Bill Moyers: The "Misery Index." and the Middle Class »

Working Americans, and that's most people, are experiencing the "big squeeze." In fact, they're trying to survive one of the most profound social and economic changes in our history. The middle class is disappearing, facing a decline in standards of living. So you'd hope that the Democrats in Denver next week and the Republicans in St. Paul the following week would confront this crisis head on and not just serenade struggling families with a chorus of sympathetic but meaningless sound bites.

As wages stagnate, prices are soaring. Economists call this pain the "misery index." It's a combination of the unemployment and inflation rates, and it's what politicians have in mind when they ask, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Well, the misery index is the highest it's been since George Bush's father became president, seventeen years ago.

When it comes to feeling the misery index, however, you don't go to the economists or the politicians. You go to where regular people live. And that's what we have been doing on this broadcast for months now. We've seen how the mortgage crisis has devastated neighborhoods in Cleveland, how workers in Los Angeles are scrambling for a living wage, and how gas and food prices are choking the ability of food pantries to stave off hunger here in metropolitan New York.

This week, we go to the city of the hour - Denver, the site of the Democratic National Convention. Nearly 75,000 people will gather in the Mile High City as Barack Obama makes history by becoming the first African American to be nominated by a major party for president.

But outside the convention center doors, history of a different, more prosaic sort is being made. This year oil hit a record high - $147 a barrel when last year, it was less than half that - around $68. A loaf of bread is up 14% from last year, a dozen eggs is up 33%, and pizza makers have seen the cost of their cheese soar from $1.30 to $1.76. Flour used to make the dough has tripled in price. As these prices soar, the value of homes is sinking. One in three home buyers since 2003 now owe more than their property's estimated worth. Not only has home equity plummeted, so has the value of other holdings, like stocks and bonds and pensions, the investments families count on as a cushion during hard times.

So America's middle class, our "fearful families" as some people call them, is taking it on the chin. The history-making nominations aside, all the rhetoric from all the speakers at next week's Democratic Convention will be so much hot air above the Rockies unless the party comes to grip with how people are living and hurting today.

Just imagine what might happen if instead of going to all the shindigs being paid for by all the wealthy donors and corporations next week, the Democratic faithful - and their candidates - spread out across Denver's neighbors, and listened to people caught in the big squeeze. That's what our producer Betsy Rate and correspondent Rick Karr did just the other day.

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