We don't need no steenkin' meeedle class!

After WW II, the United States engineered the largest expansion of the middle class in history. For 30 glorious years, they extended privileges formerly enjoyed only by the upper-middle and upper classes -- education for all, homeownership, one-worker households, even weekends, glorious weekends, with not one but two days off. Their achievement was copied across the globe - for better or worse.

All that began to change on the late 1970s. The normally prescient Jimmy Carter foresaw the impending contraction of the middle class -- and warned people -- but was unprepared for America's level of denial. "That's not what we want to hear!" screamed millions, and turned to Ronald "Morning in America" Reagan, who (along with his successors George and Bill and George and - maybe? - Barack) lulled the middle classes to sleep with pretty bedtime stories.

Stories like:

"Sure, it takes two full-time workers to sustain a household, but the house is full of pretty pretty toys!"

and

"Sure, I now need to work two jobs, but who needs weekends when my recreation is tv!"

and

"Sure, my boss is making me work longer and longer hours for less pay, but that's a lot better than joining a union! Those people are criminals!"

and

"Sure, I have to take out a ridiculous mortgage to buy a home and send my kids to college, but look how much money I got in that latest re-fi!"

and

"Sure, it's getting harder and harder to make it all work, but at least I've got these antidepressants to help me cope!"

And then, 30 years later, the middle classes woke up to discover that it was all over for them. The United States had just engineered the largest contraction of the middle class in history. Workers are just now discovering that their losses -- in education, in worker's rights, in homeownership -- weren't temporary after all. People who saw themselves as rising up the class ladder now find themselves in the middle of a steep fall, and wonder how it happened.

How the hell did the middle class not notice something that's been happening for 30 years?? Will they ever wake up!!