have to say I am better off in many, if not all, ways that matter. I assume the first thought the op conjures up is personal finances, but Stinkdyr did make me think with his "less free" answer. But that happens no matter which party rules, might explain his Libertarian stance. So that's a wash, been losing ground since 1968. But I have a pretty nice story.
Had my pay cut of 5 years ago reversed 2 years ago, with a nice bonus to help make up for the damage.
My company, that I care about deeply, is poised to have it's biggest year ever in 2012. 2011 was one of our top 4 years ever. We have been in biz for 27 years, I have been there 18, have known the owner since 7th grade and he recruited me.
We have absolutely no government contracts, though a small percentage of our sales are to local Housing Authorities, but it's always for lower end, lower profit goods.. We are a cabinet distributor and manufacturer, and fabricate countertops of all kinds from laminate to corian to marble and granite. We market to the trades and they send their customers to our showrooms. We do not compete with our customers as we do not install, except for granite. We were HIT bad as the economy tanked. 4 day work weeks for labor, 8% $$$ cuts for management and designer/sales people, 4% for labor. 401K matches were discontinued. But we also had just completed our manufacturing expansion before the dark settled in and were able to survive (competition thinned out a lot) because we no longer tied up money in stock cabinets hoping for buyers. Virtually all of the finished product we were holding had been ordered and had at least 50% deposit on it. The warehouse was hardly filled, but there would never be a liquidation sale!
New home starts died, and even safely employed people held back on remodeling, but the slack was picked up by Property Management companies, huge, large, and small owners of multi unit rental housing and others with tenants and turnovers in apartments. Our edge was that even if we were not cheaper than say Home Depot, our turn around time meant new tenants in and paying rent a few weeks sooner. A lost month's rent is not recoverable, and makes a $1,000 kitchen cost a lot more. We cost more, but we turned out to be a lot cheaper.
Massachusetts really is always in better shape than much of the country most of the time, and people realized that when homes don't sell at all, new home starts are dead, and foreclosures and abandoned property listings dominate the RE pages...well folks have to live somewhere and rental prop takes off. So the developers were and still are having a field day in rental prop development, converting mills, refurbishing neglected apartment buildings etc. And the word got out about our local factory...unheard of that manufacturing would come to Massachusetts as other industries closed. But it not only saved us, we are prospering. And now the log jam is breaking re: private residential remodeling, individuals are starting to spend. The MA RE market currently is heating up, but pricing is level (probably a realistic correction to the previous decade). So either sell now that you can or fix 'er up and live better where you are.
DPNewell and others in related trades...get your arses down to the Housing Authorities and bid those jobs, or become independent contractors for large prop management companies in reasonably populated areas. They are raking it in.
Also, the utilities are pushing free energy audits, then offering 0% interest loans for insulation, weather stripping, windows, roofing etc. When something dies, something else is born.
Frank
