As usual, Robert Paul Wolff is worth reading; from the conclusion of his lengthy analysis:

We are becoming a Banana Republic, with a tiny, obscenely rich upper class, a smaller and smaller professional middle class, a large working class, and a larger and larger mass of those left out of the economic system all together. Because of the globalization of production, even in the service industries, there are now tens of millions of Americans who are, in effect, surplus population. They are not needed by capital, not even as a "surplus population of the unemployed" holding down by their existence wages for those employed.

This is a politically explosive situation. Judging from twentieth century history, it is a situation more likely to produce fascism than socialism. I honestly do not know what can be done now to reverse the trend, given the enormous hostility and opposition in the political class to labor unions and mass organization of the working class. At a minimum, those who are now driven into the insecurity of the working class must give up their pretensions to middle class status and embrace the reality of their situation. Perhaps a vibrant and expanding labor movement might be able to attack the wealth of those at the top and start the reconstitution of the large middle class that was, for several generations, the foundation of a decent life for scores of millions of Americans.