The new millionaires are not a representative sample of the rest of the country, but they are a leading indicator. Isa Daudpota draws attention to the recent Reith Lecture by Dr. Vandana Shiva of India. Recently, I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of farmers suicides. Instead they became paupers. Their native seeds have been displaced with new hybrids which cannot be saved and need to be purchased every year at high cost.
Hybrids are also very vulnerable to pest attacks.
Now farmers are consuming the same pesticides as a way of killing themselves so that they can escape permanently from unpayable debt. And do not miss the exchange at the end between Dr. Shiva and several of her questioners. There are poor people in the US as well, but they seem to have vanished, as Barbara Ehrenreich points out in The Progressive.