Nationally, the share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 17% in 2000 to 20% in 2014, a gain of 2 percentage points. 13 Meanwhile, the share of adults in the lower-income tier increased from 28% to 29%, an increase of 1 percentage point.
From campitor's link. That pretty much sums it up. The middle class is getting squeezed, and for every 1 that drops into the lower class income, nearly 3 go into the upper class income. If you think of this as a crisis, well, I am sure the book will reinforce that.
I didn't come from the middle class, and this deteriorating social contract we seem to collectively wring our hands about seems... Fictional? Mythical? I'm not sure of the right word, but somewhere in between urban legend and nursery rhymes.
I'm sorry the fiction that let's some people sleep well at night is fraying at the edges, but maybe clinging harder to the safety blanket isn't the best solution for adults.
We compete. We have always competed. We will always compete. Any "solution" that applies to those who don't compete well, under the current rules, but doesn't leave room for that competition, isn't a solution. It's a sad, soon to fail, safety blanket, thrown over the heads of people about to get clobbered. Maybe, if one considers the clobbering to be mandatory, this is supposed to be a kindness...
Alternatively, one could look at this as it is. The world is changing, as the world always has. In a changing world, the strategies a few generations old are not likely to be optimal.
My grand parents were raised as farm kids. They all got off the farm, got jobs or started businesses. This worked for all of them. My parents got jobs, never developed in demand skills, or learned to market the skills they had. This caused a lot of failure in my youth. But this strategy worked for many of their peers. It has worked for me.
But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. The OP posted a link to a book written to make people emote at the problem. Cool. Feel however you like about it, but if you want to do something, rather than feel something, then looking at the world the way it is, (rather than as it fails to conform to our wishes) seems a good start, and a rare approach.