False Expectations from the Middle Class?

In a recent article over at US News & World Report, Rick Newman has an article outlining 7 Stressors Sapping the Middle Class. I found his last point to be the most thought provoking:

For the past 40 or 50 years, Americans have lived by a series of unofficial tenets: A good education guarantees a good job, hard work will bring prosperity, and 40 years of 40-hour-a-week work earns a comfortable retirement. Then, maybe; now, not so much. Workers who believe that somebody owes them a comfortable life just because they try hard are risking bitter disappointment in a Darwinian economy, where there are likely to be more losers and fewer winners than we're used to. The winners will be those who learn how to adapt, expect nobody to give them anything, and are prepared to work harder in the future than they did in the past. That's how it was in America before anybody ever heard of the middle class, and it may be that way for a while again. The real middle class—the true bedrock of the nation—will be able to handle it.

Is the future that bleak and desperate? Or is it just a return to reality after a 50 year detour on Easy Street? What do you think?