The Way We Live Now: doing the upper-middle class juggle. We're juggling baby! Can you keep a wife, a kid, a mortgage, a commute, and a second job in the air without dropping any? We'll watch you try!

It's called "The White Collar Shuffle," and it's America's hot new dance craze. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, and then you try desperately to maintain your pre-recession quality of life by picking up a second job. It's funky but you just might find that once you start, you can't stop!

Of course, working two jobs these days to the point of mental exhaustion is considered a blessing. Shit, at least you're not a teacher—$10 billion wasn't enough to create any new jobs for them. Or you could be a worker at a Mott's factory—they've been forced to go on strike just to not get their pay cut, and everybody who drives by them is probably screaming "I got da Mott's, whatta you got?!" And they have to admit that dim prospects for the future is what dey got.

If you want to escape the juggling life, there are only a few options left for you. You can become a vulture, feeding on the dessicated corpses of near-dead mortgages; you can join the ranks of the "unbanked," on the theory that check cashing services will be worth the extra expense when all the banks get burned in the coming revolution; or, you can join the circus, as always. (Though not without juggling skills).

No matter how bad things get, at least you can always count on Wal-Mart's low low prices. OR CAN YOU?

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