If you haven’t already read this Huffington Post [1] article, read it—a great post about how we are being betrayed economically by the Kleptocracy that runs the United States…whenever you think that our system works well, look at these statistics and the trends that Warren cites over the last 30+ years.

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is [2] unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families [3] can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in [4] default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on [5] food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for [6] bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than [7] $5 trillion from pensions and [8] savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners [9] out on the street.

Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.