Welcome to we the new poor

We the New Poor are experiencing a collective amnesia. We're acting like it isn't so. Like we're not living on a breath and a prayer.
The times have changed, but we have not kept up with them. Slowly, my friends, we are being marginalised. We who are making just enough to keep going, we who are on short-term contracts, we who are sole operators of a business that turns a modest profit, we who have been laid-off because we are surplus to requirements. Requirements, let's face it, are youth in a nutshell. Young, avid, able to tolerate long hours and intense pressure, quick minds that dance about the new technology. People who look beautiful (for youth is beauty) and not raddled like us. And another thing, we, admit it, are awkward. In the US we'd be called ornery.
Under-employed, temporarily employed, just getting by, unemployed or let down by a pension promise -- the waters of treachery lap about our feet, skirt our ankles, splash our calves. Watch out!