(Thumbnail image: dublinopinion.com)

“The people who run Minnesota Food Shelf say they’re seeing unprecedented demand, including lots of middle class people who have never used a food shelf before.” (WCCO)

High unemployment. Corporate downsizing. Allegations of jobs shipped overseas and burdening axes. It all adds up to a shrinking middle class, according to some leading scholars. And now, in the midst of this recession, the media is wondering if the biggest casualty of this economic downturn is, once again, the middle class.

We're looking at perspectives on the problem from MSNBC, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, FOX News and the San Diego Daily Transcript.

First we'll take a look at the reasons why the middle class is shrinking.  A Republican Strategist on MSNBC’s "Morning Meeting" says government bailouts have taken a toll on the middle class.

“Not only that, it has lost the confidence of the people in the Tea Party movement, the lower middle class, the people who played by the rules all these years.  You know, they bought the house they could afford, they borrowed money for the kid to go to college, and nobody’s looking out for them.  The rich, the fat cats, Wall Street, we’ve just bailed them out, at both ends too, and if you’re the guy in the middle, you’ve just bailed everybody out, and you feel like a sucker, and you feel like no one cares about you.”

But economist Elizabeth Warren says in The Huffington Post the average middle class wage has been stagnant for awhile. 

“The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.”

And it is middle-class American men who have felt the biggest brunt of this latest economic downturn.  David Brooks of The New York Times writes that with all downward mobility of the middle class, many are going to get mad and start to fight back.

“These reversals are bound to produce alienation and a political response. If you want to know where the next big social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class. ”

Some media analysts are looking to traditional incentives, like tax breaks, to reverse the trend.  FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly gives his ideas on how to pump up job creation and to get the middle class working again.

"Only the private sector can create meaningful jobs.  So give companies that hire people tax credits for doing so. Encourage private business to hire more folks by giving them tax breaks."

But columnist Ron Carrico of The San Diego Daily Transcript says tax breaks for big corporations haven't worked and something else is needed, something contrary to what conservatives like the Tea Party Movement are demanding.

“The teabaggers may be right; things need to change. But what they profess is exactly what corporate America wants; little government interference, no controls on health insurance companies, and a return to the very ideology that brought us to the edge of financial catastrophe.”

So what do you think?  Is the middle class becoming extinct?  And what should be done to reverse the tide?  Share your thoughts in our comments section and check out our transcript.  Newsy.com.  Multiple perspectives.  The real story.