Yes, but 4 years ago was an interesting time in my life. I had just quit smoking, rented a house above my means to give my disabled sister somewhere safe to live while grieving over her deceased caregiver, and spent whatever money I had saved to move her across the country.

She’s thankfully doing well now and engaged with someone she is absolutely head over heels for.

I’m still financially recovering, but things are moving in the correct directions.

And thats why Trump might win. People care about themselves, and Biden isnt helping.

We’re still getting disproportionately screwed under Trump’s tax plan that expires next year. POTUS can’t control grocery prices unless we want a failed Executive Order like Nixon’s. Biden has done everything a President can do about gas prices by opending a record number of reserve barrels during record high production, proving that POTUS can’t control the price at the pump.

The only remaining financial controllable that Biden could change is the high interest rates through the Fed.

Edit: As I learned below, that’s not really an option.

I’ve voted D every time. This question is ridiculous because most people are NOT better off and those that are, are all on the low end of the financial spectrum where the short term income gains have made a difference.

Even the best stats I see from the Democrats show 8% better income adjusted for inflation. That’s awesome! But what inflation? The low fed number. Not the CPI.

This means for anyone who purchases things, or where purchasing things is a larger proportion of their income which is everyone below the top 0.5% or 1% in the USA, your effective wage has gone down 10% to 40% depending on what your personal income raise was. Those that job hopped, are only down a bit. Those that didn’t are screwed.

Everytime this question gets asked, I look around and not a single person I know is better off now from income. Not a damn one. You know what is doing better? Stock portfolios. I have them, I’m up. My friends have them, they’re up. We have traded realized daily losses in living for stock market unrealized gains. The average person doesn’t have stocks. They just get shafted completely.

It’s incomprehensible to me how low Democrats have gone to just blatantly lie and gas light. That’s a Republican move. And every one of the people smart enough to actually think, gets a little more pissed off when they’re gas lit into trying to believe that 20% year over year multiple years in a row of inflation is good. That’s batshit.

I asked my brother this four years ago. He said he was. It was a bad question to ask him because there are many factors that can determine this besides who the president is. Still… he was unemployed from 2017 to 2021 and he felt in 2020 he was doing better than he was when he had a job and could support himself. I bet he’d answer no today despite being employed for most of the last 4 years. He was fired briefly for saying “something they interpreted as racist” but he got a new job real quick. He bought a house under biden. I think it was a mistake and he could wind up upside down real soon, but he went from unemployed to rushing into home ownership. People who are committed will believe the reality they want to.

June, 2020 - We still didn’t know where our next roll of toilet paper was coming from.

Fuck no. I can barely even make it through the day anymore.