The Middle Class

Everyone in the US is a little bit scared to admit that the 20th century phenomenon called the middle class is slowly disintegrating. We're slowly but surely backtracking to upper and lower classes. The way I see it, no amount of higher education at college and university levels will stop the slide. At best, after the shake out, you'll have upper middle, and lower middle. More realistically, it will be lower upper, and upper lower. But this is simply life reclaiming the natural order of things.

For thousands of years, "modern" society (the establishment of cities) has had two classes of people. The rich, and the poor. The rich held the land and owned the property. The poor worked for the rich in various capacities. Back then, the wild card was the merchant class. Those were the people that held a skill. Tailors, shoemakers, bakers, blacksmiths, etc. Those were the equivalent to today's middle class.

There is always going to be an upper and lower class. But if we, the middle class, want to survive, we need to reestablish ourselves as merchants. Create our own jobs, Wean ourselves off of the corporate upper class. And rediscover the concept of neighborhoods. Because not everyone will be able to run their own business and have the corporates use their services. It will be the local neighborhoods supporting each other. The suburbs eventually reverting into independent small towns again. And surprisingly, the original small towns of middle America, will be the ones teaching the suburbs and neighborhoods how it's done.