The middle class dream as lived by the Greatest Generation

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

I would like to briefly described the life my in-laws lived and their accomplishments. My father-in-law did not complete high school, and neither did my mother-in-law. My father-in-law served in WWII as a private who was in the European theater and then helped lay oil pipelines in North Africa. When he returned from war, he married my mother-in-law and got a job with a large oil company in one of their tank farms. This job was a blue collar dream come true for them. It paid well, had benefits, overtime, a defined pension plan. He stayed with this job for over thirty years. They bought a modest bungalow which they lived in for thirty years. They cared for both sets of their parents at various times in this small house, as well as their two children. My mother-in-law stayed home with the kids until they were in elementary school and then she took a job in a jewelry factory which she kept for twenty years. With their now combined incomes, they were able to pay off their home, buy a summer cottage in a beach community about an hour away, and send their two children to college - one a private university and one a state university. When the time came to retire, they had two paid off homes which had appreciated many many times in value and a large lump sum of cash which my father-in-law took as his retirement option plus their social security. (They NEVER had a credit cards until very late in life when their children were finally able to convince them that it was safer than carrying around cash for everything. They paid off the balance in full every month.) As people who lived through the Depression and war - they were always concerned about living within their means and avoiding debt at all costs. They paid cash for their cars. They made conservative investments with their money - ONLY company stock and CD's. No mutual funds, nothing else, nada. So anyway, long story short - they now qualify as being what most people would consider wealthy. Much to their amazement and surprise. They have a comfortable retirement free from worry.

Now ask yourself - is this same American dream available to working Americans today?


I would say not for many reasons.

1. They both had long-term secure jobs, free from both insourcing or outsourcing, one of which provided lifelong healthcare and retirement benefits.

2. They put two children through college on their incomes.

3. They were able to buy, not just one, but TWO homes.

4. They had an inate sense of modesty, humility and thriftiness that seems to be all too missing in our modern world. They had no need or DESIRE for McMansions, plasma TV's, $300 handbags and all the other things that pass as "average" in our consumer driven age.

Their world truly revolved around their family, their home, their friends, (and food! - oh my God, the food!)


I feel a nostalgia and longing for their world, where all things were possible and achievable if you wanted it enough and worked hard enough for it. Today, a working American family with the same values of hard work, humility and thriftiness could have FOUR jobs with no job security, they would be renting a substandard 2 bedroom apartment IF they could find one and IF they could pass the credit check, there would be NO benefits or retirement and their children could not even begin to imagine college unless they agree to indenture themselves for decades to Sallie Mae.

This is my own Memorial Day musing, 2 days late. In Memoriam, American Dream.

[Daphne08]

1. The American Dream is dead. n/t

[MercutioATC]

12. ...and "The Greatest Generation" killed it.

They (and we) elected the people who allowed this to happen.

...which is exactly why electing "Democrats" isn't enough...we have to elect people who will protect our futures (and far too many Democrats don't meet this standard).

[Johonny]

30. I don't know about that

I think the children of the greatest generation killed it. My grand parents never voted Rethug in thier lives... the same couldn't be said for thier children.

[Minnesota Libra]

2. Yes, I've witnessed the death of the "American Dream" beginning...........

....with Reagan and speed up as well as continued with #41 and the final death throw under #43.

[karynnj]

11. Guess the speaker of this 1993 speech that backs your post

was the American Dream was dying or dead. Comparable statistics from 2006 are much much worse.

Segment of a Oct, 1993 speech:

"In many ways, we are witnessing the most rapid change in the workplace in this country since the postwar era began. For a majority of working Americans, the changes are utterly at odds with the expectations they nurtured growing up.

Millions of Americans grew up feeling they had a kind of implied contract with their country, a contract for the American dream. If you applied yourself, got an education, went to work, and worked hard, then you had a reasonable shot at an income, a home, time for family, and a graceful retirement.

Today, those comfortable assumptions have been shattered by the realization that no job is safe, no future assured. And many Americans simply feel betrayed.

To this day I'm not sure that official Washington fully comprehends what has happened to working America in the last 20 years, a period when the incomes of the majority declined in real terms.

In the decade following 1953, the typical male worker, head of his household, aged 40 to 50, saw his real income grow 36 percent. The 40-something workers from 1963 to 1973 saw their incomes grow 25 percent. The 40-something workers from 1973 to 1983 saw their incomes decline, by 14 percent, and reliable estimates indicate that the period of 1983 to 1993 will show a similar decline.

