For Better Or Worse?

I'm thinking in terms of two scales -- one decades long, the other limited to this election cycle.

The question often posed in both cases is "are you better off now than you were then?"

On the long term, I have no doubt whatsoever about the answer. People today not only have vastly more, but mostly better and cheaper, options for just about everything than they did 50 years ago.

Think about your phone, and your phone bill, back then. You paid more for local land line service, using a device tethered to the wall of your home, than a basic (long distance included instead of outrageously priced by the minute) cell plan costs today. And you can get phones that are cheaper than those old ones were, fit in your pocket, and go wherever you go. If you want to pay more, for a "smart" phone, you also get a tiny mobile computer that's probably more far powerful than the ones on spacecraft of that era.

Most stuff is better now than then, and most stuff costs less now than it did then in terms of hours one must work to afford it.

But of course, in politics, the "then" is four years ago.

I'm not sure the question is really fair to Donald Trump, because four years ago we were sinking into the authoritarian COVID-19 panic, and now we're mostly out of that panic. While Trump didn't handle any of that very well (remember when he invoked War Communism to force the manufacture of ventilators -- which the market ended up providing before he could fully go through with it?).

Trying to correct for the COVID-19 stuff, do you think you're better off or worse off now than you were four years ago? And do you credit or blame Joe Biden or Donald Trump for that conclusion? That seems to be the big question politicians are asking -- and trying to provide answers for -- right now.