In a nutshell, the recent 3.5% GDP growth was a sham brought about almost entirely by government spending; productivity has been rising since 1995 allowing employers to downsize either workers or hours worked; the 2000s boom was almost totally brought about by Bush and Greenspan goosing the economy by tax cuts and low interest rates...weakening the dollar by nearly 40%, encouraging people to pile into overpriced housing as their de facto (and mostly tax free) retirement plans, and giving most homeowners who hadn't experienced real wage increases since 1999 little choice but to resort to the (tax deductible) Housing ATM until 2007, thus, leaving an intolerable hangover for the next generations to pay--in every sense of the word. Does that about sum it up?

I would say it was a pretty rotten deal, wouldn't you?