Of course there is a middle-class crisis.
No, just because many in the 5 Towns and elsewhere are either upper-class (Two salaries of at least $100K or the equivalent) and/or have help from relatives, that doesn’t address the middle class.
Take typical salaries of today and typical house prices and real estate taxes of today, and compare the those to the same 10, 20, 30 and 40 years ago.
House prices used to be far, far, lower, while typical salaries have basically stayed the same over that period.
House prices in frum areas are typically $500K or more, with Real Estate Taxes at around $10K per year or more. If you live in NYC, the RE Taxes are lower but you likely more than make up for that with your City income tax.
For a 500K house, that means you need $100K just for the down payment. Even if you could somehow cover that (rich in-laws/uncle/whatever), that still leaves about $400K to mortgage, or about $3,000 per month including Real Estate taxes but before utilities, maintenance, repairs, etc.
Figure $50K per year total, after tax, just for the house. That’s already one “normal” salary (again, after tax).
Now add tuitions, even with breaks, and you’re looking at another $20,000-$30,000 or more, depending on the schools and number of kids.
So you need about $80,000 AFTER tax for just the house and tuitions. That’s without the car or cars, food and clothing, not to mention camp (as in day camp, never mind sleep-away).
And if both parents are working, then you likely need babysitting, which is another large expense (and also a big problem because in many cases those babysitters are not Jews, so that means the kids are effectively being raised, to a large degree, by a non-Jew).
Yes, this is insane.