Nine simple charts that demonstrate the disaster of Obama's economic policies

Gauging the economic performance of a president is a tricky thing for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the fact that so many statistics sound like apples-to-apples but really aren't (like the U3 unemployment rate for example, which doesn't tell you the change in labor force participation), and the fact that politicians cherry-pick statistics that don't always mean what they want you to think they mean (like "jobs created").

There is also this: Much of what happens in the economy is not controlled by politicians. That's a hard one to swallow sometimes because we tend to want to assess presidents on the basis of things like "how he manages the economy" when in fact he does no such thing. But he does make decisions on economic policies, and there are measurable statistics that can show us not only the results of these policies, but their larger impact on the economy as a whole. That doesn't mean the president controls everything, but it does show how he can impact things. Over at The Federalist Papers, Jason W. Stevens has put nine such charts together in a wonderful Brady Bunch-style assemblage that really gets to the heart of how horrendous Obama's decisions have been, and how many problems we now have to solve as a result of them. It ain't pretty, but here you go: Any way you look at it, Obama's policies have failed to improve things. If you had to pull out only one of the nine, I'd proably choose the one that shows the decline in median family income. That's just a stunning indictment of everything Obama claims his policies are supposed to accomplish. But dishonorable mention would have to go to health insurance costs, which are soaring precisely because Obama decided to intervene in a market that was working OK but suffering from too much federal manipulation - only to see Obama introduce even more federal manipulation in the form of unrealistic coverage standards and insane restrictions on insurers' discretion concerning who gets covered. By the way, that's directly retired to the rise in debt. Even with the subsidies, the rising premiums are costing people more, but liberals would have you believe the subsidies make the rising premiums no big deal. Except that the same taxpayers who can't afford the premiums also can't afford the higher taxes necessary to fund them, not to mention the additional debt they are causing the nation to incur. But those are just lowlights. The entire picture demonstrates just what a sharp left turn U.S. economic policy has taken under Obama, and exactly what the result has been. We're printing and borrowing more money, spending much more, regulating health care more closely - and none of those who are supposed to be benefiting from any of this are seeing that happen. Kudos to Stevens for putting it together, and to the Heritage Foundation for the accompanying commentary you can see at the link. If you really want a sense of where we stand economically, you can look at thousands of different charts. But if I were you, I'd start with these four.

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