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You can look at a data series going back to 1790 (admittedly the early stats are debatable), and real per capita income growth over 20 years (1 generation) runs around 40-50%, for the whole period, with the lowest in the very early years of the republic. In 40 years it runs a bit over 100% on average.

Did you read the article? That's not true for the last 30 years.

This is also the first time a smaller generation has followed a larger one. It is also the first time in America's history that a smaller generation had to fund the previous larger generations retirement, and healthcare....

The article, like many such, is full of holes. First and foremost, it counts "families" and families have become smaller over time. If the same money supports 4 people in 1950 and 3 people in 2000, the per capita income has gone up.

Second, it is based on a survey group, not total national data, so it is subject to a lot more manipulation. Third, we have shifted production from in home to out of home, on average, and men do more of the in-home now, so it's not astonishing that measured women's income has gained relative to men. But it doesn't mean that the total income isn't real.

Yes, there is no doubt that SOME people or categories are worse off, but that has always been true. All that I asserted was that, ON AVERAGE, people as a whole are better off, and always have been, over, say, a 20-year period. And the per capita GDP is indeed up more than 40% from 1986 to 2006.

One final point -- the last stat is really remarkable, in one sense, as we have gotten more and more of families that you would expect to be dysfunctional and low-income. Broken homes, illegitimate children, single mom "families"; drug-using workers and parents, etc. If you just compare married-couple, or married-couple with children, families to their predecessors, the gains would be even more siginificant.