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They were upper middle class, or at least close enough to feel like it. They miss that. They are frustrated. They want back in.

They were living off of hot checks that Robert Reich and Alan Greenspan were writing. Now the bills are due and they have to face reality that the life they were living was an abberation based on a falsehood. If I write hot checks I too can live the life of Reilly, but sometime later I will have to cut back and pay up. The late 90s stock market and the economy it drove was a classic bubble. The bubble has burst. It turns out the Priceline.com was not worth more than Delta, United, and USAir combined. Boo.com was never going to make money. 35% per year returns on your mutual fund were not normal. Your expectations were too high. Clinton lied to you.

There comes a time when you have to grow up, when you box up the stuffed animals for good, when you put the bong in the garbage, when you have to prioritize your spending because Daddy is no longer there, because Mommy will no longer buy the toy if you throw a big enough fit. Welcome to adulthood. The adolescent 90s were fun, but that time is over. Get a haircut. Remove the eyebrow studs. Hide the tattoos. Move into a cheaper house -- maybe even rent. Grow up and deal with it.

Plenty of people have downsized before you. More will follow in the decades to come. Ask your grandparents about life in the 30s when they were little. How did Grandpa lose his hearing? Was if from the artillary on Okinawa? Did your Grandma get her arthritis from ironing clothes for cash? What tales will you tell your grandchildren when they are bouncing on your knee 40 years from now -- how life was so tough that you could no longer afford the $95 massage therapy?

Plenty of people have downsized before you.

A family of four in 1900 sqft, not a lot of room to downsize. Keep in mind this is a software engineer. This guy invested his time and money for himself, but also for our society.

It turns out the Priceline.com was not worth more than Delta, United, and USAir combined.

While I understand the excesses of the 90s, I'm glad it happened. We do have eBay, eTrade, PayPal (Some of these I would avoid), Amazon, Travelocity, CNN, Drudge, FR, DU, Hotmail, .... The explosion gave us choices and the best business models made it. The Y2K scare had much to do with driving the up the cost of IT labor too.

Yeah, we should have seen it coming. But when you see hundreds and thousands of jobs being outsourced, and CEOs taking pensions and 300 million dollar bonuses,its not a stretch to feel a little sorry for the loss of one's status. We need all the classes. If we lose one, the system will grow stale.

I personally think software engineers should earn enough to be part of the upper middle class. Geez, if engineers (of any type) don't qualify, who should? They don't just give those degrees away.