A Million Percent Better—for Whom?

Every election season, someone asks whether we’re better off than we were before. For the 2026 midterms, two years is a useful comparison. What has improved since 2024? What has deteriorated? What are we getting for our money, our votes, and our trust?

These should be practical questions. Instead, they often become a loyalty test.

If our party is in power, everything is wonderful. If the other party is in power, the country is collapsing. Apparently, the grocery bill sometimes depends less on what the cashier charges than on whose picture hangs in the White House.

We hear that everything is a million percent better. America is winning again. We’re the best at everything, and anyone who says otherwise must hate the country.

Fine. Let’s count.

Not applause. Not campaign slogans. Not the number of times a commentator has assured us that we’re witnessing greatness. Let’s count things that can be checked, including things we would rather not hear.

First, a concession: some Americans really are better off. Their investments have increased. They’ve received raises, paid off debt, or found better jobs. Their circumstances deserve to be acknowledged. An argument that requires people to deny their own good fortune has already lost them.

But “I’m doing better” and “everything is better” are very different statements. So are “my side won” and “my life improved.”

Before answering the election question, we should make sure we know which one we’re answering.

Start with the household ledger. A larger paycheck is encouraging, but how much does it buy? A pension increase helps, but what happened to insurance premiums, groceries, utilities, and medical costs? A rising home value looks attractive until we consider what it costs to insure the house or move somewhere else.

These are questions to calculate, not assumptions that everyone has lost ground. Some households will discover real gains. Others may discover that the improvement they’ve been celebrating disappears when expenses enter the calculation.

An account balance is a number. Being better off is a relationship between resources, costs, obligations, and risks.

There is, however, one group for whom the improvement is easy to document. Forbes counted 813 American billionaires in its 2024 annual list and 989 in its 2026 list. That’s 176 more, an increase of roughly 22%. America leads the world in this particular production category.^[7]

Apparently, the billionaire shortage has been resolved. We can all breathe easier.

In June 2026, Forbes also declared Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s market debut lifted his estimated net worth to $1.1 trillion. He subsequently fell below the threshold. For a moment, we had crossed another historic frontier in the accumulation of paper wealth.^[8]

Congratulations to everyone whose grocery bill is payable in someone else’s stock valuation.

These fortunes consist largely of ownership stakes, not cash sitting in a vault. Creating valuable companies can benefit employees, customers, and investors. More billionaires doesn’t, by itself, prove that ordinary Americans have become poorer. But it doesn’t establish that they’ve become better off, either.

That distinction keeps getting lost in the celebration. A country can mint more billionaires without making an ordinary paycheck stretch further. The success of the people at the top answers a question about the people at the top. It isn’t a household financial statement for the rest of us.

If someone points to a record fortune as proof that we’re all thriving, ask when your share arrives.

Then there’s the part of our well-being that doesn’t appear on a bank statement.

According to Reporters Without Borders, the United States ranked 55th in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index. In 2026, it ranked 64th out of 180 countries and territories. That’s movement in the wrong direction. The organization identifies growing political pressure and worsening conditions for journalism.^[1]

We can dislike reporters. We can complain about sloppy coverage, selective attention, and opinion disguised as news. None of that makes us better off when journalists face greater obstacles to scrutinizing people who wield public power.

If a government is doing an excellent job, independent scrutiny should help demonstrate it. If it’s doing a poor job, scrutiny helps us discover that before the consequences become harder to repair.

Our ability to learn what officials are doing belongs in the “better off” calculation. Even when those officials belong to our party.

Transparency International offers another uncomfortable comparison. The United States scored 69 out of 100 in its 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index and 64 in its 2025 edition, released in 2026. Higher scores indicate less perceived public-sector corruption. The latest score placed America 29th among 182 countries.^[2]

That doesn’t mean every public official is corrupt. It doesn’t measure every crime, and its two-year data window isn’t identical to the two years preceding this election. But it provides evidence against the sweeping claim that everything has improved. The score itself declined; this wasn’t simply a matter of another country passing us.

The practical issue is whether decisions serve the public or people with special access. When connections matter more than fair rules, the cost may arrive as a wasted tax dollar, a distorted contract, or an opportunity that never reaches an ordinary applicant. We don’t need to receive an invoice marked “corruption” to have an interest in preventing it.

The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index also placed the United States below the leaders: 26th of 142 countries in 2024 and 27th of 143 in 2025.^[3] A one-place change, especially with an additional country in the comparison, is modest. It shouldn’t be inflated into proof of national collapse. It certainly doesn’t substantiate a spectacular improvement, either.

