A bleak look at why the US economy looks stable on the surface while lower-income people are quietly being squeezed — bad news for the working and middle class, good for asset owners.

• The official inflation rate hides the real pain; for the bottom half, the true cost of essentials like food, rent, and gas has been rising closer to 9%.
• The middle class is shrinking fast — the top 10% of earners now control nearly half of all consumer spending.
• Home prices stay high even with high mortgage rates because people locked into cheap pandemic-era loans won't sell, choking supply.
• A $2 trillion "shadow banking" and private credit industry hides risky, hard-to-value loans outside normal rules, echoing 2008.
• Many big companies are "zombies" that only survive by borrowing more to pay old debt, propping up jobs that could vanish.

Outlook: The split between rich asset owners and struggling workers is expected to widen, with a quieter, slower crash building underneath a calm-looking economy.