Were we in a recession in the 90s, as the rust belt was hollowed out and earning its name, and Wall street reaped the once in a generation windfall of outsourcing an entire country's manufacturing base overseas? Many would say those were the good times. White collar professionals had their time in the sun for those couple of decades, and GDP exploded. But the working class folks were wiped out.
Now it's our turn at the high end of technology. Once top paid SWEs are being reduced to the understanding that their careers are probably over. The economy today is chugging along just fine, but our little niche of high earning specialty labor is over, just as it was for the auto workers 30 years ago. The capitalists have almost fully completed their capture of the last remaining means of production out of their control; intellectual labor.