We'd never done that itinerary before, and it sounded interesting. We always spend the night before a cruise in a hotel, so that we don't miss our embarkation due to flight delays.
Then we learned that the city of L.A. is planning a ballot initiative that would require hotels to house homeless people in their vacant rooms. Now, I'm sensitive to the plight of the homeless, and have gone out of my way to help them, and have contributed to their causes. But not all the homeless, especially in L.A., are just down-on-their-luck individuals that need a place to sleep. Early this year, a homeless man walked into a furniture store in L.A. and stabbed the 24-year-old female clerk to death. And last summer, another homeless man stabbed a NASCAR driver to death while he was filling his tank at a suburban gas station.
Needless to say, we switched our itinerary to a cruise out of Florida.
What am I waiting for to travel to these locales? Well, the reason for the rampant uptick in crime in cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, L.A., and Philly is liberal lawmakers and governors who push no-bail or cash bail laws that put violent criminals back on the street hours after they commit crimes, only to offend again; and liberal district attorneys who refuse to prosecute even serious crimes. So until that changes, I'll stick to the safer enclaves, with sane governments.
And you know what? If I'm not safe in those cities, neither are you. You can take your chances and go there anyway. But you're taking your chances. There's no getting around it: those cities are more dangerous by far than they were two years ago. And for the people unfortunate enough to live there, it's certainly not safe. In suburban Portland, a man recently listed his home for sale as-is, because squatters had moved in, and he couldn't afford a lawyer to evict them under Oregon's liberal laws, which favor the squatters. When the man went to ask the squatters to leave, they beat him up and put him in the hospital, yet the police still wouldn't remove them. I doubt that he'd say he's better off than he was two years ago.
Now, back to the economy; what about economic conditions in general? Well, if you have a job, count yourself lucky, and know that the condition may be temporary: more than 35,000 layoffs have been announced in the U.S. since June. In case you haven't noticed, we're in a recession, and all the current administration is doing about it is trying to convince you that the definition of a recession isn't what you've always understood it to be. And even if you want to drink the administration's kool-aid, a number of very reliable leading indicators point to recessionary conditions, including the fact that consumer sentiment is lower than it was during the pandemic or the 2008-09 housing crisis or the 2000-01 housing bubble or the early 1990s credit recession or the recession before that. Then there's the fact that the yield curve is currently inverted (meaning short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates, which signals an expectation that, longer-term, the Fed is going to have to start cutting rates to jump-start a struggling economy; of course, first they have to finish raising rates to try to rein in the runaway inflation caused by rampant government spending and backwards energy policy).
Want to buy a house? You're going to pay more in interest than at any time since 2002. Couple that with the fact that inflationary conditions have driven house prices into bubble territory, and home affordability is worse than it's ever been. Of course, all bubbles must burst, so if you bought a house in the last year or so, you paid more than it was really worth, so expect that home's value to drop like a rock over the next year.
Now, you pay taxes, right? Do you care about what that money gets spent on? Well, did you go to college? Did you pay your own way? Maybe take out some student loans that you worked hard to pay off? Now your tax dollars are paying off somebody else's student loans - and that somebody's parents might make a lot more money than you do, because the $125,000 income limit now applies to Junior, if he's graduated and out on his own.
What else are your taxes going toward? Well, the equivalent population of Houston, Texas, the nation's fourth-largest city, has entered the U.S. illegally under this administration, and those people are going to receive health care, education, and other services that the government is going to pay for (and when it comes to paying for things, the government is you).
We just learned today that some of your tax dollars are going to go toward a program to pay for our military to volunteer for duty at the southern border. Doing what, you ask? Running errands for the illegal immigrants there. Picking up prescriptions for them. Shredding documents. (What, pray tell, will they be shredding?) Cleaning refrigerators, for crying out loud. Yes, my fellow Americans: our military, cleaning refrigerators for illegal immigrants. On your dime.
Were you worried about covid? Did you think it was a big deal? Well, do you know what else has been flowing freely across the southern border under this administration? Fentanyl. And fentanyl has killed more young people than covid over the last two years, by far. You probably know someone who's lost a loved one to fentanyl poisoning (we say "poisoning" rather than "overdose," since fentanyl is so often disguised as or blended with some other drug).
I could go on. The bottom line is that it's hard to imagine how anyone is better off today than they were two years ago. Now, let's turn our attention to whether the country is headed in the right direction.
Numerous polls, including some from liberal news sources like NBC, show that an overwhelming majority of Americans - 74% in the NBC poll, similar to the numbers from other polls - believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. So if you believe otherwise, congratulations - you're in a very small minority. (Other polling has found that about a quarter of Americans should have their heads examined, are blindly partisan, or are just plain crazy. Of course, at least a quarter of Americans work for the federal government, so ...)
Which party has been in power for the last two years? The Democrats. And which party is responsible for the direction in which we're heading? The party in power - the Democrats.
Now, what are the Democrats running on? What's their platform?
First, abortion. They want abortion on demand, in all 50 states. So if you want to be able to get an abortion any time you want it, right up until birth, anywhere in the U.S., the Democrats are the party for you. If that's what you care most about, by all means, vote Democrat.
Of course, you may say that it's not about that - what you really care about is "women's freedom." Really? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not have to choose between buying groceries for her family and heating her home this winter? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not get stabbed to death while she's working at her job in a furniture store, or standing on a subway platform in New York City? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not get beaten while she's walking home from the corner bodega in Portland? (That's "bogada" to you, Dr. Jill.) Or to not lose her job because there's a recession? Or to not be raped by an illegal immigrant who happens to be a sex offender in his home country?
The second - and only other - plank in the Dems' platform is January 6. You know, the "insurrection." Do you really want to base your vote on something that happened 22 months ago, rather than what's happening today, and what's going to happen for the next two years? If January 6 is that important to you, consider these things:
- Go back and look at what your retirement savings balance was on January 6, 2021.
- Note that a gallon of gas cost $2.25 on January 6, 2021. It's $3.91 now.
- A gallon of milk cost $3.59 in January 2021, vs. $4.41 now.
- A pound of bacon cost $5.83 in January 2021, vs. $7.37 in August 2022.
- Think about the people who were alive on January 6, 2021 that no longer are, due to murders by offenders who were back on the street as a result of lax bail laws, or due to fentanyl poisoning.
- Remember that the U.S. population grew - illegally - by 2,000,000 since January 6, 2021. And you're going to pay for those people's health care and education, among other things.
- Note that the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 2.65% on January 6, 2021, vs. 6.92% now.
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