The economy is out to get me. I'm sorry you got caught up in all of this, but it is really after me.

I graduated from college just in time for an economic downturn. I chose a profession that has been decimated by change, I sent my son off to college just as costs entered the stratosphere and now, when I should be accumulating wealth for a comfy retirement, all the traditional ways of doing so are down the drain.

Yep, it's me the economy is stalking.

And yet, I'm one of the fortunate ones. I have a job. I have a house. I can send my child to college.

I keep trying to be happy about that, and I am grateful, but also angry.

The harm feels personal, even though I know it really isn't. Most people have their own list of woes and most of them are worse than mine. But there is something intensely irritating and infuriating about seeing the upward-mobility script turn to fiction for so many.

Every time I make peace with the situation, some new development pulls the scab off. Stocks take another tumble, as they've been doing lately. Or some new report says things are worse off than we thought.

The middle class is being eroded, the poor are getting poorer and the richest of the rich much wealthier, but talking about that is bad because it constitutes class warfare; best to just keep imagining that we are all just one good break away from becoming super wealthy. Or that working harder is all it takes to cross the threshold between shakiness and security.

We've entered a year of political campaigning that will focus on the economy, what's wrong, what's right and what, if anything to do about it.

I doubt many of us will find much beyond despair in those debates.

If your experience has been anything like mine, you may have simply lost hope in the economic system.

For the past couple of years I've been reading that the economy got stuck in neutral for most Americans a long time ago, and slid backward for some.

Last week a New York Times story, citing Census Bureau figures, said the median income for a male full-time worker last year was about the same as it was in 1973 when adjusted for inflation.

For all of our working years, much of my generation has been spinning its wheels.

The same census report said that the number of Americans living below the official poverty line is the highest it's been in the half-century the bureau has been publishing figures.

And what about savings? The savings rate has been pretty low, but for people who do save, returns on investments haven't been so great either. They go up, then they go back down. And at the moment, there are no options that look the least bit appealing.

For years, what I read, heard and was told, was that you save, buy some stocks, invest in real estate, work and you just keep climbing up that money tree. Stay the course, and all will be well.

I listened and complied.

Now, the trusted news sources, and financial experts say, ahem, the previous advice wasn't exactly true. The economic machinery that lifted millions of Americans into the middle class is broken.

Trying to run on ice is frustrating, but as I said earlier, my family is among the fortunate. We're still standing.

But if mega-millionaires can moan about the pain of potential taxes, I can whine, too. Aren't they our role models?

Maybe the economy isn't out to get me personally, but right now, it isn't my friend and probably not yours either. A Gallup Poll found only 11 percent of Americans satisfied with conditions in the country and that a majority think the economy is only going to get worse.

My hope is that we've seen enough of what doesn't work to begin demanding a return to sanity.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.