WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - Perhaps the most famous

one-liner in a presidential debate, Ronald Reagan's "Are you

better off than you were four years ago?" question to voters in

his match with Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in October

1980, came as high inflation pummeled consumers' spending power

and captured a general malaise about the economy.

As President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump

head to the first of two debates ahead of their rematch this

November, some version of that question may well come up or at

least be on the minds of people taking stock of the past, very

turbulent, four years.

But comparison between now and the pandemic "before times"

is difficult. Look at almost any economic data series and the

pandemic is not just an obvious break in the trends, but poses

the challenge of when to mark the end of the "normal" years for

Trump and the resumption of a "normal" period for Biden.

To some extent the problems likely to get attention in the

debate are modest compared to the ones Reagan used to knock

Carter.

While prices surged in the wake of the health crisis,

especially for groceries, inflation as measured by the Consumer

Price Index was 3.3% in May compared with more than 12% at the

time of the Reagan-Carter debate. The unemployment rate has,

outside of the pandemic, been below 4% across much of both the

Trump and Biden terms. It was 7.5% when Carter took office in

1977, was 7.5% when he debated Reagan in 1980, and barely fell

below 6% in the years between.

So the economy is healthier than when Reagan posed his

question, but

how does it compare

with four years ago, when Trump and Biden last went

head-to-head?

We put the questions to analysts, experts and voters for

some snapshot answers ahead of Thursday's debate.

MICHAEL STRAIN, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE

INSTITUTE:

"I think the typical worker in the typical household was

better off in February 2020 than they are now. It is all about

inflation," Strain said, noting that while wage growth has been

fast, and fastest for lower-paid occupations, it has not fully

kept pace with prices.

Beyond that, Strain said the most striking thing in

comparing Biden and Trump on economics may be the similarities -

from deficit spending to the use of tariffs.

"There is a lot more overlap than is widely realized," he

said. "I don't think either is fiscally responsible. Trump

wanted to shower special attention on domestic manufacturing and

chose to do it through tariffs. Biden chose to do it through

tariffs and subsidies."

KAREN DYNAN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY:

Inflation hurts and the housing market has become hard to

navigate, especially for younger people and particularly with

high Federal Reserve interest rates being used to contain

prices, Dynan said.

But by very broad measures, "households' financial positions

are stronger across the distribution than they were prior to the

pandemic," she said. "We saw financial gains...among groups that

struggle to build wealth. That is a victory for the aggressive

policy responses to the pandemic."

The Fed's latest data shows the share of household net worth

held by the bottom 90% rose by 1.2 percentage points during

Trump's four years in office and 1.8 percentage points during

Biden's first three years. Looking outside the immediate impact

of the pandemic, the share held by the bottom 90% rose 0.4

percentage point under Trump's middle two years in office, 2018

and 2019, and by 1.2 percentage points during Biden's middle two

years, 2022 and 2023.

DIANE SWONK, CHIEF ECONOMIST, KPMG:

Swonk says the focus should be on the long term. The

pandemic amplified trends that were already developing under

Trump, towards less globalization and heightened geopolitical

risk, and those have continued to intensify.

"The walk away from the neoliberal ideas of trade and

cooperative security, a backlash towards free trade and

immigration, more regulation and more oversight - that gets lost

in translation...

"There is no question that the economy in the aggregate is

better than it was," she said. But "we are in a much more

volatile world. Is the world better off given all the volatility

and hot wars and ongoing misery? It is hard to turn around and

say yea this is great."

ADAM OZIMEK, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ECONOMIC INNOVATION GROUP:

"If we can avoid a recession I think we are in a really good

place. That labor market has not been this tight in a long time

and policymakers are learning that we can actually run the

economy hotter than we thought," he said. But "it was quite a

rough path to get here...People are mad that prices have gone up

a lot."

And while inflation has cooled, high interest rates "are

causing a lot of pain in the housing market."

ANNA MATSON, 27, SMALL BUSINESS OWNER IN MICHIGAN:

"I definitely feel like I'm worse off. Four years ago, me

and my husband both had full time jobs, and we had a lot of

extra money to spend on getting organic food and going on

vacations, and just doing all the things we love to do together.

And we've really had to cut back because of the price of

everything. We've even started growing a ton of food so we don't

have to pay crazy prices at the grocery store for clean food."

Matson, who supports independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy

Jr, also said high interest rates are preventing them from

upsizing from the starter home they bought with a 2.6% mortgage.

"Just because the interest rates are so high, we are stuck.

There's no way we would be able to move unless we had a huge

bump in our income."

EDDIE ROMAN, 56, UBER DRIVER IN FLORIDA:

"I think I'm about equal. I don't think either one (Trump or

Biden) did anything for me. I have been working two jobs for the

last eight years of my life. Only last year did I now take on

the one which is this (Uber driving) and this part time, and

that's only because I've been medically retired."

Roman said gas prices matter a lot to him, and they were

lower under Trump. "Under Trump ... you can obviously see the

difference with gas prices going down. I don't know about taxes,

because I don't really follow economics a whole lot. But I know

that bread and milk and all these things weren't super

expensive. Now do I think a president controls all that? No."