From 1969 to 1989 average weekly earnings in this country declined from $387 to $335. No wonder then, that millions of women entered the work force, not simply because the opportunity opened for the first time. They had no choice. More and more families needed two incomes to support a family, where one had once been enough.

It began to be insufficient to have two incomes in the family. By 1989 the number of people working at more than one job hit a record high. And then even this was not enough to maintain living standards. Family income growth simply slowed down. Between 1979 and 1989 it grew more slowly than at any period since World War II. In 1989 the median family income was only $1,528 greater than it had been 10 years earlier. In prior decades real family income would increase by that same amount every 22 months. When the recession began in 1989, the average family's inflation-adjusted income fell 4.4 percent, a $1,640 drop, or more than the entire gain from the eighties.

Younger people now make less money at the beginning of their careers, and can expect their incomes to grow more slowly than their parents'. Families headed by persons aged 25 to 34 in 1989 had incomes $1,715 less than their counterparts did 10 years earlier, in 1979. Evidence continues to suggest that persons born after 1945 simply will not achieve the same incomes in middle-age that their parents achieved.

Thus, Mr. President, it is a treadmill world for millions of Americans. They work hard, they spend less time with their families, but their incomes don't go up. The more their incomes stagnate, the more they work. The more they work, the more they leave the kids alone, and the more they need child care. The more they need child care, the more they need to work.

Why are we surprised at the statistics on the hours children spend in front of the television; about illiteracy rates; about teenage crime and pregnancy? All the adults are working and too many kids are raising themselves.

Of course, there is another story to be found in the numbers. Not everyone is suffering from a declining income. Those at the top of the income scale are seeing their incomes increase, and as a result income inequality in this Nation is growing dramatically. Overall, the 30 percent of our people at the top of the income scale have secured more and more, while the bottom 70 percent have been losing. The richest 1 percent saw their incomes grow 62 percent during the 1980's, capturing a full 53 percent of the total income growth among all families in the entire economy. This represents a dramatic reversal of what had been a post-war trend toward equality in this country. It also means that the less well-off in our society--the same Americans who lost out in the Reagan tax revolution--are the ones being hurt by changes in the economy.

You might say that we long ago left the world of Ward and June Clever. We have entered the world of Roseanne and Dan, and the yuppies from `L.A. Law' working downtown. "

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. And who was that speaker? nt

[karynnj]

21. Senator John Kerry

[HughBeaumont]

3. And how it is now:

* Today's MBA is yesterday's Bachelor's. To get past even entry level, they're requiring an MBA, whether the position needs it or not (most really don't). And with every person getting this MBA, combined with new applicants that already have it from both shores, it devalues yours even further. What's next, are we all to have doctorates to be an admin assistant or a financial analyst?

* You need college no matter WHAT. There are no ifs, ands or buts. Blue collar work simply isn't there and our economy no longer accommodates those with only a high school diploma.

* Homes cost about 2-3 times an average person's income. Now, they're 4 to 12 times as much.

* Total tax burden? I read somewhere that in the 50s-70s it ranged about 12-25% TOTAL. Now, it's about 43% on average (I'm not just talking income taxes, I'm talking taxes on goods and services as well) and climbing.

* Wages have risen a measly 3-5% with inflation (and that's being KIND) since 1970, while we work longer hours on average than our 60s-70s counterparts. The minimum wage has lost value, as it hasn't changed since 1997.

* The word "pension" is soon to become a thing of the past.

* You're pretty much on your own when it comes to choosing and contributing to investments and also at the mercy of the market, which the average Joe Non-Psychic knows little about. Conservative investments are good if you plan on retiring at, say, 85.

The neo-clowns, financial pirates and unbridled corporatists have taken the American Dream and shot it square in the face. And they're all in a cigar-smoke filled room laughing their fat old asses off about it.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. All true. By the way, when little, I thought his name was "Hubo" Mont ! nt

[sinkingfeeling]

7. All true except the tax part. I, as a single mother, paid much higher

taxes in the 1970's (up to Raygun's tax cut) than now.

[BFBILLER]

22. Wages vs credit

LOng ago I came the conclusion that starting in the mid 1980's for various reasons the American people were moved from real wage increases to easy to get capital. Wages are going up slow and if you are lucky you are able to keep up with inflation. But credit is easier to get every year. To many people are falling into this trap. I would rather own my life then buy it on time.

