As Mooney pointed out, the costs for healthcare and retirement are now shouldered by workers -- on top of student loans. She dismissed the notion that we are in debt because we spend too much money on lattes and luxury items, although she admitted that American homes are getting bigger and filling up with fancy TV sets.

There is this mythology that it's the individual's fault, because America is the country of individualism. These personal-finance books promote the idea that you can be a millionaire too. And I think it takes the pressure off government and employers to help.

Are people actually spending a higher percentage of their income on the necessities, like healthcare and housing, than they did even in the '70s?

Yes, and that's been a critical shift. Consumer spending is about the same now as it was in the '70s. But we're spending more on items that require regular monthly payments, things like childcare, healthcare, housing, things that we can't give up if money gets tighter, if someone loses a job, or gets a pay cut.

Whereas if we were spending more money on buying new suits, or new dining sets, or just lattes, it would be something we could give up. Obviously, you can't say: "OK, this month I'm not going to pay the childcare, or I'm not going to pay the mortgage..."

How do you reconcile the picture you're painting of this declining middle class with the fact that the average [new] American house size has more than doubled since the '50s -- it's now at more than 2,300 square feet. Or, that the average American home now has more TVs than people?

TVs are less expensive now, so it's not as much of a luxury as it used to be. Houses are being built bigger, and we buy the houses that are available to us.

But it's a mixed bag. We do need to lower some financial expectations, like thinking that you should be able to have a big house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. I think that as part of the educated middle class we need to scale back our expectations about what that means. It doesn't necessarily mean the things that it meant even in our parents' day of being able to have two cars, because middle-class means something different now. I also think that we should be pushing for help in areas where we're having to spend a lot of our money, especially those major areas like healthcare, childcare.

Finally, she pointed out how the American ideal of rugged individualism is keeping many educated "middle class" people from asking the government for help, or even being involved politically.

Did you find among the people you interviewed that their shame about their problems kept them from being more politicized about them, rather than thinking of them in terms of their own personal mistakes or shortcomings?

Yes, I think that absolutely happens. There is a whole rhetoric in this country that the more you make the better you are. People really fall for that. They feel ashamed that they don't have enough money, especially as they get older, because as you get older you're supposed to get more financially stable, and you aren't supposed to make the kind of foolish choices that you're allowed in your 20s. We feel like we have failed, and that we're doing something wrong, and we hide it.

So, we don't admit to friends and family that we have a huge amount of debt, or that we're having trouble paying our mortgage.

We can go out there and advocate for poor people to make more money -- that feels safe and OK -- but to say that we aren't making enough, or that we aren't getting enough benefits makes us feel like we're not successful.

Good food for thought.