What's happened to America's middle class?

• Author: Krugman, Paul
• Position: Brief Article

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960s, 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 ramifies could expect steadily rising riving standards and a reasonable degree of economic security. That middle-class society no longer exists. Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years in average income. And economic security is a thing of the past: Art it takes is a bit of bad tuck in employment or health to plunge a family into poverty. But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1980 in...