The coporate idea is to focus on luxury services and not care about the lower (or future middle) class. So stuff keeps getting expensive. Government will eventually step in because less worker -> less taxes collected -> less funding for everything, but who knows how long that will take?

But I agree with the "secret ingredient" as another has put it. Crime will skyrocket if the only way to survive is to take. underground markets will help make ends meets (that the government won't get taxes off of, hence the above). And there will be riots, very violent riots, and a lot more of them. A cornered rat strikes back, and millions of cornered rats becomes a miniature civil war.