Here are my recommendations for two books you must read, now.
"Winner Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class," Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson.
"Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression," Dale Maharidge, photos by Michael S. Williamson, foreword by Bruce Springsteen.
These two books deal with the same phenomenon: The death of the American middle class and our drift into another Great Depression. They approach the question from two different directions but they reach the same end-point, namely, the American middle class is under attack and the enemy is inside our borders, in fact, inside our governing bodies.
Hacker and Pierson demonstrate that runaway economic inequality, erosion of our industrial base with the concurrent loss of good manufacturing jobs, the "housing crisis" and accompanying "economic crisis" are NOT the fault of the usual suspects -- globalization, techonological changes in the workplace, or better educated people at the top.
Instead, they demonstrate that the middle class is dying, American industry is collapsing, and this really is the new normal because a succession of US administrations -- Democrats and Republicans -- have caved in to big business, corporate interests, and far-out ideologues. As Hacker and Pierson demonstrate, the current Great Depression is no accident -- this is the way it was supposed to work.
Maharidge's book is the result of half-a-million miles of travel and thirty years of following, interviewing, and photographing working class families as their jobs disappear, their lives fall apart, and their futures disappear. Yet, somehow, people find the strength to go on and on and on. This book with drive you to tears on most every page. The two books taken together will piss you off as you've never been pissed off before.
Buy these books. Read and re-read them. Pass them to friends.