Robert Reich" Majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings and checking combined.

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36673-the-jaw-dropping-realities-of-our-widening-economic-divide

Chuck Collins from the Institute for Policy Studies has new data showing the majority of Americans now have less than $1,000 in their savings and checking accounts combined. If they slip on the sidewalk or have a problem with their car, they can be left penniless.

On the other side of the widening economic divide is an equally jaw-dropping reality: The 400 wealthiest Americans now own more wealth than the entire GDP of India, a nation of nearly 1.3 billion people.

The problem isn’t inequality per se. It’s the consequences of the degree of inequality: a shrinking middle class that’s increasingly frustrated and angry, a politics that as a result has become polarized and shrill, fewer opportunities for the poor to ascend into the middle class, and a democracy that’s overrun with money from the wealthy. The trend is unsustainable, politically and economically.

[bobGandolf]

1. trend is unsustainable?

Not sure about unsustainable. The middle class that’s increasingly frustrated, and angry, is fueled by republican rhetoric. The disrespectful actions have been modeled by republican politicians for 7+ years. Throw Trump out there with his new style campaign fanning the flames of the many frustrated citizens, and this is what you get.

[Petrushka]

2. That's their own fault . . .

. . . for not making paid speeches on Wall Street.

[Punx]

3. Actually

Getting rid of the "Middle Class" and the economic and political power they have should make society more stable. Along the lines of a feudal society. Very little change in class or status. I just don't think it's a society most of us here want any part of.

Conservatives have been after the middle class since the 70's, if not for the last millennium. Unfortunately a number of Democrats have bought in as well.