[newyawker99]

26. Hi BFBILLER!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[HughBeaumont]

27. Forgot about that, thanks.

Credit IS way easier to get now. I rememeber how many hoops I had to jump through to get my first CC in 1986. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if they started offering it to 10 year olds.

Oh yeah, and Welcome to the Underground.

[InkAddict]

4. Metaphor for America

A typical New Orleans funeral parade is divided into two parts. On the way to the burial site, the music reflects the sadness of the occasion. Very often the band plays the old hymn Flee as a Bird. But as soon as the body has been buried, the mood of the music brightens dramatically. The mourners become a "Second Line" of revellers, dancing as the band plays chorus after chorus of Didn't He Ramble -- a tune whose lyrics suggest the departed was not always immune to the temptations of rascally and even legally questionable behaviour.

[izzie]

5. That is a nice story and I understand it but, always a but

even if I came from that age, this is the age we live in and must figure out. Even if your parents and mine lived with in their means and things turned out well for them it did not for many of that age. It is in the percent that went up that one is talking about. You will find the same now. People who do every thing these people did but they my not be on the fast track of having it all, and that is what seems to count. Do recall that when your parents were growing up the 'town farms' were still in use. I love to tell the story of my mother and credit cards. She died in 1989. She had two cards and had to get them to rent a car on vacations but had never used them and did not want them but could not get a car with out them . It made her wild. She used to say 'they would not take my money'

[bleedingheart]

8. Back then, people had far more patience

they knew how to wait for the things they wanted. They thought carefully about purchases and they saved to pay in cash and in some cases they bought on time.

The biggest problem today is the lack of patience and the lack of understanding the difference between want and need.

I have had friends look at my home and call it a "starter" because it isn't as large as theirs, but at least it will be paid off sooner.

[Yollam]

9. That sounds middle class today, but it was working class then...

Middle class wives didn't need to work. My mom never worked until the Reagan years. At around that time the divorce rate started to skyrocket. What a coincidence...

[LeftHander]

10. Good post, but it was part of that generation that undid America...

The "greatest generation" also fostered an environment that set the stage for the next generation to "live better" than the previous and in doing so destroyed the America that existed for 200 years. We shifted from a network of small economies to national and global economies. Our food no longer comes from "a few miles out of town". Our good and services we purchase are now for the most part delivered by multi-national corporations. Not individuals. The economy of scale...took over for human scale, community development.

Somewhere along the line the message was lost on the baby boomers and we are now living the excess. The early baby boom generation I feel were the ones that set in motion the ability for our downtowns and communities to be ripped apart and exploited by unscupulous developers and marketers. We watched too much TV and we wanted Malls, multi-plexes,....we wanted interstate highways, mini-malls, WalMart and Target we wanted bigger houses and now that we are in our mid 40's to early 60's we are handing our children the excesses of our selfishness and greed. All the while we had TV to teach us from day to desire what we couldn't afford.

I place the blame on ourselves, the TV, our parents for letting us watch too much as kids and our consumer economic structure that has replaced a the real economies of local communities. We allowed the "economy of scale" to replace local economies. Because we wanted "more for less".

BUt we are returning...slowly. The damage casued by one generation that chose to abandon downtown communities is returning...slowly. We are not going to malls as much. We are trying to return to a time when all our goods and services were found in our local business districts of our communities. Not 12 miles away on the freeway...

[MadHound]

13. Your analysis of the baby boom generation is laughable friend

During the fifties and early sixties when the boomers were coming of age, there were no malls, no WalMarts, downtowns were doing fine, and the economics of scale were barely an idea in the corporate groupthink.

Let me ask you, which generation was it that led the "back to the earth" movement during the sixties and seventies? Oh, yeah, the boomers. Which generation led the organic food revolution? The boomers, thank you much. Which generation started the anti-corporate movement in this country? Hmmm, the boomers. Who started the modern ecological movement? Oh, the boomers.

These ills that you blame on the boomers are nothing more, and nothing less than the culmination of a corporate agenda that was set in motion long before you, or I, or even the boomers were born. In fact I would be willing to bet that if it weren't for the boomers we would be a hell of lot worse now.

