Generally things were always getting better. Today the cost of education, fuel, housing, continues to spiral upwards. The number of jobs available to new graduates has diminished. Its harder for younger people to reach the same degree of relative affluence that their parents had achieved.
I base this upon my personal observations.
I was born in the mid 1940’s and remember things always appearing to get better technologically and socially. More and better jobs for Americans with ever higher pay and benefits. Better products.
Now I see fewer high paying jobs except for certain key career ladders, I see cheap junk sold in stores by ignorant, uninformed salespeople to customers who don’t seem to appreciate quality or realize that the garbage they are buying was once made here as a quality product at reasonable prices.
So that is why GDP per capita continues to rise? That a lower-middle class individual can acquire things that used to be completely unattainable.
I base this upon my personal observations.
Too bad your personal observations do not reflect the nation as a whole.
Agreed. And this recession was predicted by economists who foresaw disaster with the unbalanced excessive cheap money solution (counterfeit growth) of trying to pretend the devastation to our manufacturing wasn't lethal.
Note also his prediction of the Housing Bubble popping...which also was pooh-poohed by the idiots spouting drivel about greater U.S. manufacturing than ever. The Virtual US Recovery is in Trouble, by William Engdahl