...companies polishing their bottom lines at the expense of the people who depend on them for their livelihoods.

The standard NeoLiberal dictum that an enterprise's duty is solely to shareholders (and rewarding upper management.)

This is not perceived as fair.

The perception matches reality.  It isn't fair.  

... the greatest fear that I hear in my age cohort - that of being catapulted from a secure to a marginal existence even though one performs well and plays by the rules.

Classic controlling mechanism: change arbitrary rules at arbitrary times for arbitrary reasons.  People can adapt to physical danger (roofers & etc) and they can adapt to consistently applied rules even if those rules are completely insane.  What people cannot adapt to is constantly changing "reality-challenged" rules.  

Political frustration - rising social inequity - increasingly precarious personal circumstances.

Let's face it: we don't need them since we produce the goods and services that constitute wealth.  The ruling class will always parasitize the productive classes keeping us in "precarious personal circumstances" until we build our own economic structures: banks, grocery stores, factories, extractive industries, e.g., mining, and so on.  

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre