well, the same was true during the depression.  the jet set still existed.  in most economic crises, there's still enough people at the top who have enough that it's not a problem for them.  it's the statistics you have to look at.  even before the crisis, iirc,  the average income was about $46,000 per 4 person family.  so most of those people were never on the slopes in the first place.  but then, i personally know a lot of people across the economic spectrum, so i see how easy it is to move in one social class and get a skewed view of the "common" situation.  also, in my city, the last economic crisis put a lot of engineers and tech people out of jobs for more than a year.  so i watched some people go from high paying jobs to selling stuff off and taking retail jobs just to make ends meet.

personally, i think of it pretty simply.  when my parents bought the house they have now, it cost roughly 3 times my dad's yearly salary as a mid/entry level engineer, and my mom was soon working herself (when i entered kindergarten).  there's no way you could find a house in that same neighborhood for 3 times an entry-level engineer's yearly salary today, even though it's basically the same class of people (and in some cases, the same families) working at the same type of jobs and making on average about the same money as they did when i was 13 (a long time ago).   at the height of things, houses were going for about 3/4 of a mill in the neighborhood.   those who have moved in over the years just took on much more debt.  same ratio issues apply down the line for everything from school tuition to TV sets.  add in the fact that tons of people in that area have lost their jobs in the past year or even past few months as different places  closed or cut staff, with no prospect in sight of new jobs, and i can tell you that for a lot of middle to upper middle class people where i grew up, it's not just a matter of gaming the system.  it's a matter of only making so much to pay for necessities, getting into greater debt as that became the necessary, and now either not having the income to pay for it or living with the prospect of losing that income. 

and i've watched the same thing happen in the city i live in now, which is thousands of miles away.

personally, i'm not worried about my parents because my dad's been really good about money. and i'm not in the worst position myself.  but that's not true for everyone, and most people i know are saving as much as they can. frankly, i know of people with millions who are being careful with their money now and cancelling vacations.