lindsaycampbell:

Few articles make our collective economic reality as clear as this.  It’s a good read.  Here the important part:

Here’s the scary news: Over half of all middle-class families have no net financial assets. That means no savings, or debts that exceed any assets. Nearly one in four middle-class families have someone who lacks health insurance. And 80 percent of middle-class families cannot cover the bulk of their essential living expenses for even three months if something should happen to their income.

On a whole, the report’s Middle Class Security Index says that 25 percent of middle-class families are at a high risk of slipping out of that class entirely and another 44 percent don’t have what they need to remain securely in it.

The Demos study gets to the heart of our national economic anxieties. Men in their 30s earn less today, adjusted for inflation, than did their fathers at that age, suggesting that social mobility is reversing. The cost of essentials such as housing and health care is outpacing income, and the thing that brought security to retirement – the defined-benefit pension – is a relic.

That’s why the microwave oven argument just doesn’t wash. Until the middle class gets back its economic footing, any talk about shared prosperity is a feint. Some Americans wake up every day with their stock portfolios bulging and others wake with foreclosure fears. The fact that they both have a clothes dryer doesn’t make them the same.

(via imarks)