Predictable law is something comfortable people can take for granted until they need it. We find out how valuable it is when we’re treated unfairly, when an official exceeds their authority, or when a powerful opponent decides that the rules are for someone else.

Being better off includes being able to obtain a fair hearing when something goes wrong.

Even the American passport supplies a measurable correction to automatic claims of supremacy. Henley’s January 2024 index ranked it seventh, with access to 188 destinations without a prior visa. In January 2026, it ranked tenth, with access to 179.^[4] Most Americans won’t experience that difference personally. It nevertheless illustrates why international standing should be checked rather than proclaimed.

And then there’s our peculiar relationship with freedom. The current World Prison Brief table places the United States fourth in its listed incarceration rates, at 542 people per 100,000 residents, with approximately 1.83 million incarcerated. We’re no longer first in the rate comparison; countries including El Salvador exceed us.^[9]

We should get that right. An argument about evidence shouldn’t improve its punch lines by damaging its facts.

Still, the land of the free remains remarkably accomplished at putting people behind bars. This is a leaderboard on which moving down would be welcome.

Incarceration is sometimes necessary. Violent offenders should not get a free pass, and victims deserve protection. But a high incarceration rate is not an international certificate of safety, justice, or freedom. It asks us to examine how much crime we prevent, how fairly we punish, and whether we can achieve public safety with less human and financial damage.

Nor is this a problem that began two years ago. It belongs in the discussion because it challenges the claim that we’re best at everything, not because it proves a recent increase. Historical weakness and recent deterioration are different arguments. We don’t need to confuse them to make either one.

Other comparisons reveal longstanding weaknesses, and honesty requires us to call them that. We shouldn’t blame a recent administration for every problem inherited from earlier ones.

The OECD’s 2025 health report puts American life expectancy at 78.4 years, 2.7 years below its member-country average. It reports healthcare spending of $14,885 per person, adjusted for purchasing power, compared with an OECD average of $5,967.^[5] The indicators use different reporting years, and the longevity figure largely reflects 2023. They establish a serious gap, not a verdict on everything that happened since 2024.

We pay luxury prices for national health outcomes that do not look like the luxury package.

But that gap matters when someone declares America the best at everything. We have outstanding clinicians and medical capabilities. We also have population outcomes that don’t justify confusing expensive healthcare with superior healthcare overall.

The fair question for an election is whether those weaknesses are being reduced. Calling the country great doesn’t answer it.

Nor does the international evidence show a country falling behind in every field. America remains a technological heavyweight. Its overall innovation ranking stayed third between 2024 and 2026, and its IMD business competitiveness ranking improved from twelfth to tenth.^[6] These are real strengths. They make blanket pessimism as careless as blanket celebration.

They also make a more demanding question possible: how effectively are we turning our considerable strengths into better lives?

A country can attract investment while its institutions weaken. A household can gain wealth while becoming more exposed to illness or unemployment. A person can feel politically triumphant while losing protections they haven’t yet needed to use.

Imagine that tomorrow brings an injury, a job loss, a natural disaster, or an unlawful decision by someone with authority. Would you have more help, more security, and a better chance of fair treatment than you did two years ago?

The answer belongs alongside the value of your retirement account. Security has value before the emergency arrives.

There’s one final complication: responsibility. An international ranking doesn’t isolate a president’s actions from Congress, state governments, private institutions, or developments abroad. Report years and measurement years differ. Any honest assessment has to respect those limits.

But limits on assigning blame aren’t permission to ignore results. We can examine whether things are getting better before arguing over who deserves the credit.

Try a simple test. Imagine these same figures had been reported while the other party controlled the White House. Would you accept them as evidence? Would a lower corruption score suddenly concern you? Would falling press freedom become a national embarrassment?

If the meaning of a statistic changes with the party in power, we’re measuring allegiance.

A party affiliation is not a calculator. It should not be allowed to change the answer.

So, are you better off than you were two years ago?

Maybe you are. Count the gains. Then count the costs, the risks, and the protections. Consider the country your children will inherit and the institutions you’ll depend on when luck stops doing so much of the work.

You may still answer yes. But give an answer that survives the arithmetic.

The ballot asks whom we want to govern. It doesn’t require us to pretend that everyone already is.

And if everything really is a million percent better, the evidence should be able to survive a few questions. Greatness ought to be sturdier than a campaign bumper sticker.