Reply #9: I think it's far too simplistic to say that any particular era

[expatriate]

was a time of "joy" for everyone in a nation. People's situations vary widely. I know many people, including myself, who had a hard time during the Clinton administration - not necessarily because of Clinton's policies and actions, but due to some societal and economic changes that took place during that era. So I certainly don't look upon that time, or any other time as being particularly golden. Things were good for some folks, bad for some folks.

During the time that the Social Security offices were basically shut down by President Clinton, my first husband had been unemployed, and had also been robbed - so he needed a new Social Security card, as he had a good chance for a new job. Went off to the Social Security office - the staff were there, but would/could do no work. Couldn't get a new card, no matter what. They didn't care that his possibility for employment hung in the balance - just told us to "talk to the President" about it. He didn't get the job because he couldn't provide the Social Security documentation, and his unemployment had run out. Our child had just been diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes that week, and we had no health insurance - and we couldn't qualify for Medicaid because we weren't living at the percentage of the poverty level to qualify. I didn't feel any particular joy on that day, as a taxpayer who had been paying taxes since I was three years old (child performer). There were people suffering unemployment during those years, just as there are all the time, and some of Clinton's policies made it more difficult to get help through social programs than it had been in the past, though Reagan had done a lot to gut those programs too.

I will say that the overall atmosphere was better in America during the Clinton years than it seems to be now. But realistically, no time in history was golden - unless you happened to be the person on the top of the heap.

Things are much worse now, of course, but everyone wasn't doing the happy dance during the Clinton years either.