OP-ED: "What You Don't Know Makes You Nervous," by Daniel Gilbert, New York Times, 21 May 2009.

I argue just about every chance that I get that the poor want protection from their circumstances and the rich want protection from the poor. But the middle class? What they want from their government is more complex: protection from uncertainty.

This piece nicely argues that it's not the loss in income that matters to most Americans (we can adjust) but the loss of certainty. We can always belt-tighten and money only makes you so happy (no rise in happiness above $20k per capita per year--the world over), but this sense that we don't know what's coming next in the economy is truly paralyzing.

A nervous middle class is an unhappy middle class, and an unhappy middle class is an unstable polity.

Great line: "An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait."

Everybody loves to anticipate. Nobody loves to wait.