For better or for worse

Are we headed up or down the quality-of-life ladder? | Joel Belz

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

It's become a maxim in recent times: The long-held expectation that we would generally pass on to our children a better life than we ourselves enjoyed—that optimism has all but disappeared.

How do you want to pose the question?

Economically? Maybe it's not fair to ask just as we're emerging from a bruising recession. But when so many folks say they question whether we're really emerging, maybe we're obliged to raise the issue. You don't have to look far to see a whole lot of next-generation wages and salaries that don't measure up to last-generation incomes. And those smaller incomes are being asked to pay for long lists of increased costs, ranging from health coverage to housing, from electricity and natural gas to tuition, from state inspection on your car's exhaust system to the interest on multiple trillions of dollars of government debt. Not much to encourage us—or our kids—on that front.