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Read other letters about this article
Let's start with this:
"...our parents wouldn't have dreamed of living as they did -- fancy cars, foreign vacations, frequent restaurant meals -- and also buying a house."
Yes, there surely are some families who live far beyond their means through the pursuit of the good life and the fancy cars, foreign vacations and frequent restaurant meals that (in the consumer culture) make it up. But for the vast majority, this tale is the same sort of myth as Regan's welfare Cadillac Queens. On this count, I'd recommend Elizabeth Warren's book, The Two Income Trap.
The second thing which I think is left out (and which is explored in the aforementioned book) is the stagnation of wages for the large majority as we put an ever larger portion of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer. Our bankers, Wall Street financiers and our government sought to address the issue not through responsible policies designed to insure responsible lending and rising wages, but through lending practices and government policies that substituted EZ credit and asset bubbles for wages in order to create an illusion of wealth.
I'd recommend people search out past Elizabeth Warren interviews with people like Charlie Rose, Jon Stewart and especially Bill Moyers. She has a good understanding of the issue.
So yes, there are some out there who just had to have the good life that they could not afford. But most of us have been struggling just to hang on, to live in safe neighborhoods, to send our children to decent schools and to keep our seven to ten year old car on the road.
America is a broken culture. It's a culture that defines success as giving ever more to those who have plenty, and consoles itself by telling us that all the "losers" are where they are because they deserve it. We have to get away from that.
