Krugman: Boomers' middle class childhood a disappearing memory

[funflower]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/opinion/10krugman.html?hp

(snip)

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.

(snip)

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

(snip)

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

(more)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/opinion/10krugman.html?hp

[Warpy]

1. In the mid 60s, I worked a series of cruddy jobs that paid barely

over minimum wage, and I'm talking about a maximum of eight cents an hour over minimum wage. I could afford a one bedroom apartment, a car and liability insurance, health insurance and I had a little left over to enjoy being a kid.

That's what we've lost. Screw the vanishing middle class childhood, I found it stifling. However, working a full time job gave me enough to LIVE ON, and that is what I DO get angry about losing.

[mcscajun]

2. It's worse than that.

Those of us who came from working class backgrounds, got educated, worked hard, and managed to inch our way into the middle class, got royally fucked in the Bush years and have now tumbled back to where we started.

The only Up Side in all this, is at least we come equipped with a "survival mode." We had nothing before; we know how to deal with having nothing again.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. Krugman: excellent, as always, but......he's just a member of the

[funflower]

4. Please, God, let me find a KRUGMAN book under my kid's mattress!

:toast: