Jerry Pournelle, who writes on this issue a lot, says that a strong middle class is essential to the quality of a nation.

He doesn't have easy answers any more than I do. I do know that destroying the wealthy isn't going to fix things.

What we are seeing is an economic equilibrium establishing itself. After WWII, the United States was largely untouched by the war. Europe and Japan were wrecked, and China and the Third World were still largely subsistence-farming type nations.

As far as manufacturing went, we were pretty much it after 1945, and for many years beyond that. We could have the luxury of paying an unskilled or even uneducated worker a good middle class wage for turning a bolt on an assembly line. Taxes were low. He could afford to buy a house and car. His wife could stay home and raise kids that might even go to college. The worker could hold his head up, knowing he was earning his own way, and not living off a dole. This was the Golden Age of the Blue Collar, and a lot of us probably grew up in families like this.

But out there were a few billion people in rapidly rebuilding nations who could do exactly the same job with no problem, and a "living wage" where they lived was a hell of a lot less. They just needed the capital for the assembly lines. Eventually, it showed up. I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was a joke. It isn't any more. When you look at the bottom of almost any cheap thing now, it's made in China. That's not going to stay that way either. If I buy a new IBM Thinkpad today, guess where it's coming from.

The trend has moved upward in recent years, and a lot of white-collar workers are feeling the cold wind of planetary economics right now.

This trend was inevitable. As incomes climb overseas, it's going to start evening out, but it's harder today for someone below the educational or intellectual average line to be part of the middle class. This is not good, but I have no easy fixes for it. Making them wards of the state, the other side's easy fix, is even worse.