>Agnes, not trying to downplay the effects on the poor but you cannot squeeze blood from a stone and right now it is the middle classes being squeezed.

Actually it's the poor as well - by various means. Just try to calculate the amount of labor they do as inmates, at ridiculous rates at order of magnitude of $1/hr (actual numbers I heard range from .25 to 2.50), the restricted funding to the schools in their parts of town, the social services they paid for while they had jobs that are now eroded, underfunded or entirely revoked etc etc. And compare minimal wage with inflation over the last 40 years - it's dropping.

Sure, there's not much money to be made out of the money they have. But there's the money they don't have, that they would have had the things stayed the way they were when capitalism had competition.