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First of all, the president has very little to do with the economy. I get so tired of the president getting the blame (or credit) for something that they have very little to do with. The economy is driven by the middle class (or bourgeoisie to use the old Marxist term).

Having a strong middle class that is allowed to innovate, produce and consume at will is what keeps the economy going.

Fact is, as a society, we are consuming more than ever. Now many may say that the economy is poor because people are out of work or are in bankruptcy. But those issues are by and large self-induced. Also, even those who are out of work are receiving welfare benefits and are certainly not going hungry - as evidenced by our obesity problem, which seems to be especially acute among our "poor."

Now I have some friends and family members who have fallen upon "hard times" and while I concede my sampling may not be entirely representative of the whole, certain common denominators are prevalent among these people:

They lived beyond their means (i.e. high credit card debt).
They have poor credit ratings (fair at best) that result in onerous interest rates on that debt.
There is a general sense that they are "entitled" to an upper-middle-class standard of living which helped put them in the situation they are in.
They continue to be unemployed because they consider most available lines of work "beneath their dignity".
They overpaid for their house and it is far larger than what they need.
They own late model cars with high monthly payments.

Now there was a book that came out a few years back (and it's been updated since then) called "The Millionaire Next Door".
The general precept of that book is that in order to accumulate wealth, one must live well beneath their means while saving/investing the remainder.
Not living "within" your means but living "below" your means.
This means that a family of four earning $100,000 a year should live as though they are only making $60,000 a year. They should be taking $40,000 off the top and saving/investing it. You can allocate this money to a combination of 401(k), stocks, bonds, and other investments.
That's much easier said then done. For when you are making $100,000 a year, you feel entitled to drive a BMW, go out for steak dinners whenever you want and jet off to vacations in Hawaii and Europe. It is very difficult to earn that kind of money and clip coupons, while driving a six-year-old Nissan Altima and live in a three-bedroom ranch instead of the McMansion your realter tells you you can easily afford.
If you have the willpower to do this, you will very quickly become debt-free and begin building wealth. After a point, you can begin to increase the quality of your lifestyle. The book explains when you can start doing that.
In summary, a lot of the pain that people are feeling out there is due to the fact that they got locked into a paycheck-to-paycheck existence with no safety net.
People love to complain about all the jobs "going overseas" but the end result is that goods are being shipped over to us so cheaply that even with stagnant wages, our incomes are "rising" because we can buy so much more with our dollar.
Just a small example, in my attic is a six-CD changer that I paid $600 for back in the mid 1990s. It was state of the art as you could play nearly six hours of music without having to change out discs. Nowadays, you can get a device for under $100 that plays thousands upon thousands of songs.
People complain about the rising cost of food yet it is still impossible to get a table at Applebees or Red Lobster on a Friday night without waiting an hour or two. For those people, why not save that money and cook at home? Sure, the prices of beef, produce and other staples at the supermarket are rising, but you can still feed a family of four pretty cheaply by buying the staple items at the supermarket and cooking more at home. BTW, stay away from the frozen convenience dinners and other heavily processed, packaged food items.
Overall, the economy really is doing well. The standard of living is at an all-time high and the fact that people consider themselves "poor" because they don't have an automobile or a big screen TV, or they can't afford that vacation to Disneyland, speaks to just how "spoiled" we have all become.