Two related articles that may inform your discussions of this topic:

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...

http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites...

For context, and lest anyone think I'm taking a cheap shot at liberalism or progressivism, I definitely see myself in the first article. Particularly in my teens and early twenties, I was about as smug as they came. Then I went meta-smug by posing as an angry libertarian, and was utterly insufferable. These days, I think and feel much the same, I just don't go out of my way to socially advertise it (or I put more effort into not making others feel small?).

>There are major class shiftings and reorganizations going on, and people living in and near large prosperous cities have largely been immune and isolated from it.

One place a prosperous urbanite might bump into this shift is when a city winds up with a commuter police force due in part to high rent.