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This, from David Leonhardt, seems like a pretty good explanation of our economic ills:
The main problem now is that the good times are no longer good enough to carry the middle class through the bad times. For much of the last 35 years, the incomes of most workers have been growing far more slowly than they once did. In the current expansion, which started in 2001, the median weekly paycheck of workers has actually fallen 1 percent, once inflation is taken into account, according to the Labor Department.To complicate that picture a bit, the issue is that the good times aren't good for enough of us to protect us in the bad times. The distribution of income and wealth has grown so unequal that economic numbers which, twenty years ago, meant we were all doing great now mean that the rich are buying yachts with heliports, the middle class is staying steady or slipping a bit, and the working class is tumbling down the ladder. In other words, growth no longer grows us all. In the past, I've called this "the Conehead Economy," and I think it's an apt image. When we hear of growth, we imagine it to be proportionate. But, increasingly, we're seeing great growth in the top few percentiles, and none beneath that.
