Today, two-thirds of us believe that the American Dream is unattainable.  That is a searing indictment of a system that is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes.  As a child, it seemed like just about everyone was part of the middle class.  In those days, people just took for granted that you could have a nice home, a beautiful family, a couple of vehicles and a comfortable retirement.  But now that kind of middle class lifestyle is out of reach for most of the country.  In fact, a brand new Wall Street Journal/NORC poll discovered that only about one-third of the population thinks that the American Dream "is still alive"…

Only about a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still alive, a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll published Wednesday found.

A survey of 2,501 people conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute twelve years ago found more than half of respondents believed the American dream "still holds true," but now only a third feel that way, according to a recent WSJ/NORC poll of 1,502 adults. The study also found an increasingly large gap between people's economic goals and what they think is actually attainable — a trend that was consistent across gender and party lines, but was especially common amongst younger generations.

Those numbers are yet more evidence that the middle class is dying.

Once upon a time, we had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the entire history of the planet.

But now most of the country is deeply struggling.

So please don't try to convince me that the U.S. economy is in good shape.

Our standard of living has been steadily going downhill for a long time, and things have been getting worse for almost everyone.