I grew up with the most wonderful of wonderful grandmothers. Not only did I love her greatly, I respected her and her generation for all of their accomplishments through some very difficult times in history.

In a way, I felt a bit embarrassed by the lacking of my own generation. For the most part, it has been smooth sailing for the entirety of my 43 years here with many of those years filled with opportunity and success. There have been no world wars, no depressions, and no plagues to speak of.

Instead of having to walk 5 miles to work in a blizzard or suffer through a sweltering summer without air conditioning, I've lived relatively pain-free. It just hasn't been as tough on us as it seemed be tough on Grandma and her generation.

At least that's the perception.

If you dig a bit deeper, there may be more suffering going on in the U.S. economy than is really acknowledged. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that there have been in fact many issues that may not be as glamorous as world wars, depressions or plagues, but have been nonetheless very challenging for the current generation.

Are We Worse Off?

Front and center for me is the idea that my generation will be the first generation in U.S. history to be worse off than the previous generation.

Whether true or not, I can attest to such a notion based on my own perceptions. For starters I am certain that the hundreds of thousands of dollars personally fed into the Social Security system will be all but squandered by the time I reach retirement.

What about the current housing crisis and credit crunch we are experiencing today?

Asset values are disappearing before our very eyes led by home prices falling, but following not far behind are stock market values. It is as bad out there as we have ever seen, maybe ever seen.

The one big difference is that with my grandmother's generation, the pain was always followed by a...