Don't apologize - it's still good reading.
I don't know where I'd heard about this kind of stuff before, but I know I've been hearing it for a LONG time - I know there was a spot of noise about it in the late '90s, when the economy was supposedly booming and the "common man" wasn't seeing a whole lot of it. Of course, those years are positively halcyon compared to what we have today...
When somebody asks you to trade your freedoms for security, it isn't your security they're talking about.