To the editor:

In his column of Sept. 1, Mr. Simons says: “The country and its citizens are not better off today than in 2008,” a notion endorsed by Mitt Romney in his acceptance speech. What poor memories they have.

In 2000 George Bush enacted his economic growth plan (which Mr. Romney wants to duplicate) passing tax cuts and deregulation, which, along with unpaid wars and other unpaid-for programs, transformed a surplus into a $1 trillion annual deficit for Obama to inherit. The result of this strategy was an increase of the unemployment rate from 4 percent to 5 percent between 2000 and 2007 before the bottom really fell out. In 2008, the last year of the Bush presidency 3,623,000 jobs were lost, and when Obama took over, more than 700,000 jobs were being lost each month. The Dow hit 6,700.

In February 2009, the Recovery Act was passed, and by May the job losses were cut in half. By November 2009, positive job growth occurred for the first time since 2007. In 2010 more private-sector jobs were created than in all the Bush years put together.

Job growth is not as easy as in previous times what with globalization, off-shoring and the emergence of the Third World countries, but today we have 29 straight months of continuous private-sector job growth, the Dow is at 13,000, housing prices are finally going up, General Motors is alive and well, and Osama Bin Laden is still dead.

Not better off than in 2008? Really?