It's like middle-class tightrope walking, this current economic scene in the United States. You step on the rope, hanging on to your balancing umbrella (that 401(k), that employer-provided health insurance policy, perhaps parents with some money) and you lift the other leg up in the air while the audience oos and ahs, watching the rope swing ever more violently under your foot.

And then the umbrella disintegrates, spine by spine, and there you are, trying to balance yourself with a stick.

One illness may be the exact distance which separates a middle-class household from poverty. Or one divorce or one job loss.