The rich, those born suck­ing sil­ver spoons like Mitt Rom­ney and Paul Ryan, real­ly are dif­fer­ent from the mid­dle class. The wealthy grow up and live their lives wrapped in secu­ri­ty. That’s what gives them the arro­gance to orga­nize a posse to hold down a fel­low prep school stu­dent and chop off his hair, mock NASCAR fans’ clothes and ridicule cook­ies offered by sup­port­ers. No mat­ter what, Rom­ney and Ryan will remain rich and secure.

Republicans like Ryan have decided relieving the deficit is more important than relieving uncertainty for the middle class.

By con­trast, those born into pover­ty or the mid­dle class live lives nagged by inse­cu­ri­ty. They know their jobs could be off­shored at any moment. They know their employ­ers may raid their pen­sions in bank­rupt­cy. Their major asset in life, their home, may have lost a third of its val­ue when the Wall Street-inflat­ed hous­ing bub­ble burst. Rich would be great, but those born with­out trust funds work hard­est just to attain a lit­tle security.

Last week, the Pew Research Cen­ter issued a report detail­ing how inse­cu­ri­ty has increased for the mid­dle class since 2000. The non-par­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office (CBO) pub­lished a report pre­dict­ing increased inse­cu­ri­ty for the mid­dle class if Con­gress takes no action on tax­es and bud­get cuts with­in the next four months. A third report released last week, called Pros­per­i­ty Eco­nom­ics, describes how to revive the econ­o­my and broad­en security.

A true demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic, where the major­i­ty rules, would reverse the past decade’s trend against the mid­dle class, fore­stall the CBO pre­dic­tion, and increase secu­ri­ty for the mass­es. The sil­ver spoon­ers seek­ing the Oval Office have giv­en no indi­ca­tion, how­ev­er, that they intend to ease the uncer­tain­ty of the plas­tic spooners.

The Pew Research Cen­ter looked at how the mid­dle class fared since 2000. In a word, it’s bad­ly. This is what Pew called its find­ings: ​“The Lost Decade of the Mid­dle Class: Few­er, Poor­er, Gloomi­er.” Here’s how the cen­ter sums it up:

Since 2000 , the mid­dle class has shrunk in size, fall­en back­ward in income and wealth, and shed some – but by no means all – of its char­ac­ter­is­tic faith in the future.

, the mid­dle class has shrunk in size, fall­en back­ward in income and wealth, and shed some – but by no means all – of its char­ac­ter­is­tic faith in the future. Over the past 40 years, the per­cent­age of adults in the mid­dle class shrank from 61 to 51 . Also, the rich seized a greater por­tion of the nation’s house­hold income. Their cut rose from 29 per­cent to 46 . Almost all of that came from the mid­dle class, whose share fell from 62 per­cent to 45 .

years, the per­cent­age of adults in the mid­dle class shrank from to . Also, the rich seized a greater por­tion of the nation’s house­hold income. Their cut rose from per­cent to . Almost all of that came from the mid­dle class, whose share fell from per­cent to . Sim­i­lar­ly, the mid­dle class suf­fered a 28 per­cent drop in wealth over the past decade, much of that in hous­ing value.

The loss­es inten­si­fied mid­dle-class inse­cu­ri­ty. Those inter­viewed by the Pew researchers expressed pes­simism. For Amer­i­ca, which sees itself as the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty, this sur­vey result is dispir­it­ing: 29 per­cent of the mid­dle class said hard work and deter­mi­na­tion no longer guar­an­tee suc­cess for most peo­ple. The Amer­i­can Dream is dying.

Mid­dle-class inse­cu­ri­ty and gloom will wors­en if Con­gress allows the coun­try to fall off the fis­cal cliff – if it fails to renew at least some tax cuts set to expire at year’s end or tem­per sched­uled bud­get cuts. The CBO, in its Update to the Bud­get and Eco­nom­ic Out­look: Fis­cal Years 2012 to 2022, said if Con­gress does not change its cur­rent tax and spend­ing plan, the Unit­ed States will descend into reces­sion again next year and unem­ploy­ment will rise to 9 percent.

The bud­get cuts were demand­ed last year by House Repub­li­cans, led by Ryan, who refused to raise the nation’s debt ceil­ing until they got a deal guar­an­tee­ing the bud­get slash­ing. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has repeat­ed­ly sought mon­ey for infra­struc­ture improve­ment and oth­er job-cre­at­ing projects to relieve unem­ploy­ment and pre­vent a dou­ble dip reces­sion, but Repub­li­cans have rebuffed him. They also have reject­ed his plan to renew mid­dle class tax breaks while ter­mi­nat­ing the mas­sive­ly larg­er breaks for the rich.

Repub­li­cans like Ryan have decid­ed reliev­ing the deficit is more impor­tant than reliev­ing uncer­tain­ty for the mid­dle class. The per­fect sym­bol of that is Ryan’s plan to voucher­ize Medicare. Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare are beloved by the mid­dle class because of the secu­ri­ty they pro­vide in retire­ment. Ryan’s vouch­ers would end that secu­ri­ty because they would dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase costs for senior cit­i­zens. Ryan and his fol­low­ers demand aus­ter­i­ty for the mid­dle class and tax cuts for the rich.

Aus­ter­i­ty is not nec­es­sary, accord­ing to two Yale researchers. They offer an alter­na­tive, Pros­per­i­ty Eco­nom­ics.

Jacob Hack­er, a Yale pro­fes­sor and direc­tor of the Insti­tu­tion for Social and Pol­i­cy Stud­ies, and Nate Loewen­theil, a Yale law stu­dent, describe how to cre­ate a dynam­ic econ­o­my and fos­ter a soci­ety ​“marked by greater health, broad­er secu­ri­ty, increased equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty, and more broad­ly dis­trib­uted growth.”

They believe in res­ur­rect­ing the Amer­i­can Dream. While the mid­dle class is los­ing faith, Hack­er and Loewen­theil say it does­n’t have to be that way.

In their plan, every­one ben­e­fits, not just the sil­ver spoon­ers. It’s not, how­ev­er, a strat­e­gy like­ly to be adopt­ed by aus­ter­i­ty advo­cates Rom­ney and Ryan, who have nev­er expe­ri­enced the pain of eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty suf­fered by the plas­tic spoon class.

Full dis­clo­sure: The USW is an In These Times sponsor.