Natasha Vukelic left her job as an anchor and news director for a Florida TV station because once she'd factored in the long hours, her salary - before tax - of $28,000pa was yielding her not much more than America's minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
She headed for the big smoke chasing better pay. So how did she end up in a bar in working class New Jersey earning $2.13 an hour plus whatever she could scratch together in tips?
Alongside her in the bar on the same deal is Mike Doyle. His plummet into the ranks of America's working poor is even more dramatic. He was a Wall Street trader - a bona-fide one-percenter - clocking off mid-afternoon and enjoying the good life in neighbouring New York. Then the GFC clobbered his hedge fund and here he is - mixing drinks at night and taking the dawn ferry to Manhattan to try - so far in vain - to resuscitate his financial career.
"Five, ten years ago I would have been more of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps kind of guy but I guess my views have shifted definitely more towards the centre. I think I'm more concerned with how other people are able to provide for themselves. I think it's a real big issue now. Every family I know, all of these people have two jobs." MIKE DOYLE - Bartender
Mike and Natasha are just two stark examples of America's middle-class collapse as wages go backwards and secure jobs with good pay and benefits disappear. And as former professionals compete for low-paying jobs they're forcing out America's huge ranks of pre-existing poor.
"Most Americans have seen their incomes stagnate or fall since 2008. In fact, if you look in the middle, the average typical American income today is lower than it was say 15 years ago. Median income of a full-time male worker today is lower than it was 40 years ago." PROFESSOR JOSPEH STIGLITZ Economist, Columbia university
The ABC's Economics Correspondent Stephen Long joins Foreign Correspondent for a journey into the hard reality of post-GFC America. In New Jersey he finds hometown boy Bruce Springsteen's tales of working class desperation have a new and urgent currency and where for many the American Dream is dead and buried. While on the opposite side of the country in the ultimate dreamland of California, the reality for Wal-Mart worker Juan Becerra is a pay-check - on an exceptional fortnight - of $500 as he shares a single room in a far flung suburb with his wife and three children.
Despite the grind, some refuse to give up. Like young mother of one Tayzia Treadwell - working as a security guard in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in America, while raising her child and studying at business college.
"I want the good life that everyone dreams when you're in school and you draw the little house and the picket fence and a dog. I just want a happy ending. I don't want to struggle. I want to wake up knowing that my daughter has everything she needs, I have everything I have and then come back give to my community like where I grew up. I just, I want to live the good life." TAZIA TREADWELL
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