Also, wrt growth, the argument I would make is that for much of the last 30 years, most of the economy's growth has not been shared with the middle class. Some of this is undoubtedly structural - the technology revolution has put a higher premium than ever on those with highly developed skills/education and there are certainly workers who have just been left behind. But if you look at the data, the wealth gains over the last 30 years have pretty overwhelmingly been concentrated in the VERY top of the income distribution (I hate to use the rhetoric of the Occupy movement just because it is very inflammatory to a lot of people, but it really is a top 1% phenomena). If this inequality could be mostly explained by education/skills, you'd expect something more like the top ~20% to be vastly pulling away from the bottom 80% of the distribution.
This has been true for a very long time, but people were filling it in with debt. Then everything got over-extended and collapsed.
Please go read the source I linked to, which shows that growth has not stalled for the bottom 20%, nor the middle 20%.
Go read the article I linked to. We are richer than our parents. We own more and bigger houses and cars than they owned.
To fix your analogy: "Next quarter's numbers will be higher, and shareholders are just going to accept 10% growth rather than 20%. Expecting 20% growth forever is unrealistic."
If you want to argue that growth should have been higher than it actually was, or that somehow the evil vampire squid is holding us back and making us into serfs, go ahead and make that argument. But you still need to square your argument with the fact that we are consume more than ever.