The McClatchy News Service reported Monday that, based on opinion polls and interviews with voters and political experts, the American people are more liberal than at any time in a generation.

This is not to say that there aren't deep divisions over issues such as immigration policy, gay marriage and abortion.

However, there is one thing that Americans do agree upon -- they are deeply unhappy with the direction that our nation is headed and want to see change.

How unhappy? Just one in five Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, the worst outlook since the eve of the 1992 presidential election.

Only about one-third of Americans think President Bush is doing a good job, among the lowest ratings for any president since Harry Truman in 1952.

Maybe these numbers have something to do with another set of numbers that came out last week from two liberal groups -- United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies. They found that the average CEO of a large company earns about $10.8 million a year, or 362 times what the average worker makes.

They also found that the 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded companies last year took home, on average, $36.4 million. That's 204 times more than the highest paid generals in the U.S. military and 212 times more than the top 20 ranking members of Congress.

You've heard a lot recently about private equity and hedge fund managers, the people who make great fortunes by exploiting market trends. The top 20 fund managers earned an average $657.5 million -- or 22,225 times what the average worker makes or 3,315 times more than President Bush earns.

While CEOs and fund managers have been fattening their wallets, this nation's 130 million working people have seen virtually no increase in their inflation-adjusted annual income for the past three decades. Last year, median earnings for full-time workers actually fell by 1 percent, despite a 3 percent increase in productivity.

In short, according to Business Week, the share of this nation's income that's going to corporate profits rather than wages and salaries for workers is at a 50-year high. This nation is on a course where more of our wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and the middle class is getting squeezed out of existence.

Those figures go a long way toward explaining why so many Americans are feeling as if the economy no longer works for them. Those at the top are doing great. Those who aren't are seeing their jobs outsourced to China and other low-wage havens. They're seeing their pensions disappear and their health insurance, if they're lucky enough to have it, cut back.

They're working harder for less money. And they're not happy about it at all. Talking about these issues is more or less taboo in American politics. One gets accused of class warfare when bringing up issues such as excessive executive compensation, tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations or the need to make the minimum wage a living wage.

Unfortunately, class warfare is real and most Americans are standing in a free fire zone. Politicians of both parties have coddled the rich while supporting policies that have made the gap between rich and poor in America the highest it has been since the 1920s.

The war in Iraq has overshadowed economic issues in the ongoing presidential campaign. But given the pain people are feeling -- pain that will only get worse as the nation's housing market starts to collapse under the weight of millions of shaky mortgages that will never be repaid -- is real. And working Americans want solutions, not lip service, for an economy that is growing more and more inequitable.