An era ends

What is ending is not only a time when the American auto industry was a colossus in the domestic and world economies. What is ending is any genuine chance that the majority of American workers—most of whom do not acquire the pedigrees we’ve come to consider as the gate passes to personal prosperity—can attain anything resembling the middle-class life the generation entering adulthood during World War II achieved.

[From Truthdig - Reports - The End of the Middle Class as We Know It]