But apparently it is all the rage in some circles to blame the boomers for every current ill, rather than laying the blame at the feet of where it truly belongs, the corporations and the MI complex that dominates our government. Instead, we absolve those institutions, all to blame a generation that stopped a war and started a whole host of social movements that have bettered our society. Whatever, I think that many are suffering from generational envy.

And if that's the case, well here is your chance. There's a war to stop, a country to save. The boomers have and continue to do their share to make this world a better place. Let's see the Gen Xers and Yers step up and do the same.

[LeftHander]

17. Good points but....the boomers you speak of are the minority,,,,

Aren't they...to get all of those progressive issues to the front we have had to fight and claw against overwhealming numbers of "squares". Who are perfectly fine with taking and taking all that this planet has and returning nothing.

there were also lots of boomer flower children that left that 60's ehind and have adopted the corporate mentality, greed and excess of modern western culture.

Well I am a late boomer....('62) and have always felt out of place and basically ignored by the older boomers and the younger gen-xers...

So it continues.

The fact is something happened all across America in OUR lifetime...we saw the death of local economies and many many people adopt a consumer culture and economy.

It seems to me the vast majority of middle AMerica did. And that majority ARE boomers.

We broke it. And many are trying to fix it. To simply not accept that the lifestyle we all grew up with had nothing to do with the troubleswe have is frankly irresponsible...and part of the symptoms of "boomeritis".

You may have always lived life simply and fought for progressive ideas and that is great but you have definately been in the minority...

[MadHound]

19. I have to disagree with you

You are placing all the blame on a generation, and ignoring the fact that the actual damage was done by both corporations and our MI government. Certainly many boomers who left the sixties behind, but interestingly enough the sixties didn't leave them. Take for instance recycling. Once considered a radical notion to seperate out the recyclables from the trash, now recycling is de-rigor for most city and suburban communities, a program that has the highest participation from boomers.

In fact while a lot of boomers have become comfortable and middle class, they haven't left behind their compassion and quest for justice. Many got involved in local issues, rather than joining national movements because between working and raising families they didn't have time for anything else. Now that they're older without the time pressure, they are becoming more involved, going back to their roots, the anti-war movement.

Sure, some of them became conservative, corporatist and consumerist. But most retained their compassionate, liberal roots. After all, who put Clinton into office, it certainly wasn't the Gen Xers:shrug:

I'm sorry that you feel alienated from the boomers, it is hard to decide whom to identify with when you're on the cusp. I'm technically a boomer, born in '61. And while I gravitated early on to the boomers, and were good friends with many, there was also much that my generation had to offer, from punk music to protesting apartheid and nuke plants.

There is plenty of blame to spread around for our current problems, and the majority of that blame can be laid at the feet of corporate America and the policies of our corporate friendly government. As far as placing blame on one generation or another, well that's a false paradign. There's plenty of blame to spread amongst the generations, from our parents and grandparents generation, down through the boomers and those who came after, the Gen X and Yers. To put this all at the feet of the boomers is just as wrong as putting it at the feet of the Reagan babies, most of whom seem to preoccupied with their own life, and the latest technological gizmo, all while being the most uninformed generation to come down the pike in a long while(see, isn't broad brushing fun:sarcasm:)

We ALL have a responsibility to clean up this mess, and choosing whether or not one participates in such a clean up isn't the measure of a generation, but the measure of the individual. And there are many, many fine indivduals doing great works from all the generations. Stop buying into this blame game friend, all it does is promote hate, envy and devisiveness at the very time when we ALL need to be the most united in face of this assault.

[raccoon]

29. Yes! Yes!

" As far as placing blame on one generation or another, well that's a false paradign."

I used to be naive and think the Vietnam War could be blamed on my mother's generation (the one His Majesty Brokaw called the "Greatest Generation.") I grew up and realized it wasn't the rank and file of that generation who was responsible for the Vietnam War; it was that handful that C. Wright Mills called the "power elite."

[raccoon]

28. And that consumer culture is by no means limited to the baby boomers.

" and many many people adopt a consumer culture and economy.

It seems to me the vast majority of middle AMerica did. And that majority ARE boomers."

[karynnj]

18. I agree with you

The generation after the baby boomers were far more focused on material success than we were. I was amazed by the people who interviewed in the 1980s at the major company I worked at. From high school on they had a plan, and took the courses, learned the skills etc to get into very specific jobs. As a 1972 graduate, I think I started thinking about that only in my senior year.

