From the article: "Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last."

There have been many postings to Hacker News recently with similar themes. The situation described increasingly looks like the situation in the worst-off countries in western Europe, where an ossified social welfare system insulates the older generation (approximately people from the oldest people now living down to people with birth years before 1970) from the economic situation of the younger generation. The United States used to be much less like that, but the Silent Generation (roughly, the people born during the Great Depression) throughout their lives acquiesced in government policies that resulted in an enormous income transfer to people in their generation at the expense of younger people, including Baby Boomers like me.

[AFTER FIRST EDIT: A friend who is a Ph.D. policy analyst for the federal government sent me a link the other day raising the question "Has the US median household income really stagnated over the past 30 years?"

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/the-7-most-illuminating-eco...

(point 6 in the link). I think the statement is surely correct that actual ability to spend on the part of Americans on goods and services they desire has increased in all income quintiles over the last thirty years. Some economic statistics don't take account of tax policy and transfer payment (entitlement) policy well enough to reflect the actual economic well being of American families. Official inflation statistics have also badly overstated increases in "cost of living" throughout my adult life, failing to take into account changed consumption patterns and changing (improving) quality of many goods and services, thus making people think they are poorer than they actually are. By observation of actual consumption patterns, young people today are better off in general than young people a generation ago, which is the consistent expectation of American culture.]

I support United States policies that move in the direction of east Asian rather than western European patterns of government spending and social welfare, putting more of the investment in future generations back in the hands of families and less in the hands of bureaucrats. I'm in favor of a big boost in the minimum age for all kinds retirement benefits (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) as the only possible way to keep taxation for those programs from crippling the opportunities of my children. (Yes, I support that even though I am middle-aged and that will put off my retirement. I'm already slated to retire well after age 65 by the last Social Security reform that was passed in the early 1980s to favor the Silent Generation.)

I'm also in favor of greatly expanded parental choice in education so that families with children have the power to shop to help children gain good primary and secondary educations that launch the children into adulthood with a reasonable chance of employment. I live in the first state (Minnesota) to have charter schools, to have statewide public school open enrollment (the school district in which I live has enrolled students whose residence addresses are in FORTY-ONE other school districts around the state), and to have statewide dual enrollment of senior high school students in college-level classes. Even at that, I was a homeschooling parent here, and there is more that Minnesota and every state in the country can do to expand parental choice in education. But the parade of horribles that some people claim will happen if parents gain more choice has NOT happened in Minnesota over the last quarter century, and more states ought to at least emulate the example of my state, where educational achievement compared to educational spending is moderately high by the unambitious standards of the United States. I'm glad that through homeschooling and other alternative approaches I used to educate my children that now my oldest son, already grown into adulthood, gained sufficient work skills that he has gainful full-time employment even in today's bleak job market. His generation should be spared from the policy mistakes of my parents' generation.

ANTICIPATORY EDIT NOTICE: I posted an outline of what I think the policy problem is here first. I've been looking up some sources and may do some more edits as this thread continues to interest other participants here on HN, until I run out of time on my edit window.