O pportunity is the cornerstone of American values. Liberal or conservative, we embrace the religion of opportunity, the dream that we all will have the chance to make ourselves and our families safer, happier, and wealthier. It is the belief in opportunity that spares us significant moral pains when we contemplate the rampant inequalities in our society. If we all have chances to do better, we tell ourselves that those who are on top deserve to be there because they capitalized on their opportunities. By the same reasoning, those at the bottom deserved their fates as well. Even as we laugh at the refrain that George H.W. Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, we cling tenaciously to the idea that America is a meritocracy: If we work hard, we will succeed.

And yet something unsettling has happened to opportunity in America over the last eight years. The poorest Americans have gained little since 2000, while their counterparts at the other end of the income scale have had an amazing run. The levels of opportunity at the extremes have been extreme. Those with less and less of a chance to climb out of poverty are silhouetted against gargantuan CEO salaries and bonus packages pulled down by those on top.

Most Americans, of course, live somewhere between those ends. For the middle class, opportunity is about timing, resources, and a finite number of chances. But it is also about larger forces that have recently, and subtly, shifted the opportunity landscape, making it harder for them to seize the opportunities that come by. In a detailed summary comparing middle class economics over the eight years of the Bush Administration with what happened to the middle class during the 1990s, independent analysts at Third Way concluded that the typical middle-class family–the family that is employed, has health insurance, is investing money in a retirement account, owns a home, and has a child in college–is worse off by $94,929, thanks to a combination of falling wages, lost investment income, lost home equity, and higher costs for health care, food, fuel, and child care or college. They are doing everything right, but they are worse off for it.

Americans don’t want to be coddled. They see life as open-ended, taking risks to improve their circumstances. For much of the twentieth century, the role of government has been to facilitate good risk-taking while discouraging bad risk-taking: improve education for young people; help Americans launch new businesses or train for new careers; and, if the new business doesn’t work out, help a family get a badly-needed second chance. And yet, since 1980, the role of government as the catalyst for opportunity has been under assault. Under the guidance of George W. Bush, it has collapsed. The price of the social and intellectual capital needed to take good risks has shot beyond the reach of many middle-class Americans. At the same time, the guardrails guiding risk taking have disappeared, while the punishment for losing out on those risks has risen. A new administration gives us new hope that we will put government back on the side of the people, to embrace regulations that give people a chance to take reasonable risks, to accumulate wealth, and to build something for the future without worry that they will lose everything in a game that is rigged against them.

Look first at education, the time-tested key to moving ahead in America. The dream that education is the equalizing road to opportunity, with college as the final, crucial step to prepare to capitalize on opportunities, has given way to a very different reality. Despite seven years of No Child Left Behind, public schools continue to leave behind millions of children with alarming frequency. For those lucky enough to graduate high school and make their way to college, the path has become far steeper: Nearly three-quarters of students at the nation’s top colleges come from families in the top quarter of the socioeconomic status scale, compared with only 3 percent from the lowest socioeconomic status quartile.

Moreover, the price tag continues to climb. During the past eight years, the cost of college has increased 34 percent faster than the rate of inflation at public institutions and 20 percent at private institutions. The Bush Administration has deliberately shifted those costs onto students through borrowing. Today, undergraduate borrowers leave school with an average of $20,000 in debt, and average graduate borrowers owe $45,000. The average young adult now devotes a whopping 24 percent of her income to paying off debt.

Thanks in part to these growing costs, a college admission slip is no guarantee of success. Students from wealthy families are more than six times more likely to graduate than their lower-income counterparts, and white students are far more likely to complete their degrees than their African American and Latino counterparts. Financial barriers also prevent half of college-qualified low- and moderate-income students from ever enrolling in four-year colleges. Taking on loans that are double the family’s annual income is understandably daunting, so they become cautious, resigning themselves to less education and fewer lifetime opportunities. For these young people, the repercussions of this decision will last a lifetime. Real wages for adults who never attended college have fallen over the past eight years, leaving them with half the income of their better-educated counterparts. By shifting these risks onto students, the federal government has closed the doors of higher education to millions of students.

Traditionally, the story would end here. A young person gets an education (or doesn’t), and now has the opportunity to succeed (or not). Of course, opportunity isn’t just about a good education; what you do with it matters even more. Opportunity is about the chance to achieve the American dream–work hard, get a good job, a home, and give the children a chance for a better life. In financial terms, this translates loosely into the opportunity to build wealth and security.

But for the middle class, opportunity-through-hard-work is on the ropes. Day to day, the middle class has been trounced by a one-two punch of stagnant wages coupled with rising costs for basics expenses. Average real wages declined by $2,000 for workers under 65. At the same time, core costs–mortgages, health insurance, transportation, food, and a landline telephone–have increased $4,655 over the past eight years, adjusted for inflation. Interestingly, there are sectors where employment is booming. On the low-wage side, jobs for debt collectors have skyrocketed, while at the other end of the income spectrum, jobs for Washington lobbyists have also doubled. Demanding debts or trolling for political favors have replaced producing goods and services as hot growth areas.

With incomes down and core expenses up, families turn to debt. Like medicine, debt can be good for you–just what the doctor ordered to buy a home, get a degree, or launch a new business. But the American middle class surpassed those healthy doses of debt decades ago, and it has long been struggling with the consequences. Over the past eight years, debt loads have continued their breathtaking climb, and today more than 50 million Americans cannot pay off their credit card bills; 35 percent of those credit card accounts slipped into default at least once last year. Payday lending has ballooned into a multi-billion-dollar business that charges upwards of 400 percent interest to working families.

And yet instead of putting even the mildest curbs on lending, the federal government has looked the other way, giving lenders a free hand to trick and trap unsuspecting consumers. When states tried to enforce consumer protection laws earlier this decade, Washington regulators stepped in on the side of the lenders, fending off regulations that might have protected families. Ironically, the federal government remained unwilling to intervene until the entire system seemed on the verge of collapse–at which point Congress intervened on the side of rescuing the banks, not the borrowers.

Just as education opens doors, heavy debt loads close them. Big student loans? Don’t become a public school teacher, a firefighter, or a police officer–the pay is too low. Crushing credit card debt? Better not go into business for yourself–too risky when you have to make those payments every month, rain or shine. Don’t apply to graduate school–just more debt. (In fact, more than four out of 10 college graduates cite student loan debt as the reason for not pursuing graduate school.) Today’s young people talk about delaying marriage, forgoing homeownership, and working full-time when babies are born, just so they can keep paying their debt.