by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

What in the world is happening to the middle class?  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.  When I was growing up, a single income was all that was needed to support a middle class lifestyle for an entire family.  My mother didn’t work outside of the home, and that was the case with many other mothers that lived in our middle class neighborhood.  None of the kids that I played with or went to school with were “wealthy”, but everyone lived comfortably.  But now everything has changed.  The middle class in America is working harder than ever, but it has been steadily shrinking.  With each passing day, more Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty, and this is a trend that should deeply alarm all of us.