For decades critics of the current American economic paradigm have warned that the prosperity of the middle class is fabricated and illusory. They have said that the gap between rich and poor was widening, that things are getting worse for the average person, not better. That deficits, both personal and state - will catch up with subsequent generations.

Now the situation is finally coming to a head, and reality is showing its face… as documented in the New York Times of all places.

The underlying problem has been building for decades. America’s median hourly wage is barely higher than it was 35 years ago, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Most of what’s been earned in America since then has gone to the richest 5 percent.

Yet the rich devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, and thus stimulating the American economy, the rich are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

The problem has been masked for years as middle- and lower-income Americans found ways to live beyond their paychecks. But now they have run out of ways.