It was just one sentence on NBC Nighty News, a lead in to a Dateline special "America Now The Town That Jobs Forgot." Jacob Hacker said those devastating words to to Lester Holt, "Seventeen Million Middle Class Families are on Medicaid." Not just seventeen million people. If the average size of an America household is still 2.5 people than that is 42.5 million former members of the "Middle class" who have joined the working poor.
It may not mean much in Washington, a town with "a big, lethargic, sleepwalking Great Dane being led around on a hostage leash by an angry, insecure Chihuahua" On Wall Street where they are discussing a "double dip recession" these Americans don't really matter. Usually the media seems to have very little time for this large percentage of the American population.
But those words "Double Dip? Some wonder when the first recession ended" and Lester Holt's intro about a Georgia town that jobs forgot are the reality for far too many Americans. Seventeen million families who never wanted to ask for anything are facing economic insecurity, trying to avoid foreclosure and struggling through each day. These seem like the forgotten American families.