Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – Politify Takes an "America 2.0" Look at Pocketbook Politics

May 23, 2012

Just in time for what is shaping up as a blockbuster national battle between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney comes Politify – a new site designed to financially quantify our political decisions.

The new startup culture has been accused of trying to monetize just about everything we do online, so it should come as no surprise that politics is just the latest target.

But give Politify props for focusing on personalized data – and a bottom line metric – to help us make more informed political decisions.

Barack Obama and the Change We Can Count

When you use Politify you give some basic information, age, rough income, marital status etc. and then use this as the basis to compare how much each candidate would cost you, or make you, if they are elected and their policies are enacted.

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For example, a 35-year-old married San Franciscan making $65,000 per year with one child would “Net” more than $5,000 per year from a new Obama term and lose over $2,000 per year if Mitt Romney is elected. It might either impress you or trouble you (it impressed us) that part of the calculation includes the government services each of the candidates would deliver (or in the case of Romney–not deliver) to each individual.

Politify compares your tax benefit under an Obama and a Romney presidency.

We suspect most Reset readers already have a pretty good idea who they are going to vote for in the coming presidential race between Obama and Romney. But this is the kind of tool that could be very useful to undecided voters in elections to come.

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