A good job. A decent income. A path to upward mobility and the sense that if you work hard, it shouldn’t all hang by a thread. These are all bedrock American ideals grounded in work that have become unattainable for far too many – especially for people starting at the lower end of the economic ladder. A few stats bear this out: 90 percent of 30-year-olds born in 1940 earned more than their parents did at the same age; by the 2010s, that number had plummeted to 50 percent.
