The Amazing Shrinking Middle Class

"When I go into the supermarket, I marvel at the price of things: a single onion for a dollar, four bucks for a jar of jam, five bucks for a box of Cheerios, four bucks for a wedge of cheese. Is everybody except Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and Mark Zuckerberg living on store-brand macaroni and ketchup? It's hard to measure the desperation of households in this culture of rugged individualism. At social gatherings friends rarely tell you that they are two months behind in their mortgage payment and maxed out on their credit cards. And that's the supposed middle class, at least the remnants of it. I can't tell you what the tattoo-and-falling-down-pants crowd talks about in the parking lot outside the 7-Eleven store. Perhaps they swap meth recipes."

By my definition, I suspect that the "middle class" is smaller than most people think.  I think that if you total up the credits and debits of many families thought to be "middle class" you would find that they are in fact "workin' for the man" (more or less).  Sure, they have many of the trappings of modern suburban life and by most worldly standards lead a pretty cushy life where material things are concerned.  But in return, they must resolve themselves to climbing upon "the giant hamster wheel" to maintain their "social place" and belongings.  I would imagine it would become quite mind numbing over time.  Each day, they become another day older and deeper in debt...mostly by their own action or inaction or inability to say "no" to themselves or marketing firms or advertisements or peer pressure or all of the aforementioned.

I have to confess being a long time reader of grouchy old "get off my lawn" doom and gloomer, James Howard Kunstler...  but you have to admit that he makes some valid points.