Who is to blame for this alleged disappearance of the middle class?

Let's just say for the sake of argument that you accept the premise that the middle class is shrinking and we're being put into a 2 tier class system of rich and poor with a slowly diminishing middle class.

One school of thought is to blame the government since the middle class burdens a pretty large share of the tax revenue pie. Is there some truth to that? Perhaps.

But I do think that financial institutions are probably part of the problem as well. The practice of extending credit to people that aren't really credit worthy creates a cycle of "survival" style cost of living with the constant high interest debt payments that need to be made just to keep current. Let's face it, most college students don't know how to manage money well. Yet any of them can get a credit card as a freshman despite not having any proof of being credit worthy. A lot of these same people get burdened with student loan payments and the like. Then you have a class of educated people (although perhaps not the most financially savvy) that are stuck in a cycle of debt that they can never come out from unless they can achieve a high income to conquer that debt.

People blame the government for the financial collapse all the time. But it seems as if financial institutions had as much of an impact as the government if not more. The very nature of the banking industry is to hope for people to manage credit as poorly as possible so they can get the most out of them in terms of interest and penalties. An unchecked private banking industry is certainly not a good thing for the economy. They have a vested interest in the poor staying where they are IMO.