"Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.

"It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.

"Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off with the nation's bounty. 

"A big problem, of course, is that American workers have been hurting badly for years. Revolutionary improvements in technology, increasingly globalized trade, the competition of low-wage workers overseas and increased immigration here at home, the decline of manufacturing, the weakening of the labor movement, outsourcing and numerous other factors have left American workers with very little leverage to use against employers.

"Many in the middle class are mortgaged to the hilt, maxed out on credit cards and fearful to the point of trembling that all they've worked for might vanish in a downsized minute.

The privileged classes, with the Bush administration's iron cloak of protection, avoid their fair share of taxes, are reluctant to pay an honest dollar for an honest day's work (the federal minimum wage is still a scandalous $5.15 an hour), refuse to fight in their nation's wars, and laugh all the way to their yachts.

"So now, with people's 401(k) retirement accounts vanishing along with their puffed-up middle class pride, perhaps there is space for a little truth telling.

"The average American never leaves the class level he or she is born into. Yes, it's true, despite all those Horatio Alger kitchen table talks about "you can be anything you want dear, this is America!" I don't want to let greedy financiers off the hook for current market turmoil, nor do I wish to deflate the ambitions of next great entrepreneur, Google founder or Warren Buffet in the making. But Americans just don't understand class and how it works within the version of capitalism that is the U.S. of A.

"

For decades, people truly believed they were far better off financially than they actually were, even though the average American worker saw a 16 percent drop in his earnings (adjusted for inflation) between the 1970s and 2004, according to economist Benjamin Friedman of Harvard. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of the income scale skyrocketed ahead? Yet somehow, every American proudly proclaims membership in "the middle class." Amazing what E-Z credit and the ability to buy a latte every morning can do to a worker bee's perspective.

"It is time for the voting masses – and I'd include myself here – to understand economic facts better and begin pushing for real change. We need to shed our mythical beliefs about class and build a stable economic foundation that all Americans can depend on. I suspect more people will be open to this line of learning now that unemployment has hit 8 percent. For decades, people missed the fact that a white collar job, a college degree and a cubicle did not necessarily offer them a level of job or financial security above the blue-collar, manual labor workers they thought they'd moved ahead of.

"Consider the findings of the 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream, released in March: Half of all respondents admitted they were one or two paychecks from ruin. If they lost their jobs, within a month, 50 percent of the people polled admitted they would not be able to pay their bills.

"Another 28 percent said losing their job would find them unable to pay their bills within two weeks. More than a quarter of people earning $100,000 said they'd be insolvent after a month of unemployment.. That's not middle class stability as most people would define it. No doubt this situation owes much to the recent crash in home prices and the cratering of the stock markets. But that's another way of saying that many Americans were simply never as upwardly mobile as they had assumed, or deluded themselves into thinking they were.

"You may own a sprawling home with the three-car garage, take an annual trip to Cancun, and be able to discuss basic investment strategies, but somehow at least a quarter of you are living one month away from financial oblivion. The trappings of middle class life are not the same as security."

"Another sign of our cluelessness is that half of us are railing (a few decades late) at the excesses of the executive class, while the other half of us are railing at deadbeat subprime borrowers. What we should be doing is pouncing upon our elected officials, demanding that Congress lay a foundation for true prosperity and security, as previous generations did in the 1930s and 1950s. In this session, Congress will likely decide on major legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize workplaces; that would reform the 

"American health care system; and possibly that would overhaul the way we regulate banks and other financial institutions. In each of these areas we need bold change from recent policy.

"I hear the cry of "socialism" coming from the back of the room.

"This isn't about class conflict; this is about building a stable foundation for the future, so hard work really will get people ahead."