Maxed Out has an interesting piece about the underbelly of this economy and the potential costs. I only disagree with part of her rant, the rest is true. I added the following comment regarding the declining incomes of people who used to be middle class:

You make some very good points regarding the ever broadening bottom, a bottom that more and more contains people who used to be middle class.

A serious problem is the corruption and gangsterism within the labor movement. This contamination means that most people would rather work at starvation wages than join a union. We are looking at the last of the middle class labor people in the auto business; people who made enough money to send their kids to college, buy nice things, take good vacations and spend their money. Now we have a few hundred thousand mega-millionaires and several hundred million working for survival wages; those people cannot afford to buy homes, nice cars, great vacations and so on. One thing those people do have is guns and if we don't find a way to raise wages at the bottom those people will use their guns.