Myths of the Near Future

"For a generation, most Americans have been told by left, right and center that they would be failures if they ended their educations with high school, worked hard, saved cash for emergencies and bought modest homes they could afford. They have been told that to succeed in life they need to ape the lifestyles of the upper middle class that provides most of America’s politicians, pundits and scholars.
"The result has been an experiment in social engineering that has gone horribly wrong: the creation of a faux mass upper middle class."

Michael Lind in Salon explains how "the American dream has turned into a nightmare."