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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RidgeHunter" data-source="post: 1830515" data-attributes="member: 4319">I don't take anything away from the WWII generation, and I often bash my generation and praise theirs for certain qualities the possess that my generation and baby boomers lack.I'm simply saying the constant bashing of my generation in one area, financial expectations/employment, is out of whack and it's old hat. I have a split family, one half Okie dirt-farming Democrats, and the other half from back east. The back east grandparents were part of the WWII boys coming home and bought a new house in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown" target="_blank">Levittown</a> addition and raised 3 kids on a single income (manufacturing work). A nice lifestyle for an entire family with a single blue-collar income was the norm for a while in America. Pensions were the norm. Union membership was high.The Okie half of my family also raised three kids with jobs/educations and maintained a lifestyle that would be very difficult to maintain in 2012 with the same jobs/education (both parents worked, tho). All their kids had a chance to go to college. They grew up dirt poor before the war. They never had a cushy lifestyle at all, but raised families in a way that would not be feasible if the situation was transferred to 2012. They were never close to having spare money, and busted their ass more than anyone I've ever known, but they did receive rewards for it that aren't achievable today.All I'm saying is it's objectively not drastically easier - and IMO it's likely more difficult in certain ways - to maintain a "middle class lifestyle" with the same skills/education/jobs than it was in the 50's and 60's. Of course like anything economic, this is highly complicated and depends on many variables, like COL in certain areas of the country, etc, etc. The greatest generation grew up poor, sacrificed  ridiculous amount both for the war effort and for the prosperity that followed as you lay out, but objectively, when they came back and started popping out babies around 1950...they weren't comparatively scratching and surviving for any employment to feed the kids in contrast to my generation pissing a silver employment platter.Good luck raising three kids in a new house with new cars on a single blue-collar income and sending them to college and retiring at 65 with a pension today. My generation deserves a lot of bashing, but in the employment arena only, the "entitled" BS is getting old. We don't expect a damn thing employment wise. No pensions and the smart ones don't expect social security to pay for a bag of rice when we're old. I don't expect to send 3 kids to college working in a factory. Entitled my ass.</blockquote>

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