I am David Brooks...

…and you will rip my latte from my cold, dead hand.

Today the thought-provoking columnist (no sarcasm intended – I like his op-eds) wrote about the former middle class.

Back in August, I wrote about this very same subject, “I Can’t Be Poor, I Have a Master’s Degree,” kvetching about my “lifestyle reversal” as a grad school refugee in the last recession, the “self doubt” that came from three months of people asking if I’d gotten a job yet, and the “drop in social capital” that happens when you can’t afford sports tickets, expensive restaurants or marquee concerts like a good little yuppie.

What will the former middle class face in this recession?

“They will suffer lifestyle reversals. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have had unprecedented access to affordable luxuries, thanks to brands like Coach, Whole Foods, Tiffany and Starbucks. These indulgences were signs of upward mobility. But these affordable luxuries will no longer be so affordable. Suddenly, the door to the land of the upscale will slam shut for millions of Americans.”

Nooooo!!!!!

“The members of the formerly middle class will suffer housing reversals. The current mortgage crisis is having its most concentrated effect on people on the lowest rungs of middle-class life — people who live in fast-growing exurbs in Florida and Nevada that are now rife with foreclosures; people who just moved out of their urban neighborhoods and made it to modest, older suburbs in California and Michigan. Suddenly, the home of one’s own is gone, and it’s back to the apartment complex. “

The horror!!!!!

Then I read articles like this and realize that “hard times” are relative.

“If you want to know where the next big social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class.”

Nah – I’ll be jacking up my credit card at Pottery Barn, thank you very much.