Robert Kuttner

For at least three generations, Americans have looked forward to passing along a better life to their children. But today's young adults face a double whammy. For more than two decades, the costs of making it into the middle class have been outstripping incomes--the costs of college, homeownership, decent health insurance and the expenses of raising kids--have soared while incomes have been nearly flat. Since 2007, on top of that trend we've had a severe jobs recession, again concentrated among the young. So is the Millennial Generation just fated to be a lost generation? Are young Americans victims of unlucky timing? Not at all--they are victims of bad politics and bad policies. Broadly shared postwar prosperity did not just happen. It was the result of deliberate measures during boom years that created ladders into the middle class. Those ladders can be re-created if we change our politics.