[Bridget Burke]

15. Early Baby Boomer here.....

My father returned to his pre-war job as bus driver. He was called back to active duty when I was 6 weeks old & died when I was 4. My mother brought me & my younger sibs back to Texas so her mother could help raise us. When we were all in school, she went back to work. We didn't have much but did fine, compared to others in our semi-rural community--not "suburbia" in those days. Yes, we had 4 channels on the TV! We also had books. (The books came in the mail. The nearest library was a long trip by car & downtown's bookstores were impossibly distant. I would have loved one of those mediocre bookstores found in the modern mall. But this was pre-Mall.)

When I was old enough, I moved close to downtown, where I remain. I spent lots of time with my Mom--who also moved closer in--until she died. Compared to all too many people in the world, I'm doing fine. But--I'm a renter & get to work via mass transit.

"Father Knows Best" was a TV show--not the reality many of us "Boomers" experienced. Stop "blaming" & get to work.

[ThomWV]

14. You Have Just Described Every Living Union Coal Miner

It is exactly the life being led by every family man coal miner in this state right at this very minute.

And the industry is dieing. And the Unions are dieing.

[Skidmore]

16. Well, it was a simpler time, but not always rosy.

I, too, was born in the 50s. We were dirt poor, though, but didn't know it. My father had a 6th grade education, dropped out of school and worked odd jobs till he was 17, when he lied about his age to enlist in the Army to serve in the Great War. He came home at the end of the war after suffering 2 wounds obtained while driving lorries to the front lines in France. He was a living trainwreck--diagnosed alternately with schizophrenia and organic brain syndrome. As an adult, I often wonder if the diagnoses really applied, or if his brain was fried due to the huge amounts of alcohol he would consume. He would talk to the radio, was physically and sexually abusive to some of us 8 kids, and couldn't hold down a job for long. He spent years in and out of psychiatric units. There were no support services back then for families of people with mental illness. And for those of you who would condemn the large family--there was also little available in terms of birth control. My mother worked for minimum wages as a nursing assistant in an elder care facility up until her death 12 years ago. She never owned her own home and never asked for much even though she suffered much in silence. As adults, it took us all extra years to start making ground. We didn't have college funds to draw from. I was in my thirties before I was able to complete my BA, having put myself through school while working full time and raising 2 kids. The fifties I remember was one of hard work and great loneliness at time. We lived in a rural area, in an old house a mile and half from town. I walked that gravel road to town many times to carry back groceries because we didn't have a car. My uncle gave us a bicycle at some point and we would ride into town to run errands. We didn't have an indoor bathroom until I was 16. Every year my mom made certain we put in a large garden and we helped her prepare vegetables for canning. This was what got us through the winters frequently. One pair of shoes per kid each year, purchased at the beginning of the school year, was the limit. God help if your feet grew during the year. You were relieved when summer came so you could run barefooted and your feet wouldn't hurt. Mom made our clothing--even the boys' jeans. She'd purchase fabric bundles through the Sear's catalog and spend the summer making clothing for the school year for anyone who had grown to a size not covered by available hand-me-downs. We all worked in the school cafeterial washing dishes during the noon hour in exchange for school lunches. We learned that our ticket out of poverty was an education. In this, Mom fervently believed. I wish she had been able to be the teacher she had dreamed of being as a young woman. When all is said and done, taught 8 kids that they neeed to be self-reliant and perservere. I guess through the lens of my life, the fifties don't quite come into so soft a focus.

[Lars39]

23. They were probably never in danger of losing everything

due to outrageous medical bills either.

[Jim Warren]

24. One factor probably more than all others

of the New Deal was the GI Bill.

My dad survived the 30's depression walking five miles to a job shoveling shit to advance to be the sole family breadwinner able to own his own home. He caught the wave and finished pretty well with 15 decent years of retirement before he died. I know that ain't in the cards for me.

A factoid I heard from a caller to Al Franken last week said in 1965 gold was $35/oz. and the average worker was making that a day. Well, who's making the worth of an oz. of gold per day today?

[RedEarth]

25. Good post.... the middle class is disappearing

Corporations are cutting middle management and people that wanted to run their own business could choose from a variety of options. Now, the options are fewer. Used to be, a person could be a "merchant". They could sell hardware, hats, burial garments, sporting goods, cameras, TV's, appliances, etc..........

