Our Generation is Poor Because of...Women?

Shocking News! According to a new study, American men are worse off than their fathers for the first time in generations:

"In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s, a good predictor of his lifetime earnings, was $35,010, the study says, 12% less than for men in their 30s in 1974 -- their fathers' generation -- adjusted for inflation. A decade ago, median income for men in their 30s was $32,901, 5% higher than 30 years earlier."

How could this have happened? The Wall Street Journal, and their bevy of "experts" from the Brookings Institution seem stumped:

"[Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution] said she isn't sure why men's wages have stagnated. "It seems there's been some slowdown in economic growth, it's possible that the movement of women into the labor force has affected male earnings, and it's possible that men are not working as hard as they used to."

Yes, let's blame it all on those pant-suit wearing 90s women! It's couldn't be the fact that America's entire manufacturing sector has moved overseas only to be replaced by Wal-Mart style jobs in the service sector, or the fact that trade unions have virtually disappeared. No, it's got to be women. Also, sheer laziness.

Leave it to economists to develop complex theories just to explain painful, base reality. Maybe Isabel should just ask her 25-year old nephew who undoubtedly works at Borders why he can't support a family of five on $7.50 an hour.