Better Off 4 Years Later? A Mixed Bag Of Answers

Baugh now makes modular homes in Indiana. He likes his job and company, but he worries about gas prices, health care costs and more generally, the future.

"I feel like there's no direction," he says. "You don't have the promise of a job the next day. A few years ago, gas was cheap, food was cheaper. I knew I had a job, at least I thought I had a job. I had a safety net. Now I have no savings. You don't know what's going to happen next week."

The recession's impact leaves him pining for the past.

"I would love to go back to before everything happened," he says. "Things were much easier. You felt like you had a future. Now you don't know if you're going to have one. I'm going to be 47 next month and I don't know if I can ever retire. It's really scary. Time catches up with you and you really don't know what to do."

Baugh feels he's gone backward. "When I was 19, I used to bring home $320 a week," he says. "Now I'm 46 and I bring home $390 to $420. Where's the progress?"

The financial strain, Baugh says, also took a personal toll, contributing to his divorce from his wife of 21 years; he says their joint annual income plummeted from $103,000 to $36,000. "A lot of people get scared when you're used to a certain way of life and it changes overnight," he says.

Baugh says he's detected a modest economic turnaround but wishes Obama had done more to help folks like him. Some friends think Romney is the answer because of his business background. Baugh isn't sure he'll vote. "I can't believe anybody anymore," he says.

"I really did have hope when (Obama) got in that things would be good," he says. "Now the only thing I see is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I was born into the middle class and now I'm on the other side."

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