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According to the NYT:

“The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?”

For years, I’ve been saying that “we” are the first downwardly mobile generation. By “we” I mean those Americans who grew up in the middle or upper-middle classes. I don’t know anyone who’s living a life remotely comparable to that of their parents. Many of us do not own homes, and the apartments we rent are small and less central than those we grew up in. If we do own, we own smaller and/or shabbier. We’re waiting to have kids, and worried.

My parents cared for their parents as they grew older–emotionally to an extent, and certainly financially. Would I be able to do the same for my parents? Certainly not if I’m relying on a job to do the trick. In 1968, the year that I was born, my father, working a middle management position, earned the same amount that I earned at my last full time job 3 years ago. On that salary, however, he could afford a 4 bedroom house in a prime neighborhood (with a rental unit), 3 kids (public school, private summer camp), and various extras (like renting a darkroom for a hobby). My mother worked, but not steadily, and that was never a financial concern. On that same salary, all I could afford was a studio in Brooklyn. Nuff said.