[Hoot Gibson]

Like I said, you guys are pissed because he isn't fixing Bush's mess fast enough. Bush screwed us into one of the biggest holes we have ever been in, it takes time to fix that mess.

[Image: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/avg_median.gif]


http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html

If income levels are not given in constant dollars, they are really not valid. Here is a good synopsis of Obama's economic record from the left-leaning Factcheck.org website.

As for fixing Bush's messes, Obama is generating messes far faster than he is fixing them. The increasing share of part time workers in the job market is also lost in the figures that you cited above. Anyway, we only have to survive two more years of Obama before the healing can begin.

Income, Poverty and Food Stamps
Also since our last report, the Census has released annual figures on income and poverty covering 2013. They provide a bleak picture of the economic well-being of most Americans during the first five years of Obama’s tenure.

Median household income rose just slightly to $51,939 in 2013, Census reported. In “real” income, adjusted for inflation, that was 0.3 percent higher than in 2012, but still 4.6 percent below 2008, the year before Obama first took office, when the first effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression were just starting to be felt. And it is 8.7 percent below the peak year of 1999.

The same Census report showed that although nearly 1.2 million fewer people were living in poverty in 2013 than the year before, the number still remains nearly 5.5 million higher than in 2008. The official poverty rate — meaning the percentage of the population living below the poverty line — dropped 0.5 percent in 2013, but it still remained 1.3 percent higher than in 2008.

Meanwhile, the number of people receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps,” bounced back up by nearly 400,000 since the period covered in our previous update. As of June, the most recent period for which the government has released monthly figures, the total stood at 46.5 million people. That’s 2.7 percent below the peak reached in December 2012, but it’s still 14.5 million, or more than 45 percent, higher than the month before the president was first sworn in.