People fly off welfare. Newsweek counts new billionaires. Yet something's off. Consumer debt has more than doubled in the past decade and is up 51 percent in the last three years alone. Personal bankruptcy hit a historic high last year.
Job security is a dream from the past.
Full-time work with good benefits can be elusive. Most important, rising income is not a part of this economic expansion. Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economics professor, calculates that from the last peak in the business cycle, in 1989, to now, median earnings in real dollars are down 5 percent. Even when Krueger cuts off the leaner part of that cycle, starting instead from 1994, median earnings are down 2 percent. The latest trend puts even base pay on the table.