If you own stock you are, in fact, much better off than in early 2009

[cthulu2016]

And if your chief concern is being laid off you are fantastically better off then when Obama took office.

And your home is probably worth more, and/or more salable.

In general, "Are you better off than you were in the worst months of the biggest economic crisis since the great depression" is almost a rhetorical question.

[SheilaT]

1. Yep. I do own stock, and the value of it

has gone up quite a bit in the past three years.

I bought my home two years ago, and since I plan to stay here at least five more years, and the monthly payment is affordable, I'm not too concerned about the value, although it's probably gone up a bit.

I'm not too concerned about being laid off or fired, although it's not impossible. I'm actually fortunate in a way that I'm doing entry-level work, and I'm reasonably certain I could get a similar job if I needed to. Not that I'd like to have to go out and look again, but I'm not highly paid in a job category that's being shipped off overseas. I work an information desk at a hospital.

[nobodyspecial]

2. Yep, my retirement portfolio

is finally back to where it was before the crash. If Romney gets in, I'm going to quickly move it into fixed accounts. With my timeline, that's not the right thing to do, but I'll be damned if I watch tens of thousands of dollars evaporate again.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. Actually my home is worth less than in 2009

Fortunately I bought it in the late 80s and didn't borrow money against it. As such I'm not underwater.

My 401K on the other hand is appreciably higher.

[BlueStreak]

4. I suppose that is possible, but it seems unlikely to me.

In most markets, the home value was very near the bottom by early 2009 and has rebounded at least somewhat since then.

It sounds like you did not have your home up for sale in 2009, so how could you really know the value? Are you just assuming what you wished or hoped the value might have been then? It is very easy to replay a false history here.

Housing in most markets is reaching an equilibrium where the used stock is in proportion to the cost of building new. That was not true before the 2008 collapse because a supply demand imbalance (caused mostly by way-to0-easy credit) caused the used stock to become artificially inflated.

What that means in practice is that if you bought anything in the past 10 or 15 years, your current value may be a little lower than your purchase price. But you also lived there rent-free for so many years. Housing is a good deal.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. I based it on the appraised value set by the county assessor for tax purposes.

That value significantly lower today.

[BlueStreak]

6. Fair enough. In my market

those assessments aren't very accurate and lag the market by several years. And they rarely go down without the homeowner making an appeal.

[BlueStreak]

7. If you are unemployed looking for a job, that isn't much consolation

The fact is that we were losing jobs at 750,000 a month and the Obama administration has turned that around, with 4.5 million private sector bobs created sine the recovery started. But there are still plenty of people who can't find a job with a living wage.

The question then, isn't whether you are better off, but which direction do we go from here. What we know for certain are these things:

1) The Obama policies coincided with creation of 4.5 million jobs.

2) To the extent that Romney will say ANYTHING about his plans, they sound a lot like the Bush policies that last all those jobs.

3) And let's say you really can't tell a difference between the Obama and Romney policies. Well, in either case there will be many people unemployed, and many in poverty. What we know for sure is that the Republicans want to shred the safety net.

So the real question we should be asking is this:

[font size="4"][center]DO YOU TRUST ROMNEY ENOUGH TO FLY WITHOUT A NET?[/center][/font]