Nostradamus:
Century 10, Quatrain 72
The year 1999, seventh month,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror.
To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols,
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.
Did I miss these guys? I was kind of busy that year. I wonder if Mars is still lucky.
I think, if you wanted to, you could find historical predictions in the works of Shel Silverstein.
But, Fat Bastard, there is data to back up your assertion that the middle class is eroding. Check out
this table. Or
this one . Which fifth do you fall into? Surprisingly, I am in the upper range of the middle fifth.
This table is the most fascinating. According to it, the lowest percentiles make roughly the same relative to the middle percentile now as they did in 1967. But, the upper percentiles have seen a large growth in their income relative to the middle percentile. This means that while everyone's real income has increased over the past 40 years, it has increased a lot more for the very rich.
But I am not sure if erosion of the middle class leads to revolt - can you think of some historical examples? In 18th c. France it was a growing middle class that lead to the revolution, and you could probably make the same case for the US. I am not very sure about the communist revolution in Russia... I'm very rusty, but I think it started with a revolution lead by the middle class against the Czar, and then that new gov't was revolted against by the communists, who weren't "bourgeoisie," but also weren't poor. I think it was a revolution of the intellectual middle class agsint the merchant middle class.