That trouble is about not paying bills. It's also about the vertigo of falling out of the middle class. "We talk about it as middle-class poverty, Your frame of reference, when you think of yourself as middle class, doesn't include being scared about making ends meet, realizing that welfare and food stamps are your only option. Psychologically, that shift is devastating."

-- said Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, which has 70,000 members in New York City, quoted in a NYTimes essay on the recession and freelancers