Needless to say, their are some merchants still around, however, with Home Depot, Cosco's, Wal-Mart, Office Depot and the rest of the big box stores in the same market, the odds of being able to support your family have been greatly diminished. It seems to me, the economy is becoming more and more like a third world country.......the rich and the struggling.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

31. The rules of the game changed only we all didn't get the memo

I think the rules changed with Ronald Reagan. I believe that was the decade and the era where we moved from the altruism of the seventies hippies to the selfishness of the eighties. There we have the onslaught of "trickle - down" economics and the aggrandizement of consumption. Here is a feckless theory of economics that was scrawled impromptu on a cocktail napkin that basically tore down all previous gains of the New Deal. And remember, the New Deal is what hauled America's ass out of another turbulent, terrible economic disaster.

It is all beautifully summerized in the movie "Wall Street" which stands up even today. Here you have Gordon Gekko with his teratagen capitalism - "Greed is Good" philosophy busily dismantling companies to sell off for their parts to his personal enrichment - regardless of the harm to the workers, the company or society as a whole. Gordon Gekko triumphed over all the rest of us. Gordon Gekko is who is financing our political scene today and Gordon Gekko is the man buying up all the media. It's all about the bucks, kid.

[Iowa]

32. No mutual funds?

"They made conservative investments with their money - ONLY company stock and CD's. No mutual funds, nothing else, nada."

Mutual funds are not risky per se. Some pose significant risk while others pose negligible risk - and everything in between. It depends upon the securities in the fund. Well managed, low cost, no-load mutual funds are excellent investments, and many would pose far less risk than buying individual company stock.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

33. The rise of mutual funds as an investment tool for the middle class

is a fairly recent historical development. To my in-laws, "playing the market" or buying stock in any way shape or form was more risk than they felt comfortable with. The company stock was part of an employee stock purchase program that my father-in-law felt he should do to support the team as it were.

Our outlook today is totally different especially since the day of the defined benefit pension is pretty much just a dim memory. We HAVE to rely on things like mutual funds and just pray that they will return a decent amount in order to fund a retirement. (A side note - my husband and I have a plethora of different funds in various IRAs, 401ks,etc. They swing up and down like yo-yos. The one that I am most amazed with is a CD with solid, predictable, safe gains that over time due to the miracle of compound interest has grown quite substantially. And, I don't have to wake up tomorrow and find out that it lost half its value overnight. There is quite a bit to be said for safety and security.)

Most Americans in my opinion are absolutely completely clueless about how they choose funds for their IRA's, 401k's, etc. I think if you lined up 10 people at random and asked them the difference between a "growth" or a "value" fund or what is "small cap" vs "large cap" I would be amazed if more than two could answer coherently.

[Iowa]

34. Yep...

Investment knowledge is pretty thin among the general public.

Regarding company stock... employees who invest exclusively in one stock - especially if it's the stock of the company they work for - are taking significant risk. If the company tanks, they simultaneously lose their nest-egg, and possibly their job. Very risky business and not a good idea. In your in-laws' day, many invested almost exclusively in company stock, and quite a few still do. The lack of diversification poses large risks.

Regarding CDs... There's nothing wrong with CDs. I have a fair amount myself. But over time I expect them to lag other conservative investments - like TIPS. So I use CDs for short-term needs. Also, when one examines the return on CDs, it's best to look at real return - not nominal return. Most CDs barely keep pace with inflation. TIPS and I-Bonds provide some inflation protection with as much security as CDs (as long as you're willing to hold until maturity). Today the returns on most CDs are actually negative, IMO, because the CPI is understated. Safety and security come with a cost. But it's a cost many are willing to pay.

The main point I want to make here (and the reason I replied to your OP) is this: What might appear to be a conservative investment portfolio may actually pose significant risks that may be overlooked. It's not just a matter of good investments and bad investments, or safe investments and risky investments... it's a matter of combining all those risks appropriately so that one risk offsets the other, and the portfolio as a whole moves upward. In other words, a portfolio containing the right mix of stocks can be far less risky than a portfolio containing no stocks. This is the basis of portfolio theory - and the knowledge of these concepts is why some people have considerable assets - and the lack of such information is why others probably never will. It's that important.

BTW, kudos to your in-laws. They did almost everything right. I agree that that life isn't as accessible to my kids.