I really think you should watch the show. The purpose of the show is not to say this is the way it is for everyone, or the way it will be. It simply documents two families who over the last twenty years have seen the loss of decent paying manufacturing jobs shipped overseas replaced by minimum wage, low benefit jobs that rise and fall with the economic tide. These are people who lived in modest homes and weren't trying to take European vacations, build fancy new mcmansions etc. I used to feel like some posters here as I was going along my middle class life but I have seen too much. And all these people who have had to take lower paying jobs or be out of work for years will enjoy a much smaller social security check than those who were able to keep good paying jobs. We all can't be engineers, nurses etc. And even many of them have watched their benefits and high wages slip away. the timespan of the show was through many administrations so it was not political, just the reality that many people face that worked hard to try to make a middle class life for their family.