Past peak prosperity

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http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/276879">Smart Remarks:

As our economy has evolved, it has distorted the very nature of our society. Once upon a time in America you could believe that if you worked hard your wages and standard of living would increase; your kids would live better than you did. All that's inoperative now. The fundamental American promise seems broken. There are many reasons for this — globalization would top my list — but the bottom line is that as a society, we appear to have passed the point of "peak prosperity." Never again will we be as broadly prosperous as we were, or believed we were.

This "believed we were" is key, because we probably reached peak prosperity a decade ago. Since then wages have flatlined, though the housing bubble and easy credit made it easy to ignore this. But now the piper — and Mastercard — must be paid; now prosperity must give way to austerity. Unemployment is likely to remain high, and this will have a profound effect, shaking the confidence of a generation and further crippling our consumption-based economy. At the same time, as we cut social spending, it will reinforce this spiral of newfound destitution; our descent down the far side of the peak prosperity bell curve will quicken.

We are going to be a poorer nation, and Americans aren't going to take this well at all. Prosperity is a birthright, or regarded as such. We'll mourn its passing. Then we'll get angry — even angrier than we are.