When times are good ... Hell, when were times good for you?

The longest stretch of economic prosperity for me was during the 8 years of the Clinton presidency. Never got laid off once. Plenty of overtime. Seemed like everyone who I knew was working. I had more seniority where I worked by that time but that wasn't all of it. I don't remember any lay offs where I worked during that period even for the low seniority workers.

I still have my unemployment check stubs from the Reagan years. Lot of them. Seemed like standing in line at the unemployment office during that period was my job.

How about you?

Don

I graduated from college in 1983. The only job I could find was a minimum wage clerical job my mom got for me. I got laid off a month before I was to head off to grad school. After grad school, I started a job at $20K. Before that nightmare of peace and prosperity, the raises were slim to none. During the Clinton presidency, I got decent raises, and was able to save up enough money to buy a house. I was in my house about three months before the election. I remember staying up that night and crying, wondering why the fuck I had just bought this house, because I was going to lose it, along with my job. After all, the shitbag who stole the election drove every business he ever had straight into the ground. I knew he and his party would do the same to this country. And, here we are. My job is long gone, the temp job I'm in now ends in September, and unless I am able to sell my house soon or find another job, I'll lose it. And, as we all know, our economy was run straight into the ground.

Fresh out of high school, newly married, family started, first house, all the work and OT you could stand, every business was looking for workers.

What happened.............?

because I was an agency nurse in Boston, requested by name by several different big hospitals. I was pulling in an obscene amount of money and banking it all, planning to leave the city because I didn't fancy paying rent for the rest of my life and a cosmetic conversion of a cruddy tenement into a condo didn't appeal to me, at all.

I did the best in the late 60s, though, when a low level office paycheck was enough to pay the rent on a one bedroom flat and the gas and maintenance on an old car. The 70s saw double digit inflation and single digit raises and wages have never recovered from that. The 90s saw my job stalled at the same pay for 8 1/2 years and the profit motive injected into all levels of health care, something that pretty much wrecked any job satisfaction. Since I didn't use my house as an ATM and my health continued to deteriorate, the Naughties were just plain horrible, barely survivable.

We old boomers who remember what things were like before OPEC and Reagan wrecked the US economy remember that working people once had a decent deal, that even marginal, low level workers could afford roofs over their heads and that when we got sick, we could afford to go in to see a doctor for ordinary illnesses and injuries.

I don't know if those conditions will ever return. I do know that the stranglehold the rich have on us will continue to be a tenuous one, done under the shadow of the guillotine if it doesn't, at least in part.

Before: I was out of work several times during Reagan/GHW Bush. When I bought a car in 1986, I paid 13+% interest!

Now: I haven't worked full time since June 2009. No prospects yet.

70's,for regular people,not for the ones who have been doing the fuckedering.

Late 90's particularly good - I was in a law firm (as a paralegal) and they kept giving raises because so many entry level paras were going to dot.com's instead (this was in the large law firms in DC). I kept getting memos that increased my salary. With my overtime I made more than many of the salaried younger attorneys.

Had a good job doing what I loved, was making some money and was living in a cool place (Austin, TX). *Sigh* I sure do miss those days!