I am a baby boomer, a post WWII son of 2nd generation immigrant parents. I'm a bit older than Paul Krugman, but I grew up in exactly the same America he talks about in "Conscience of a Liberal".

Postwar America was, above all, a middle-class society. The great boom in wages that began with WWII had lifted tens of millions of Americans - my parents among them - from urban slums and rural poverty to a life of home ownership and unprecedented comfort. The rich, on the other hand, had lost ground. They were few in number and, relative to the prosperous middle, not all that rich. The poor were more numerous than the rich, but they were still a relatively small minority. As a result, there was a striking sense of commonality: Most people in America lived recognizably similar and remarkably decent material lives.