My generation – Gen X – was pretty lucky. We grew up in the aftermath of the Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation, which had built the middle class by rebuilding the world after World War II. It made sense that we would have had the greatest economy the world ever saw; we were the only first-world nation of size and entrepreneurial spirit with the capacity to provide the materials needed to provide what was needed for a world flattened by bombs to rise up again. We did it, and we benefitted from it.

The result was our country and economy booming in ways that seemed impossible. Over the years, we’ve lost some of that edge, as other countries worked hard to catch us in certain fields, but overall we’ve remained on top. We don’t dominate in real terms as we did, but we still dominate.

As a generation growing up in that world, our country did just fine. My family didn’t have a lot of money – my mother was disabled, and neither of my parents graduated high school. They had five kids; the youngest is me, and they managed to survive just fine. Only later did I realize how tight things were with money, or must have been, which is a testament to my dad’s willingness to work two jobs year-round and my mom’s ability to budget and clip coupons. She seemed to make at least a buck and a half out of every dollar; it was something to behold.

Where I grew up, that was the norm, so it seemed ordinary. We were........

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