The ultimate cause of middle-class anxiety is a failure to adapt U.S. social institutions to a new economic environment.

Consider this list:

10 Reasons America's Two-Income Families Aren't What You Think
(According to Harvard Law professor and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren)

1 Two-income families today make 75% more in inflation-adjusted dollars, but have less money to spend than one-income families did 30 years ago.

2 Two-income families today spend: 21% less on clothing, 22% less on food, and 44% less on appliances compared to one-income families a generation ago.

3 Every 15 seconds an American family files for bankruptcy.

4 This year, more kids will live through their parents' bankruptcy, than through their parents' divorce.

5 1.6 million families will file for bankruptcy this year, 9 million more are already in credit counseling.

6 Home mortgage foreclosures are up more than three-fold over the last generation and car foreclosures have hit record levels.

7 More than 62% of families say that they worry about making ends meet.

8 The average family spends 69% more in inflation-adjusted dollars on their home mortgage than their parents spent a generation ago.

9 The average family spends 61% more on health insurance, than their parents spent a generation ago.

10 Credit card default rates are at a record high.

The best the Democrats have to offer is warmed-over New Deal, but consider that Democrats used to be the ones with the monopoly on belonging, in an authentically conservative fashion. FDR, an upper class aristocrat with a profound sense of noblesse oblige, as well as with brilliant political instincts, constructed social ties, based on belonging to the group of the oppressed and depressed, and he offered solutions that respected the concepts of fairness and unity simultaneously. This was a very unique historical event, not repeated since, and certainly not possible now. So, the "holy ghost" of New Deal has no heart in it, while the "conservative" groups are so shrill and lopsided that they become some kind of post-modern anemic simulation of "family values" during the 30s.