When I was growing up in the late 80s thru 90s, my family was an early "casualty" of this economic trend. The housing / rental market in Massachusetts was already too expensive and layoffs too rampant for a blue collar family to survive. We had to move across the country.<p>I remember even as a kid being confused about the Simpsons. It didn't look like my family's situation. It didn't even look like the life of any of the people I knew. They/we lived in houses without switchplates over the outlets. Houses they rent but didn't own, or rent-to-own houses with gotchas in the fine print they didn't understand.<p>The Simpsons also never went hungry. They had family meals. At my friends' houses we ate microwave potatoes with soda. My family went hungry 3 days at the end of each month.