American corporations have pretty much written off the middle class. Their actions declare that the middle class is moribund. And they should know since they have been in the front lines shooting down and decimating the middle class. Indeed, American business has dismantled much of manufacturing and has eliminated untold numbers of other middle class jobs, sending them overseas where cheap labor fattens corporate pr of its at the expense of American workers. That's why the employment and housing markets are struggling on life support, food stamp use is at an all time high and the ranks of the working poor are swelling--- whilecorporate profits soar and the S&P 500 stocks show the best first quarter since 1998.

In view of the assault on American jobs and workers is it any wonder that a Stanford University study reveals a dramatic drop in American families living in middle class neighborhoods---from sixty-five percent in 1970 to forty-four percent in 2009. Robert Borosage, President of the Institute for America's Future, adds this alarming note : "The broad middle class -- the triumph and strength of America's democracy -- is sinking. Unless we change course dramatically, we will become even more a nation of haves and have-nots."